Redesigning The Past
Many a player and fan has a Shergold story to tell, not least its new guitars’ designer, Patrick James Eggle, who explains how old meets new in the Masquerader models
Many of us will go misty-eyed to see the name Shergold back in our music shops. Rather like all those people who ‘attended’ the first Sex Pistols’ gig, everyone we speak to seems to have a Shergold story. “I know about Shergold,” laughs the brand’s new designer, Patrick James Eggle. “The first electric guitar I ever tried was a Shergold. I went shopping for my first electric guitar to a shop in Hendon and the first thing I picked up was a Shergold, but it was a 12-string so I didn’t buy it. I ended up with an Avon SG copy, as it happens. So I remembered them from back then, and I think I had a Shergold on one of my guitar posters back then, too.”
Brian Cleary, joint managing director of Barnes & Mullins, the company behind the relaunch, is another: “My first proper guitar was a Shergold, so this project has great personal significance.” Indeed, Barnes & Mullins originally distributed Shergold and before that had commissioned Shergold founder, Jack Golder, and his team to build guitars under the B&M brand.
Barnes & Mullins purchased the Shergold Guitar company in 2015, but this writer can remember a few conversations that go back further with Brian on his plans to relaunch Shergold. Perhaps after the long-haul job of successfully creating the company’s acoustic line, Faith, B&M felt it needed an existing, albeit dormant, brand if it were going to enter the electric guitar market. “I always knew that the reborn Shergold guitars couldn’t be retro reissues,” says Brian. “We had to bring something new and exciting to the guitar party. Although Patrick took inspiration from the original Shergold models, he has worked to design an all-new instrument with some truly excellent features.”
“The new Masquerader is a more rock guitar than just a standard bolt-on neck guitar,” confirms Patrick. “The woods are readily available where the guitars are being built in Indonesia, a really good source of Indonesian rosewood and really nice mahogany as well. But it was a strange path to tread, because I felt we had to keep the inherent vibe of the original Shergolds – which I know
some people are very passionate about – while bringing it up to date and making it more friendly as it were, certainly in a commercial sense but also from a playing point of view.
“The original has quite a squat fat body,” Patrick continues, “and, inevitably, you find when you’re trying to improve the shape of what is a double-cutaway guitar, it doesn’t matter what you do, you always seem to end up defaulting to a Stratocaster. So you have to be careful to avoid that and let it still have its original look, but just try to make it look a little cooler.”
A New Point Of View
The guitars feature a new bridge design, too. “The plan was that with an ashtray-style [Telecaster] bridge, everyone loves the fact that you can rest the palm of your hand on the back and mute or damp the strings really easily. But everyone also hates the fact that you can tear your hand to shreds when you get into the heat of it and begin playing hard. So we decided to just dress away the sides, and there was some tooling and therefore expense involved there. Other people have done similar things – cut the sides off completely, for example – but from a looks point of view, I think our new bridge looks right: it’s not really messing with it, aside from the humbucker one, obviously, but just from a playing point of view it makes a lot more sense.”
Patrick also believes using Seymour Duncan was “a safe choice”. “Back in the Eggle days at Coventry we used Seymour Duncans,” he says. “They’re as safe as houses, we can rely on the build quality and they’re an American-made pickup. We did look at getting some pickups made in the UK, but no-one could do it for the right price or in the right quantities. So in the end, we said, ‘Why don’t we ask Seymour Duncan?’ We thought if we could offer a guitar with USA Seymour Duncan pickups and a rosewood neck, it’s going to be killer.”
Perhaps the cleverest bit of the new design, however, is how it feels like a high-end boutique guitar at a far from high-end price, almost like a production version of the electrics Patrick makes himself that have received excellent reviews in our pages. Little details, like the Bakelite scratchplate and backplate… “I’m glad you noticed!” says Patrick. “We went through hell and high water to do that. It’s easy to buy Bakelite from Japan and it costs an absolute fortune and, obviously, we had a budget to stick to. So we had to find somewhere that made Bakelite to the right quality and the right finish at the right price, but that took a long time. So, yes, we went through a few stages before we got that nailed. But I like Bakelite, I think it’s cool and it ages well and it’s not black shiny plastic.
“Inevitably, there will be things happening down the road, but I’m not sure I want to think about that at the moment,” sighs Patrick when we ask about future Shergolds. “I just want to get these guitars out, make sure that they’re right and keep a very close eye on it to the point where we can take a breath and then think about the next development. Just don’t ask me about twin necks, basses or effects modules!” [DB]