TV Jones

Thomas V. Jones founded TV Jones in 1993 in Whittier, California, initially as a guitar repair and custom-building shop. His path to pickups ran through Brian Setzer: Jones had been working on Setzer's guitars since 1993, and Setzer's vintage 1959 Gretsch 6120 became the obsession that drove him to understand Filter'Tron pickups from the ground up. In 1998, Setzer chose Jones's Hot Rod pickup in a blind test for the new Gretsch Hot Rod guitar line — the breakthrough that put TV Jones on the map.

The Filter'Tron was originally designed by Ray Butts and introduced by Gretsch in 1957; Jones's contribution was researching Butts's original designs, sourcing the same AlNiCo magnet formulations, and hand-winding pickups that replicate the late-1950s construction more precisely than anything previously available. Fred Gretsch hired Jones as a consultant in 1999, and TV Jones pickups became the reference standard for vintage Gretsch tone. The Ray Butts Ful-Fidelity series — built from Butts's own notes and Jones's decades of analysis — represents the most historically precise expression of that work. Other key models include the TV Classic, Super'Tron, and Power'Tron Plus, the last developed for Billy Gibbons for the Billy-Bo Gretsch. Jones relocated to Poulsbo, Washington in 2001, where the company remains.

The guitar line grew from a 2000 collaboration with Gretsch and Setzer's tech Rich Modica, inspired by a Kay Tuxedo that came in for repair. Early Spectra Sonics were US-made at the Hamer factory; production moved to the Terada factory in Japan — the same facility that builds high-end Gretsch instruments — where it continues. The Model 10 is also Terada-built. All Spectra Sonics are shipped back to Poulsbo for setup before leaving the facility.