Rickresource Rickenbacker Forum

I recently purchased some Newtone Strings which are handmade in the UK. They are reasonably priced, and have a slightly lower tension than most other strings I have tried. The extra heavy tinplated coating on the plain strings makes them much more comfortable to play as well. I have learned that there are about three grades of tinplating and Newtone uses the thickest coating.

I bought them at the 12th Fret which is a very nice guitar store in Toronto. You can go to the description of the strings here.

Peter- i know of that make......us brits make good strings .....and amps...shame we couldnt ever manage good guitars

IS there a British made guitar?

I loved my Jaguar (car) especially because I sold it before things started going wrong!

Peter: on which guitar did you try these strings?

Jerry yeah

Vox, Burns, Baldwin, Shergold

Well made tho butt ugly guitars

I thought the Vox guitars were beautiful, some of the Burns guitars were pretty wild, I never heard of Shergold, and of Baldwin all I remember was their Baldwin Exterminator haha! A guitar amp, I think it had two 15's, two 12's and two horns, or something like that. It was a a solid state amp, loved the name.

Burns makes a replica of Brian May's (Queen) handmade "red special" for you glam-rock shredder types.


As well as a lot of oddball stuff.

lol yeah ive seen the red special.

Actually I think its really just Vox and Burns that were/are the british guitar makers. All the others (Shergold, Hayman etc) are part of Burns.

But we also have Marshall, Trace Elliot (now out of buisness) Ashdown, Hiwatt, Orange, Rotosound and Newtone.

You americans would be lost without us;)

No, we don't need you, we got Ampegs, haha!

and bad backs...

Owen and Bob: I have to say that if it wasn't for the British Invasion I cannot imagine where music would be today and what we would be talking about. So first there was the British Invasion and before we knew it "Bob's your Ampeg."

I don't know about now, but Shergold and Hayman were once independent companies. The early Vox guitars were British but most of them were made in Italy by EKO.

Burns has been revived but most are made in Korea. They do have a UK Custom Shop, a bassist I know in Minneapolis has one of the UK reissues. And he claims he hasn't heard a good sound since the end of the '60s.

Dave - shergold have not existed for decades. I saw one in a store here recently. Played it,,,,it was an AMAZING bass. Just really really ugly

It may be my imagination...

...but didn't the general shape of a Shergold bass get "copped" for the initial offerings from Wal?

Wouldn't that just make a Wal a "made-over, beautified" version of a Shergold?

oh yeah, maybe. Wal is also british yes?

One of my favourite Shergold stories is here.