John David Scott was founded in the summer of 1999 by three business partners; John Harb, David Amirault and Scott Fraser. Over the last few years many changes have occurred but we have tried to keep one thing consistent; build a handmade guitar the best you can then try and improve on it every time around. To do this we kept the operation small in the beginning in order to keep focused. We felt this was the road to take so we could worry about building a few guitars better rather than building more in order to pay the bills. So far we have had great response from everyone from musicians to studio owners and engineers. This makes us very proud and continues to inspire us to grow. Here's a little background on the builders...

John Harb and David Amirault were both employees of a major Vancouver based guitar company for a number of years and decided to team up with they're collective talents and start a small shop based in Burnaby B.C. A small loan and a few months later the first hand-built guitars started to emerge. Already having all the skills needed to build these guitars it was just a matter of establishing systems of doing things to get more consistent results. Over time and with a lot of advice from our friends such as John McQuarrie at Northwood guitars, Jeff Sigurdson and Jesse Brace at Legend and of course the father of Canadian guitar builders Jean Larriveé at Larriveé Guitars we were on track and headed quickly in the right direction.

The dreadnaught was the first guitar we built with a number of different headstocks bridges and bindings. All the guitars were always built from the early days with solid woods ebony bridges and fingerboards and hand-fit dovetails. Over time we settled on a headstock shape and expanded our models to include an orchestra model and both regular and extended upper bout cutaways. All our guitars are built from hand selected quality local and imported woods and built under climate-controlled environments.

Over the next year and a half, John Harb and Scott Fraser remained involved in their primary roles until increasing pressure from their primary carrers caused them to resign form the company. This brings us up to current day with myself; David Amirault being the principal owner/operator of the company.

With an increasing demand for the guitars an ever growing pressure to move to the next level and find a proper space in which to work I was fortunate enough to meet John Schmidt who owns Hycraft Design; A local company which he runs doing high end custom wood working. He was kind enough to rent me part of his larger woodworking shop, which he has been operating some forty years now. I made arrangements in the summer of 2002 and moved in and have been building full time since Nov 1st 2002. With the new shop, my journey which started almost a decade ago took a new and exciting turn and I was in my new space. And what started as a one-car garage was now a proper woodworking shop.

Once in the building I completed a batch of guitars that included my first custom design a dreadnaught made of Australian Blackwood which sold to a buyer from Hawaii. I went on to make an Orchestra Model version of this guitar, which is currently in production as I’m writing this.

As well as exotic woods & shapes, I also build from local Canadian supplies because it is some of the best and most beautiful wood in the world is right here in British Columbia.

Thanks for stopping by to read about us, I look forward to hearing from you when you decide it’s time to own a John David Scott guitar of your own.

David Amirault - Luthier and President, John David Scott Guitars