Jeff Conley received his first guitar when he was born.  A brand new 1980s model from his mother; a musician and folksinger herself, who was always playing guitar through her college years in the 1960s. Thus began Jeff’s life-long passion for music.  His story has just as many twists and turns and unexpected elements as the stunning guitars he makes today.

Jeff’s affinity for vintage Americana took root in youth amidst the treasures he found in the dusty corners of antique shops alongside his mother and his father’s love of classic cars.  “At nine, I started playing and I got obsessed with it.  I mean obsessed. But not just the music part, the form and function of it.”  He loved the way they looked.

By the time Jeff was off to Hartwick College, in upstate New York, he had been playing for a decade and had built up a collection of nearly 50 guitars. “If anyone was ever selling one on craigslist and I had an extra $40, I would get it.”  Peppered across locations from his parent’s house to his dorm, to storage, the collection grew and grew. 

It wasn’t until Jeff got serious about playing full-time that he sold his self-proclaimed, “worst guitar collection of all time” in exchange for two, thoroughly researched, beautiful vintage 1960s Gibson guitars. 

This was the move intended to launch his career.  Post college, Jeff and a friend started an acoustic duo called “Me and this Kid”.  They were playing six nights a week all over the eastern seaboard as a cover band. He was writing and singing some of his own songs as well.  Jeff has released some of his original songs on records which can be found on Spotify and other music services under his name.

Until one night changed everything.  Both guitars were stolen at a venue knocking his musical trajectory onto a different course.  In a blink he went from 50 guitars to zero guitars.  The only two that remained were the one that his mother gave him as a baby and the small fender guitar he used for lessons as a 12-year-old boy.

The unsolved theft marked the loss of more than just Jeff’s livelihood.  “The two Gibsons were a big deal... it felt like a transition from playing music as a hobby to playing professionally. The Gibsons and vintage aesthetic also became a big part of developing a brand identity. I think, at the time, my overall musical identity was about "old stuff"... old music, old guitars, old look and feel.  So it felt impossible to just buy a random guitar to replace the Gibsons and course correct."

“One night someone said, ‘Oh don’t buy a new guitar… just make one’.  They were kidding, but I couldn’t sleep all night long thinking, I bet I could make one”. 

Jeff set out to do just that.  “I was making guitars out of old wooden bowls and old this and that, but I needed something better.” 

He spotted a vintage clarinet case at a Wells Maine antique market, “great color, great patina, and the same dimensions as a guitar body”.   He began tinkering with the fender guitar he used as a child, taking it apart and rebuilding it.  “The intention was to play maybe a song at a show. I pulled it all apart and shoved it in a clarinet case.” This first build was completed just a few months following the theft.

With that trial clarinet case guitar in hand, he played at a show one night for a song and it didn’t go out of tune so he played a second. “I got home and was like I wonder if I could play a whole set with a homemade guitar.  And then it evolved into I’m never going to play a real guitar again. I’m only going to play homemade stuff”. 

Jeff spent years of trial and error to overcome the challenge of keeping these 70-year-old clarinet cases in tune and ultimately templatized his design for consistent results. 

Jeff’s one-of-a-kind guitars started to be requested by well-known musicians who were doing stadium tours such as Boston local Chadwick Stokes. “He would come and pick one up and bring it on tour with him and come back 6 months later for another to try”.  Jeff’s guitars have traveled the world, from Europe to South America and played at venues such as Red Rocks, in Morrison, Colorado and the Greek Theater in Berkeley, California.  

A designer by trade, Jeff started to design branding for Chopped Guitars putting the logo on hats, t-shirts and all kinds of apparel. But once it got to the point of strangers making custom orders, the process shifted into a strain on his creative spirit.  This definitely took away from the initial philosophy of each guitar being unique which had made them so appealing in the first place. 

Chopped Guitars has continued to evolve. Each build takes roughly two months depending on materials and design. You would have to make a few a week to really make it a sustainable business model.  “I still build,” Jeff shared thoughtfully, “I have a guitar on the bench right now…but it’s for me.”  It’s a passion project. I like when friends ask to take them on the road.” 

Tapping into the natural curiosity and interest in his work from others, Jeff has led guitar-building workshops at Shalin Liu, in Rockport, MA and elsewhere.  He has demonstrated how to make your own percussion using piezo elements, wiring cereal boxes at Manchester Memorial Elementary School to create home-made drums and inspire the ingenuity of our youngest residents.  “I do enjoy talking about the process and hopefully inspiring folks to start taking things apart and trying to put them back together in a different way.”  

Currently his shop has a stack of clarinet cases and many other found objects all waiting to be reimagined one day. Some of the found items he has repurposed for his guitars include vintage mix master (baking equipment) parts for sound hole covers, oven plates for switch plates, oven temp dials for volume control and then some. 

When Jeff plays gigs these days, he plays for the love of playing and has a favorite guitar he uses which is reliable and sounds great. “I love incorporating parts that don’t traditionally belong on guitars, ie: spaghetti strainers, oven knobs, vintage mix master controls, vintage DJ Faders, vintage license plate tags, etc.”

After his father passed, 2 years ago, Jeff has honored him in his own way,, “I love my 1943 license plate tags as that was the year my dad was born." He has other 1943 trinkets too that he's found in antique stores around New England.  A true beauty of Jeff’s guitars are just such personal touches that make each one unique and can hold tremendous sentimentality. 

The Gibson theft “went from a bad thing that happened one night, to this thing I have been working on for twenty plus years”.  Sometimes you just don’t know if something is going to be a positive or a negative in life.  The theft of course initially felt like a bad turn of events, and yet it spurred a whole new engagement with music fueled by Jeff’s creativity and ingenuity.  “It feels good now to have this lifelong hobby”.

Reimagining the purpose of vintage finds, embracing the unexpected turns, committing to trial and error, and obsessing over the process ultimately lead to an entire set, and life, played in tune. And that guitar gifted at birth? It still hangs in Jeff’s bedroom unchanged.