Jeff Stinco

Jean-François "Jeff" Stinco (born 22 August 1978) is a French Canadian musician, who is best known as the lead guitarist for pop punk band Simple Plan. Stinco got the nickname Jeff, because many of his non-French fluent friends couldn't pronounce 'Jean-François', so they began to call him 'JF', leading to Jeff.

Early life

He attended College Beaubois High School in Pierrefonds, Quebec along with bandmates Sébastien Lefebvre, Chuck Comeau and Pierre Bouvier.

Jeff studied classical guitar for 10 years at the "Conservatoire de musique de Montréal" with Jean Vallieres. He also participated in many Masterclasses over the years with many renown concertists such as Manuel Barrueco and Roland Dyens. Jeff is the only person in Simple Plan to have taken professional classes to learn how to play the guitar.

Equipment

Stinco plays Gibson guitars. For the "Save You" and "When I'm Gone" music videos, Stinco is seen with his white Gibson Les Paul Custom. For the "Your Love is a Lie" music video, he rocks a Gibson ES-335. Live and in the studio he mostly plays Gibson Les Paul Standards and Customs. He's also often seen playing handmade guitars by his friend Ted Stevenson of Stevenson guitars. He uses Mesa Boogie amplifiers.

Music

Beside his Simple Plan projects, Jeff also contributed to the Rush tribute cd released in 2005 titled Subdivisions: "A Tribute To Rush"" and performs on the Rush hit "The Spirit of Radio" along with Kip Winger.