South Knox musician uses his passion to build perfection
When it comes to Josh Hobbs’s artistic endeavors, one thing led to another. The first thing was music. Josh was 8 or 9, he says, when he started playing an alto saxophone, and when he was around 11 he asked his dad to teach him to play the guitar. His dad made a deal: If he learned to play one song, he’d buy Josh his own guitar. In no time he was strumming “Secret Agent Man.”
His love of music led to a University of Tennessee degree in studio music and jazz, which led to playing with a number of local bands. Then COVID interrupted life and performance, allowing him to shift gears — in a good way. “I’d also gotten married; it’s hard to be on the road all the time.” Instead, he focused on teaching guitar lessons, something he’d been doing for years, but on Zoom. He also repaired and modified guitars for Parris Guitars.
Hobbs has been tinkering with guitars since he was young. He remembers the first electric guitar he modified: “I ripped all the electronics out of my guitar and they sat on my bedroom floor for about two weeks.” Modifying the electronics in guitars changes their sound, Hobbs says.
About the same time, he got started repairing instruments alongside Greg Seigmund in his Andersonville shop. Seigmund became Hobbs’s mentor, and after about a year of working together, convinced Hobbs to build a guitar, a Fender Telecaster style guitar. “Then he kicked me out of the nest,” Hobbs says.
He’s now working on his fourth guitar from his South Knoxville shop, a custom version of a Fender Stratocaster. It’s made of Khaya mahogany from Africa and high-quality flamed maple with a gaboon ebony fret board.
“I’ve always liked to work with my hands,” he says, “and creating a concrete product at the end of the day is so gratifying. I want to create the most perfect playing surface for a guitarist, something that removes all barriers to playing the music they hear in their head.”
To follow along on Josh’s journey, head to his Instagram
@hobbsguitars.
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