Shergold

Shergold
Company type	Subsidiary
Industry	Musical instruments
Founded	October 1967; 56 years ago
Headquarters	Harold Wood, England
Products	Electric guitars
Parent	Barnes & Mullins

Shergold Guitars, or Shergold Woodcrafts Limited, is an English guitar manufacturing company established in October 1967 by former Burns London employees Jack Golder and Norman Houlder. Based in East London, the company moved from Forest Gate to Harold Wood in 1973.

Shergold Guitars is currently a subsidiary of Barnes & Mullins since it was acquired in 2015.^[1]

History

Initially the company concentrated on producing woodwork for other companies, principally for Dallas Arbiter under the Hayman brand (until 1975); for Jim Burns himself under the Burns London banner; "Ned Callan" and Rosetti. When the contract for the Hayman guitars came to an end, the Shergold company found themselves with significant stocks of part finished instruments and raw materials. With this stock they launched their first guitars under their own brand name from late 1975.

Shergold concentrated on guitar production until 1982, when a downturn in the guitar market (especially for home grown instruments) meant that they returned to general custom joinery producing furniture, and only undertaking guitar work on a custom order basis. In 1983, Norman left the company to emigrate to Australia, but would return to the country (but not to Shergold) within a few years. In 1991, Jack began making new Shergold guitars - the Limited Edition Masquerader - due to a rising interest at that time in British guitars from the 1970s. This revival was short-lived, as Jack died in 1992. The Shergold company closed shortly afterwards.

Shergold pioneered features that would be used by other manufacturers (bi-directional truss rod, semi-neck-through-body on the Cavalier), and others that have been forgotten (interchangeable control electronics on the Modulator series). Visually, the guitar bodies were slab-sided, featured arcane blackletter lettering and presented a logo of a man carving a guitar body, a style that was often criticised by contemporary reviews.

In 2015, Shergold Guitars was purchased by Brian Cleary and Bruce Perrin of Barnes & Mullins Ltd, the original UK distributor of Shergold guitars. One year later, Patrick James Eggle became a shareholder. Eggle is a British guitar builder responsible for Patrick James Eggle electric and acoustic guitars, and the designer of Faith guitars ^[2] and the new Sherwood guitars models.

Artists

Notable players of Shergold instruments include:

Mike Rutherford playing his double-neck Modulator in concert, 1980

Mike Rutherford (Genesis) ^{[note 1]}
Tim Smith (Cardiacs)
Christian Hayes (Cardiacs)
Bernard Sumner (Joy Division, New Order) ^{[note 2]}
Gillian Gilbert (New Order)
Peter Hook (Joy Division, New Order) ^{[note 3]}
Julian Cope ^{[note 4]}
P. Paul Fenech (The Meteors)
Marty Willson-Piper (The Church)
GP Hall ^{[note 5]}
Gary Marx (The Sisters of Mercy) ^{[note 6]}
Porl King (miserylab)
Gary Numan ^{[note 7]}
Bob Walsh (The Dooleys) ^{[note 8]}

Models

Some of the models produced by Shergold were:^[3]

Guitars

Masquerader
Modulator
Custom Double (double neck)
Meteor
Nu Meteor
Cavalier
Activator
Trojan

Basses

Marathon
Modulator

Notes

^ He had a set of double-neck Modulators custom-made in 1977 which could be split in half and interchanged.
^ Particularly on the Unknown Pleasures album.
^ Played six-string Marathon basses.
^ Played Custom dobles.
^ Played a modified Shergold six-string bass with a half-fretted, half-fretless neck.
^ Played a Masquerader.
^ Owns a Modulator bass which he initially wrote "Cars" (song) on.
^ Played a Modulator bass.