Episode 3 - Patrick James Eggle Guitars
Before Six String Tales was launched I really wanted to film an episode with a UK based guitar builder but didn’t really know where to start. Fate intervened however during filming for the first episode with ThorpyFX when Adrian produced a stunning looking guitar with one of the most impressive flamed tops I’d ever seen. We ended up using this guitar to film all the playing that featured in the ThorpyFX film and I couldn’t put it down when I finally got the chance to play it. The guitar was a Patrick James Eggle Macon Single Cut, part of a relatively new venture into the high-end electric guitar market by Patrick Eggle. Certainly no stranger to guitar building though Patrick has been making guitars for many decades, some of which have graced the hands of Tony Iommi, Rory Gallagher and Albert Lee, not a bad list of guitarists to have used your instruments! After a few emails back and forth I found myself heading down to Oswestry to film at Patrick’s workshop for episode three.
I had fairly high expectations about the kind of footage we’d be able to get filming someone making such high end instruments but I was still blown away by the time and attention to detail that went into every step of the build process. As soon as I arrived we jumped straight into filming Pat work on the stunning quilt top Macon in the photo below. This had one of the deepest, most impressive quilts I’ve seen on a guitar (even before it had been strained and sprayed) and I found it mesmeric watching the stain bring out the quilt pattern even more. Although I’m not convinced I have the patience to be a guitar builder I can definitely understand the deep level of satisfaction that comes from producing such finely crafted instruments and you could tell Pat was in his element whilst working on them.
An unexpected bonus to the shoot was a visit from blues guitarist Aynsley Lister who came in to talk about the specs of a Macon Single Cut that Pat was building for him alongside another for Chris Buck. We ended up filming Aynsley improvise on a Macon for about half an hour and some of this playing features at the end of the film, the soundtrack for the rest of the film is also one of Anysley’s tracks ‘Rain’ from the album Upside Down. For anyone interested Pat and Aynsley also sat down and discussed the differences between the Macon models as well as how much wood choices affect tone (dare I mention tone woods!) in the video below
A massive thank you to Patrick and the rest of the team for taking the time out to let me film with them. The finished film is on the Six String Tales YouTube channel
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