RED LAYER GUITARS

My name is Jort Heijen, 30 years old and living in Amsterdam, the Netherlands. I like to build guitars… a lot. It's the one thing I can't stop doing. After I quit school when I was 18, I wandered around not knowing what to do next. In 2011 I was working as a bicycle mechanic in my hometown and spending my money on guitar parts, woods and hardware. When my boss asked me if I wanted to take over the bicycle store, it hit me… I didn't wanted to end up working all my life fixing bikes. I just wanted to spend time building guitars… So that's when I decided to move to Amsterdam and attend to a 4-year woodworking school as this was the closest thing to guitar building... In those years I realised a lot of my dream, I attended three internships at Adamovic Basses in Haarlem where I learned a lot of skills I could use for my guitars. In my third year, I got the opportunity to get a CNC-machine from my uncle (who happened to have one left…). I dedicated this machine to build guitars and parts..

Primary location: Amsterdam