Top Guns

Chapman's new factory move coincides with a bit of a rethink. We track down the key players all around the world

- Dave Burrluck

Not for the first time, part of this story starts with the legendary guitar hardware designer Trev Wilkinson. Just before Covid, Trev had shown us some DIY guitar kits that were a serious level up from the cheapos that seem to flood the market. It turns out they were being made in India by Harmony Musical Instruments (not to be confused with the Harmony guitar brand) and proved hugely impressive in their quality and detail.

“I’d been at the NAMM Show,” remembers Trev, who was actually hard at work at the Indian factory when we called, “and Harmony’s CEO, Shankar Swamy, and [works manager] Pushpalingam Chithirai put a Fender-style neck in my hands and it was the best proper Fenderstyle neck I’d seen outside of the Fender Custom Shop. This was the neck I’d been trying to get made all these years in all these different factories. That directly led to those guitar kits, which I know you’re very familiar with.”

Harmony Musical Instruments (HMI) is based in Chennai, formerly Madras, and had already been very active in the worldwide guitar-making scene, creating instruments for the likes of Squier and Jackson in considerable numbers, Trev tells us. But when that ended Trev began his working relationship with the factory by bringing in the much smaller production of Fret-King guitars for JHS, for whom he was consulting at the time. And when that, too, came to an end he began consulting for HMI.

“Dave Hollingworth creates the designs for Chapman in the UK and I’m in the UK most of the time. We have a very direct line of communication for questions, suggestions – all kinds of stuff.”