The Pederson Hand Made Archtop Advantage...

The Pederson J2 is a 13' Jazz/rock designed guitar. At 13' this guitar is smaller in stature — perfect for the performing musician. Once you play this guitar you will immediately notice its design, precise set up, quality and big open sounds. It is the state-of-the-art guitar in its genre. Producing a BIG well-rounded sound for its size, it will appeal to not only the modern alternative rock player but to the jazz players as well. If you journey from jazzy tones to hot rock leads, you'll want this guitar to take you there.

The J2's main feature is the asymmetrically shaped body and the Koa wood. We use Koa for the J2 because its beauty and tones are easy to see and hear. Koa has a wonderful hue in its coloring and is just a very unique wood. Koa also has a great warm tone and tends to be a little brighter than mahogany but is very much like mahogany in its overall output quality. This guitar sweats tone.

The J2 is a well-designed guitar, allowing your hands to naturally gravitate towards the picking and strumming positions. It has perfect balance and is not neck heavy like many of its non-competitors. This balance is important to reducing player fatigue and improves with how you interact with the guitar. You want this guitar to be ONE with you for the maximum playing experience…for as many hours as you like.

Again, the voice of the guitar is its selling character. The highs and mids come off the guitar with authority, yet they do not over power the full rich bass notes. There is a plethora of tones produced by the Koa carved top and you'll notice its big voice and even bigger response.

The J2's responsiveness to your playing is the key element it its relationship with you. As your fingers manipulate the notes you'll notice that there is an atmosphere around the J2. It responds with its own personality to your light touch and playing style with tonal balance and note-to-note richness. Responsiveness and sustain are intertwined in the voice of this guitar and the J2's tones are typified by a powerful output that is saturated with rich sustain. If you play a guitar that responds better to your playing, you will have to struggle less with the guitar, your playing will improve and this guitar will take you to newer heights.

Finding Your Favorite Wood

The best part of the J2 journey is that we USE the perfect wood for this guitar — Koa. We use select Koa for the top, back and sides on this guitar. Of course, as an optional upgrade, we can use highly prized flamed Koa for these body parts too…the only limit is your imagination. Koa has a beautiful warm sound and is very responsive to the players touch. Koa is a prime choice of wood for the J2 Arch Top.

Fine Fingerboards

The fingerboard on all Pederson Custom arch tops is ebony. Ebony is a hard and dense material and is the perfect selection for fingerboards due to its durability. It also makes a great background for custom inlay. Many players also like the blank fingerboard look for that all black appearance.

Elegant Headstock & Premium Electronics

Most players prefer the 6 in-line headstock on this J2 model, just be informed that you can select the 3X3 headstock at no extra charge — they are interchangeable. We use Gotoh 510’s as a standard tuner choice and with a 18:1 ratio — fine tuning your J2 is accurate, dependable and quick.

Bridge and Tailpiece Details

On all our arch top guitars, including the J2, we use ebony for the bridge, bridge base and tailpiece. Ebony gives our bone saddle a rigid dense material to be coupled to, which heightens the sense of the strings vibrations to the guitars top — creating a robust tone unique to Pederson Custom Guitars. Our bone saddle is compensated, similar to an acoustic guitar — this gives the J2 and all our arch tops that boutique "Bone Tone". The bone nut is also standard selection. Optional is the metal T-O-M style bridge.

Finishing Touches

The J2’s body design is asymmetrical in shape and that is a distinctive trait shown in these pictures. This guitar is well balanced, light and features master construction. The action is fast and the neck is very comfortable allowing for hours of blissful playing.