another john birch rebuild

[TheGuitarWeasel]

....that can survive a few days in a salt water flood unharmed. quite relieved about that

There are things thatJohn was experimenting with in the pickup department that are still cutting edge today (Multiflux anyone?).
Ere ... wot's wrong with brass nuts? They serve brass monkeys very well!

[ICBM]

I have had quite a few 'British' guitars (though I belive all of them were actually marked 'Made in England' which would of course prejudice anybody living on the dark side of Hadrian's wall )

The only 'major' (production, as opposed to one-off small builder) Scottish guitars I know of are -

Moon - almost production, although still very custom-built, did a lot of stuff for the Scottish bands of the 1980s and 90s ("Mooncasters" were his speciality - Fender shapes with bound bodies, humbuckers and Kahler trems usually), but also ruined a fair few vintage Gibsons, mostly on behalf of Bruce Watson of Big Country (eg a '64 Firebird with a Kahler and two full-size humbuckers... WHY?!!),

Mike Vanden - made high-end archtops, and also designed the Mimesis pickup which he sold to Fishman and became the Rare Earth.

Ian Watt - 70s or 80s I think, looked a bit like John Birch meets Odyssey (remember those?) - saw a few in the mid 80s but I don't know how 'production' they were.

And... wait for it... one of the oddest guitars ever made... BOND!! (Andrew, not James ) A plastic composite cross between a Melody Maker and a Strat, with programmable controls - nowhere near as sophisticated as it looked though, just on/off/phase for each pickup and volume/tone settings - and oddest of all, the 'Pitchboard' instead of a frets - angled steps in a moulded composite fingerboard. I don't know what the supposed advantage of this was, but it felt very odd to play and the material started to wear severely almost immediately, producing an unintended sitar emulator. They're apparently quite collectable now! I've seen at least one that Jimmy Moon put a conventional fingerboard on too, which at least this time was an improvement....

[impmann]

I don't want to be unnecessarily harsh, by why exactly is John Birch so highly regarded? All I've seen of his work indicates that he needlessly butchered a lot of good guitars in ways that didn't actually improve them (even given that they weren't actually valuable vintage ones at the time), the ones he built from scratch are indeed often massively flawed design-wise, clumsy in operation and sometimes playability, occasionally not that well built - and he was apparently difficult to deal with...

His guitars always struck me as being a bit like Shergolds, but less original and more complicated. Very typically "British" electric guitars, which is almost always not a good thing .

I've fixed a fair few Birch guitars over the years - electronically, they were always massively complicated and not very well soldered/built. They always seemed to be under-engineered and really poorly laid out from a repair standpoint.

The woodworking was always a little suspect IMHO - I've worked on an SG-alike that didn't play in tune with itself because the frets were installed in the wrong places. A new fingerboard fixed it but it still had the resonance of marshmallow...

And the neck profiles themselves seem to vary massively from one to the next. I'm sure there are good ones out there, I've just never played one.

As for Shergold - I'm a huge fan and collector of Shergold instruments. Ugly, clunky styling... but unique tonal characteristics. And unique in a good way, IMHO - plus superb necks. Plus they are generally very well made. Unlike most Birch guitars I've played... I love Shergolds.

[TheGuitarWeasel]

I've fixed a fair few Birch guitars over the years - electronically, they were always massively complicated and not very well soldered/built. They always seemed to be under-engineered and really poorly laid out from a repair standpoint.

The woodworking was always a little suspect IMHO - I've worked on an SG-alike that didn't play in tune with itself because the frets were installed in the wrong places. A new fingerboard fixed it but it still had the resonance of marshmallow...

And the neck profiles themselves seem to vary massively from one to the next. I'm sure there are good ones out there, I've just never played one.

As for Shergold - I'm a huge fan and collector of Shergold instruments. Ugly, clunky styling... but unique tonal characteristics. And unique in a good way, IMHO - plus superb necks. Plus they are generally very well made. Unlike most Birch guitars I've played... I love Shergolds.

Had Shergold got the styling issues sorted they would have had a much bigger following ... but the UK guitar industry in its early years had more than just styling to contend with compared to US manufacturers. For starters working in isolation ... no other big manufacturers down the road to come to 'deals' over technology with (like Harmony, Gibson, Epiphone etc) or even 'steal' ideas from. No cheap Mexican labor as Fender used, and no history like Gibson. No (or very few) North American hardwoods ... and in the early sixties, very few US instruments about to copy. The list goes on ... I actually find it astounding ... given how difficult it is - even today - to source some top quality parts ... that ANY of the great UK manufacturers produced ANYTHING of worth. Hats off to them, They had no internet for ideas exchange or ordering ... and the might of Gibson/Fender ranged against them ...yet they still thrived for a brief period.

[ICBM]

They did have the huge advantage of import restrictions until the early 60s and (as there still is) shipping cost and customs duty though, which put up the prices of the American guitars hugely and made the British ones much more competitive - or it would have if they'd got the styling right. After about 1963/4 when the first British bands started touring the US and bringing back instruments there should have been no excuse for not getting it right really. Burns wasn't too bad, admittedly... but still not quite as perfect as a Fender or Gibson - maybe about on the Rickenbacker level of quirky but good.

Marshall managed it with amps - even if his first product was a direct Bassman copy, it didn't *look* like it but had a real 'class' of its own.

No, I just think that the kind of people who went into guitar building in the UK in the late 60s and 70s just didn't have any natural flair for 'right' design or a feel for what musicians really wanted - but the Japanese did, in the late 70s and early 80s... and not just the blatant copies.

[drwiddly]

My first 'good' guitar was a John Birch that I bought in 1973. I was told that it was originally made for Allan Holdsworth but I don't know if that was true. For a Birch it was very simple with 2x humbuckers and tone/volume/selector. I kept it for 30 years and gigged it massively in the 70's and 80's. I sold it on a few years ago as it rarely came out of the case and there's not much point in keeping a guitar if you don't play it.

I also had a JB Firebird for a while in the 90's. It was a good sounding guitar and played well but it weighed about as much as 2 Les Pauls and had far too many knobs and switches for my liking!

I always liked the sound of JB pickups but the woodworking and switching arrangements (certainly on the later models) left a bit to be desired!!

[Bogwhoppit]

My Brother worked for Shergold in Romford during the 70s. As kids we used to wander around the factory and 'pass comment' on the stupid looking guitars they made. You know what kids are like, oi mister, that aint exactly a Les Paul is it haha.

There was a local music shop in Romford run by two old geezers (think 'suits you sir') who sold mainly Shergold and Burns guitars ( local guitars for local people). Shergold were and still are hideous creatures that should be burnt on November 5th. I swear they went into double glazing at one point ?

[impmann]

Shergold were and still are hideous creatures that should be burnt on November 5th. I swear they went into double glazing at one point ?

Funny, I think similar about Ibanez guitars but hey... if we all liked and played the same guitars we'd all sound the same too. And that would be dull.

[Sporky_McGuffin]

Funny, I think similar about Ibanez guitars but hey...

All of them?

[impmann]

Most... but mainly the SupaStrat jobs with Floyds etc. They just leave me cold.

Put it another way - I've never owned or played one that I really, really liked.

But hey that's only my opinion. I don't like bananas either... nor Jim Carey, nor Nigella Lawson, nor South East London... we all like different things