The Harry Bloodline
The gecko pictured above is Harry, the namesake of the lineage.
Harry is an incredibly unique (and now somewhat legendary) gecko that I acquired as a young adult back in 2004, and I believe the above photos were taken within a year or so of that time. This shaggy crest/pinstripe structure that once made him a total outlier is now seen in many collections throughout the hobby today.
I stumbled upon him at a reptile store (online) that I got some of my supplies from, I believe back in 2004. From the moment I saw him, the plan was to introduce this structure into all of my projects if at all possible. I remember a conversation back then, where I actually said to someone "Every crested gecko should have this structure, at least as far as I'm concerned." and then went on to explain that my plan was to work this structure into every project and try to introduce every color into his bloodline as soon as I could. That's pretty much what I did, although I wasn't really all that interested in it for the first 5-6 generations. It wasn't until I started seeing geckos that looked just like Harry, but color and pattern looked nothing like him, that I realized I had actually kinda done it - or at least I was actually doing it. Until then, it was just something I saw as my pet project and outcrossing material for later.
Harry and his original breeding group of three females, including the original female Soft Scale, started off as a pet project that I always intended that I would build off of, if it worked out - something that's so long-term, you just have it for fun and you don't expect it to yield much in the way of results. To be honest, neither Harry or the OG Soft Scale had color I liked, so it was just a structure "play" that I kept in my back pocket as outcrossing material, figuring I'd have my fun and stay at it until the structure was represented throughout my collection.
20 years later, we're pretty much there (although not everything has that structure!) , good old Harry is still breeding, still with the same three females, his offspring have been sold to breeders all over the world and I am still making a point of breeding his shaggy/spiny structure into every project I can.
Genetics
While I've mostly worked on the theory that this structure was selectively bred, a lot of that is just because I never expected it to be an allelic mutation, and so I never treated it as such. That being said, there is now work being done by other breeders who are working with Harry line Soft Scale geckos, and that work may indicate Harry's shaggy structure is the result of a genetic mutation, either incomplete dominant or recessive (same thing, just a matter of whether or not the heterozygous form is visually distinct). This is a newer development (2024), so I'm sure we'll hear more on this in the coming years.