Mike Johnson brings together the rare combination of skills that defines Mike Johnson Custom.

Mike made a large part of his livelihood from playing Tuba as far back as 1979. The son and grandson of farming stock, Mike has always been a practical person, as interested in how it works, as playing it.

Over many years of taking things apart, figuring out how it was made, and putting things back together again, coupled with often changing his instrument "looking for something better" all come together to help form the ideas at the core of the MJC concepts.

Whilst playing Tuba for the Natal Philharmonic Orchestra in Durban, South Africa, Mike started changing things on his tuba.

The week after featuring as the soloist with the NPO, during February 1985, Mike modified his Besson 981 Eb Tuba, to have a detachable bell, on his kitchen table, using a junior hacksaw, a blow torch and a roll of solder!

Thus started the fascination with improving things.
He spent most of 1991-92 as a full-time repair technician under the watchful eye of the late Miles Barnfield in Pietermaritzburg, South Africa, learning to formalise the skill sets that would later become so crucial.

Mike returned to his native Salford in the UK in 1994 and started working on instruments again in 1997, making one-off parts and the famed Orenophones, of which two were built, played by the great Oren Marshall.

In 2015 Mike moved in to the workshop facilities of Ian Farnell in Salford, a workshop equipped with all the needs of a brass instrument maker, many of the tools coming from the famed Higham's factory that was active in the early part of the 20th Century.

The two versions of the Orenophone.