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Folkstone Guitars is a small US specialist in innovative guitar modifications and a builder of unique one-off guitars. Folkstone Guitars located in Tallahassee, Florida, US. FG is owned and operated by luthier Gary Hudson.

The owner
Gary Hudson began playing guitars at age 14 while living in Jacksonville, Florida. He learned much from a friend and mentor, Gary Smalley, guitar tech for Lynyrd Skynyrd. He carried his advice and techniques right up to today.

Folkstone construction
Folkstone uses bodies of ash and alder. Hudson stated, "We use are about sound and innovation in the electronics. Several top guitar builders make their appeal exotic wood (bubinga, koa, African blackwood) laminate tops and headstocks, fancy inlay and other cosmetic fronts that have nothing to do with the tone and quality. The player winds up spending thousands more for these extra eye catchers. We are not as concerned with catching the eye as we are catching the ear. While each of our guitars is a work of art to behold, tone, quality, and feel are the objectives."

Folkstone electronics
Folkstone Guitars concentrates on two basics. Stainless steel frets and quality electronics. According to the luthier, DiMarzio pickusps, Dragonfire, Motherbucker Humbucking pickups, Folkstone has created "14-way switching" custom mod for 3-pickup electric guitars. On a 3-pickup guitar using HSH for pickup config (humbucker-single-humbucker), a push/push volume combined with a normal 5-way lever switch and mini toggle allows the player to select any combination of pickup coils desired for a wide variety of tones. These selections can include all three pickups at once, three single coils together, or neck and bridge single coils or humbuckers only. On-board active effects range from QDD overdrive to BCU super EQ.

Special modifications
Folkstone has modified existing guitars for the band Eli is the only company that has hand-made stainless steel frets on every guitar plus each guitar is unique.

Folkstone builds
The owner of Folkstone Guitars, Gary Hudson, states that they are very unique and set apart from other guitar builders in that every guitar is built from the ground up. Each customer chooses a particular base guitar model then the parts are chosen and modifications decided upon. Hudson states that to his knowledge, Folkstone's success is in the electronics and the use of stainless steel frets (standard)

Specialized eletronics
Folkstone Guitars has been able to engineer 14-way switching for guitars. The use of 5-way switching is a standard in the guitar industry with 5-way switching used on Fender Guitars' Strat Plus, Elite Stratocaster, PRS Guitars, and Ibanez S. An advancement upon the 5-way is 7-way switching

Body and neck
upon request using parts and colors chosen by the customer. A standard feature of Folkstone Guitars are stainless steel frets. Each guitar is a one-off. Models that have been created are the F81M, Phat Screamer, Blues Blazzer, ST Custom, Gold Cat, eXII 12-string, and T3. Each basic design is aimed at one or more particular genres of music from heavy metal to the blues. Each can be a "signature" model with the owner's signature embedded in the guitar's finish on the headstock.

The company built a one-off custom guitar for musician, well-known record producer, and mixing engineer John Kurzweg who engineered three Platinum albums for the group Creed and other well-known artists.

Signature builds
Folkstone hand built a guitar, the John Kurzweg ST Custom, a complete hybrid and one-off guitar for record producer, recording engineer, and performer John Kurzweg using a Telecaster and a Fender Stratocaster 3-pickup configuration. The body was a hand rubbed oil finish without paint. The headstock contains a decal with Kurzweg's signature.