I'm not entirely sure when I first had any direct contact with Jonny from Scott bats. I've posted on here for donkeys and I guess he has too. However at some point over the summer we had started exchanging the odd message over IG whenever anything interesting cropped up on his feed.
A few months later my brother (this one
http://custombats.co.uk/cbforum/index.php?topic=46781.msg754058#msg754058) messaged me to say his bat had finally given up the ghost (it hadn't and I still have it but there's only so much punishment one bat should have to take!) He wanted the same bat again, but was less keen when I said you'd no longer get an Aldred Butterfly for 125! After many discussions I convinced him that not many places worth getting a bat from would do you a custom bat for much less than 200 and I think I eventually ended up offering to split the difference as a birthday present to the big oik.
At the time Jonny seemed to be getting good reviews on the forum and was one of the few able to offer anything in my brothers hoped for price range. So I started sending him some photos of the old bat and asked for his version of something similar in a LH.
A few weeks later I was in town for the Headingley test and planned to sneak into the workshop for a quick visit to see the bat before it was posted off. When I mentioned this to Jonny he even picked me up off the train, despite the workshop being closed due to him having had a fight with a ripsaw blade the day before, which allowed us to compare horror stories after I gave myself a very Harry Potter like scar in a football injury last year, and half an hour very quickly turned into a whole afternoon gassing about bats and batmaking.
Photo's of the new bat are in the thread linked to above.
After this Jonny quickly became my go to man when anyone at my club asked for my opinion on where they might want to look for a new custom bat (a teammates very specifically measured LBLH came out slightly overweight, and rather than try and palm off a bat that would otherwise be hard to shift, he was offered a cleft Jonny thought was as good a performer but at a lower price grade, and has proceeded to score heaps with it ever since) and also for rehandles, the one repair I'm not setup to do here in Oslo).
He even managed to rustle up an old Uzi style fish fin handle for a fussy teammate, though he might not thank me for sharing this one if anyone else requests it.
A favourite L&W rehandled and cleaned up.
During one of our many rambling chats about bat shapes I told Jonny if he ever got in any mega light butterfly clefts to let me know, and in early December he did (though I'm not sure many would have still called it a butterfly grade after all but a tiny area of the stain vanished under shaping!)
The Scott take on a Ben Stokes PE. Still on it's first leg on a trip to Oslo, so I'll need to let
@Chad comment on performance.
Here's a selection of the various photos received underway, making it pretty much as close to being in the workshop as it's made as you can get while sat in -15 and 1m seep slow in Oslo!
I'll comment on the bat myself once I have actually seen it in the flesh, but customer service wise I think that Jonny offers goes way beyond helpful and far into bat buff, engaging in all sorts of bat and cricket related chats at whatever time of day I message him, (and most of that before I'd even spent a penny there) and occasionally even prepared to listen to my screams of 'what happened to the customer always being right' when trying to get the shape very finely adjusted to my horribly fussy CBF forumer levels. My main issue now is that he doesn't offer enough sticker colours now that 4-5 guys in the side have Scott bats (or stickered rehandles) and it's going to cause some confusion!
Anyway, what was meant to be a very focused bat review ended up in a giant ramble and loads of pictures of other stuff, but when you've first got the photo hosting page open you may as well cash in