We were lucky to catch up with Jeffrey Donovan recently and have shared our conversation below.

Jeffrey, thanks for joining us, excited to have you contributing your stories and insights. So let’s jump to your mission – what’s the backstory behind how you developed the mission that drives your brand?

The mission of my company is to make the best guitar pickups available. I’ve been playing guitar since I was 5 years old, and at age 61 am still playing and gigging. I have always sought after the best sounding pickups I could find for my guitars and at some point realized that the only way I was going to get the sound I wanted was to make the pickups myself. I started doing this as a hobby, and as many of my friends are also musicians, they started asking me to build them pickups as well. After doing this for some time, and getting great response from my friends who were using my pickups, I decided to officially make it a business. While it’s been less than a year since making this decision, my products have been well received and I look forward to growing the business and helping other players achieve the exact sound they are looking for.

Awesome – so before we get into the rest of our questions, can you briefly introduce yourself to our readers.

I started off as a guitar player looking to get a better sound out of my guitar. This led to my hand making my own guitar pickups and doing countless experiments and prototypes to both understand the science behind the product and how to achieve any specific sound and/or tone I was looking for.

Many of my clients are seeking exactly what I was seeking when I started; a specific sound or tone they have in their head but have been unable to realize elsewhere. I talk to my clients one on one to understand what they are after and once I am confident I know what they are looking for I begin the process of building their pickups. While I do offer many stock models of my own pickup designs, it gives me great satisfaction in helping others find exactly what they are looking for and custom models are a major part of my business.

I take great pride in my work, and am solely responsible for all products made.

Can you open up about how you funded your business?

Putting together the necessary capital for my business was a process of moving it from a hobby to a real business. At the time I decided to turn my hobby into a business I had already acquired a fair amount of the equipment I would use. After that it was a matter of sitting down to prioritize what remaining equipment I would need to go into real production and the cost of that equipment. I used my own savings to fund the remaining purchases and to get the company through the first year.

What do you think helped you build your reputation within your market?

Probably the biggest factor in building my reputation as a guitar pickup builder is that I have been a guitar player all my life, and I USE my own products exclusively. Saying you make a great sounding pickup is one thing, getting up on a large stage in front of a large audience and actually using it is quite another. I believe this fact alone is probably the key to the reputation I have in the business.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://donovanpickups.com
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/donovanpickups
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/DonovanPickups