Jim Dunlop passes away at 97

Ir was announced yesterday that the legend, Jim Dunlop Sr. has passed away. To many in the musical-instrument industry, Jim Dunlop Sr.was the crowned king of guitar accessories. Over the course of his long career, his eponymous company’s vast selection of everything from capos to picks and pedals became one of the best-known in the industry.

In fact, it’s not a stretch to say Dunlop’s work and diligence in pursuing improvements in the less-vaunted corners of the guitar industry likely impacted just about every player who picked up the instrument from the early ’70s onward. It was these countless unsung advances in form and function that constituted his real reward from the work he loved. “When I meet people and they say, ‘What do you do for a living?’” Jim told PG’s Chris Burgess in 2008, “when I tell them I make guitar picks, they kind of give me that blank stare, but I equate what I do with making paintbrushes for artists. I’m like the guy that made Leonardo Da Vinci’s paintbrush. You know what I mean? I have the opportunity to work with the greatest guitar players of our time.”

Dunlop was born in Scotland in 1936 and remained a proud Scot throughout his life. Trained as a processing and chemical engineer—and a keen guitarist in his spare time—the elder Dunlop was already working on guitar-related accessories while employed in Glasgow as an apprentice to the inventor of the first hip replacement. He founded his part-time business, the Jim Dunlop Company (later Dunlop Manufacturing, Inc.), in 1965 while still holding that job, then emigrated to Canada shortly after and eventually moved to Califonia.

Anyone who encountered Dunlop at his NAMM Show appearances or dealt with him over guitar-industry matters knew him to possess a rare and admirable blend of the businesslike and the personable. He treated every query seriously, without ever taking himself too seriously in the process. He was a guy who made stuff, and he always attempted to make it the best it could be, but that never once landed a chip on his shoulder.

Ultimately, Jim Dunlop Sr.’s genius lay in his ability to identify subtle, incremental improvements in the less-glamorous products that fulfilled the essential everyday needs of guitarists—and he produced exponential leaps forward for the artform in the process.

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