# Jeffrey Yong

Jeffrey Yong (born 29 November 1958) is a Malaysian luthier noted for using local Malaysian wood in his instruments and for his innovative designs. Yong has exhibited at conventions in the United States, Canada, Japan, Russia and China. He founded the Guitar Institute of Malaysia.

## Career

Born in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, Jeffrey Yong started his career in 1976 as a guitar instructor and examiner. He built his first guitar in 1985 from a DIY kit, later traveling abroad to improve his guitar-making skills.
Yong founded the Guitar Institute Malaysia (GIM) in 1993, specializing in teaching different genres of guitar playing and guitar construction. He also taught at the Luthier School International in California. His skills in luthiery were mostly self-taught. He has published articles on guitar-making in several newspapers over an eight-year period, and has appeared at guitar maker conventions in the United States, Canada, Japan, Russia, China and Malaysia.

## Materials

After a luthier asked why he was sourcing material from overseas when Malaysia exported good quality wood, Yong looked into the possibility of using local, non-traditional timber, such as monkeypod, rengas, mango, rambutan, and local Diospyros spp. (known as "Malaysian blackwood" or Kayu malam), for building musical instruments. He continued to innovate and gained extensive knowledge of different kinds of timber, especially those from tropical regions.
Yong introduced Malaysian blackwood to other guitar makers during the 1998 GAL convention in Tacoma, Washington, United States. He also pioneered monkeypod as a tonewood and saw it adopted by other luthiers. Using monkeypod wood (Samanea saman or rain tree, formerly known as Albizia saman) to build guitars was not new, but it had not been regarded as a premium tonewood and had previously only been used for aesthetic purposes.
Yong built a guitar almost entirely from monkeypod, which went on to win the blind listening test at the 2006 convention of the Guild of American Luthiers.
Instruments built in Yong's workshop were made by hand with 99 percent local woods, mostly monkeywood, the remaining one percent being the maple veneer used in the bindings. His bracing design and layout were influenced by Martin's X-scalloped patterns, Torres fan bracing and Smallman lattice bracing.

## Achievements

Yong's guitars have been exhibited at Healdsburg Guitar Festival, Shanghai Music Festival, and Montreal Guitar Show. At the Montreal show in 2011 he introduced his "JJ Blackie" and his innovative "Seismic", a JJ-shaped 10-string acoustic guitar with Monkeywood body and Blackwood fingerboard (see pictures, right) which featured in Premier Guitar Magazine. The guitar's D and G strings had octave pairs and the B and high E had unison strings.
Yong built almost an entire guitar of monkeypod, and in 2006 it won the blind listening test at the Guild of American Luthiers convention. It was judged to be the best-sounding instrument in terms of tonality, timbre and sustain. Yong was competing against notable luthiers such as Erwin Somogyi, and two of his guitars were ranked in the top three.
Artists who use Yong's guitars have included Don Alder, Farid Ali, Kent Nishimura, Hiroshi Masuda, Shun Ng, Wayan Balawan, Dan LaVoie and Okapi.

## Styles
### Steel string guitars
#### JJ (Jeffrey Jumbo)

The JJ is a hybrid of a classical guitar and a jumbo. It uses scalloped "X"-bracing, and has a unique bridge with more mass than the conventional bridge. The body shape is a cross between a Jumbo and a Classical Guitar.
Other interesting features are:
* Cutaway bevel – offers more excess to higher frets without sacrificing air mass in the body.
* Sound port – to bring the in-body sound closer to the player.
* Thumb scallop – helps the player utilize the over-the-thumb technique with ease.

#### Other steel strings

* OM Guitar
* Seismic Guitarat:

### Classical Guitars

* Tioman I: nylon string, with Torres bracing and body design
* Tioman design: nylon string, has a Torres body shape, with modified lattice bracing
* Tioman III: nylon string, has a Khono design body-shape (larger body) with modified lattice bracing

## Coverage and industry participation

Conventions and festivals attended :
| Year | Name | Place | Achievements |
| 1993 | Guitar Institute Malaysia (GIM) | Malaysia | Founder |
| 1998 | Guild of American Luthiers (GAL) Convention | Tacoma, Washington, US | Introduction of Malaysian blackwood internationally |
| 2006 | Guild of American Luthiers (GAL) Convention | Tacoma, Washington, US | Introduction of monkeypod wood (Samanea saman or rain tree) OM Guitar won the Blind Listening Test Best sounding guitar in terms of tonality, timbre, and sustain |
| 2011 | Montreal Guitar Show | | JJ Blackie & Seismic were featured by Premier Guitar Magazine |
| 2012 | Kirov Moscow International Guitar Making | Moscow, Russia | Classical Guitar Tioman III won first prize |
| 2012 | Sound Messe Osaka | Osaka, Japan | |
| 2013 | Malaysian International Guitar Festival (MIGFEST) | Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia | |
| 2013 | Healdsburg Guitar Festival | Santa Rosa, California | Featured in Guitar Player magazine |
| 2013 | Tokyo Handcrafted Guitar Show | Tokyo, Japan | |
| 2014 | Malaysian International Guitar Festival (MIGFEST) | Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia | |
| 2014 | Guild of American Luthiers (GAL) Convention | Tacoma, Washington, US | |
| 2015 | Osaka Music Festival | Osaka, Japan | |
| 2016 | Shanghai Music Festival | Shanghai, China | |
Media coverage :
| Year | Media | Title |
| 2009 | The Star newspaper | "Jeffrey Yong promises to teach how to make a guitar in two weeks" |
| 2012 | The Straits Times newspaper | "Strum a Mango" |
| 2014 | The Star newspaper | "Guitar Gods of a Different Sort" |
| 2016 | Create with Malaysia | "A Luthier's Song" |
| 2017 | Sin Chiew newspaper | "Making Musical Instrument with Non-Traditional Wood" |