Welcome to Fylde Guitars Newsletter

Second Hand Leonardo for Sale
Julia Fordham with Gordon Giltrap
Fifty (one) Years of Fylde Guitars
Roger's Old Guitar Emporium
Will McNicol: Oscar McLennan. Snow on the river
John Smith. Live at Café Lena
John Smith On Tour
Ken Nicol. The Songs of Stuart Adamson
Current Work

Blackmore's Night. All Our Yesterdays
Troy Donockley and Nightwish
Biréli Lagrène. Isn't She Lovely
Eric Bibb. New Beale St. Blues
Clive Carroll Workshop at Ullapool 1st to 3rd October 2025
Clive Carroll. The Adventures of Wilfred on The Charity CD
Ullapool Guitar Festival 2025
A special reward for those who could be bothered to read to the end. The Great Egg Race!

Second Hand Leonardo for Sale

This doesn't happen very often. It's the Rosewood and Spruce version, made in 2018. It's a very well-played guitar, and it's a mark of how well it has been looked after that the frets are well worn but has hardly any other wear and tear.

It has never left the owner's house. Apart from two small marks which we plan to fix, it's in superb condition, and we will refret it before we ship it out.

There should be time to become its new owner before Christmas if you move quickly!

For sale at £5,400

Click on an image to enlarge ...

Julia Fordham with Gordon Giltrap

Julia's singing is lovely, Gordon is still finding new collaborations and influences and shows no signs of slowing down, good for him. This is a new song co-written between them for Julia's new Album "Earth Mate"

Gordon's guitar here is the first 12 string guitar I ever made; I think it would have been in 1972. It's seen some serious work in that time, changing hands several times, back to me at one point for a thorough rebuild, then, again by a circuitous route back to Gordon to be used in such beautiful music as this.

The guitar is a "Prospero", named after the Sorcerer in "The Tempest", the last play written by William Shakespeare and one of the "deepest" in all sorts of ways

The idea was to have a very short scale to keep the string tension down and playability up, and a 12-fret neck join to improve the physical balance as well as the resultant sweet tone. The neck has no adjustable truss rod, but it does have two aluminium beams through the whole length. Gordon plays the same guitar in the "50 years" video. It's special to both of us. "we are such stuff as dreams are made on,"

Very apt.

Gordon's Website

Julia's Website

Fifty (one) Years of Fylde Guitars

It's nearly a year since this video was completed and posted on Vimeo, so really, we should call it "Fifty One Years of Fylde Guitars". In a few months it will be Fifty-Two Years. Doesn't time fly when you are having interesting times?

It's now "reissued" on YouTube so that it can generate interest across the dark and mysterious world of "likes" "lists" and "links" and, I think, a much wider audience.

Obviously, I've seen it all a number of times and I can honestly say it's rather good. Even the bits where I'm in it are just about bearable

All the participants have shared it on their "socials”, and it's attracted some lovely comments.

It's worth saying that the Fylde guitars YouTube Channel contains a lot more videos of wide-ranging music. So feast yourselves on mince pies and subcribe to the Fylde Guitars Youtube Channel by clicking the link below.

Fylde's YouTube Channel

Feel free to leave nice comments!!

Roger's Old Guitar Emporium

I am often asked to look out for good second hand Fylde instruments, and as time goes on, more are coming on the market.

I don't always feature them in the newsletter, sometimes I just put them in the "for sale " section of the website, and they usually sell very quickly, in fact, they often don't get as far as the website because I have a list of people waiting. We do always give them a thorough looking over and make any adjustments and repairs necessary. Moira and myself have just finished an analysis of the cost and effort involved, because I was worried that it was taking up time that we simply don't have, getting in the way of our main purpose. I want to be making new guitars

But I want these older guitars to have a good life. Some of them are well over forty years old, and with proper care they can be reborn. For obvious reasons, we are the best people to be doing that, so I'm hoping to continue.

So - if you have "a good one" that you need to move on, perhaps an inheritance etc, please do let me know. Also of course, if there is something you are looking for, I might be able to help.

Will McNicol: Oscar McLennan. Snow on the river

Here is the link I promised last month. It isn't actually Wills' album, but he features heavily. You can hear the Ariel on Track 6, and the Fylde Classic on Track 15.

The rest of it is excellent as well of course

Will's Website

John Smith. Live at Café Lena

A ten-minute video - what a treat!

John was due at work last week to have the latest in a long line of pickup experiments fitted. This time to his "Smithcaster" (Juliet) in time for his European tour starting about now. But the pickup didn’t arrive in time so he couldn’t get it to me. He’ll probably write a song about it while sitting in the airport.

John's Website

John Smith On Tour

John is travelling light; this is all he has. Apart from a change of clothes anyway, and perhaps some CDs and posters.

Ken Nicol. The Songs of Stuart Adamson

Ken is getting busy with his latest project, music from Big Country - "The Songs of Stuart Adamson"

This is a promo video for the band, it looks fun, and I'll be watching the gig list in case they play near to us.

Ken's Website

Current Work

WHAT'S THIS?

AND THIS?

There is a massive story behind this picture, but I can't tell it until the project is much further along. Maybe not even then.

Blackmore's Night. All Our Yesterdays

There are a lot of recently launched videos of Ritchie with one or another of his Fyldes. Hopefully I can slowly show each one over the next few months.

Blackmore's Night Website

Troy Donockley and Nightwish

This video is from 4 years ago. 1.3 million views! It’s a good job every view doesn't result in a guitar sale.

Troy is pursuing another of his musical projects at the moment, he sent this picture and a brief note:

"Two weeks into a Christmas tour of Finland, and the ‘Billiard Bazooka’ is refusing to misbehave. It’s living in a truck at minus degree temperatures and laughing at me when I expect problems. Here I am in Helsinki Cathedral, with a 1,300 sold-out crowd, and it doesn’t even need tuned."

I should explain, I made the bouzouki from the leg of a snooker table. It has hollow "chambers " inside which means I can pretend it isn't a solid body electric instrument, perish the thought.

Troy's Website

Biréli Lagrène. Isn't She Lovely

She Certainly is.

Biréli's Website

Eric Bibb. New Beale St. Blues

You won't see much actual playing in this video but it's a good tune and has lots of good photographs.

I count eight Fylde guitar pictures. Eric told me a little while ago that he wasn’t going to work as much in future, but he doesn't seem to have slowed down, he is finishing this year’s work with two dates in Vienna, then back home for a long, much needed break.

Eric's Website

Clive Carroll Workshop at Ullapool 1st to 3rd October 2025

Clive is in the enviable position of being paid to have holidays in his favourite spots.

He calls it "work" but I'm suspicious; he will be spending a whole week in Ullapool next year, hosting a three-day workshop, then taking part in the Guitar Festival and probably having a few games of golf as well. I shall try and encourage a little whisky drinking in amongst that if I can. That is "work" ?

If you want to join Clive on his "holidays", you can apply here.

Clive's Ullapool Workshop

Clive Carroll. The Adventures of Wilfred on The Charity CD

I'm just taking the opportunity to sneak this video in. It's guitar pyrotechnics, but simply by pure virtuosity, no tricks. Clive recorded this piece for the " Strings That Nimble Leap" Charity CD .

I won't pass up the opportunity of plugging that CD, it makes a wonderful Christmas present and there is still time.

Clive's Website

You can order the CD here

Ullapool Guitar Festival 2025 - Emil Ernebro and Lucas Brar

Just a taste of what Richard is planning for us next year. Looks fun!

Ullapool Guitar Festival Website

A special reward for those who could be bothered to read to the end.
The Great Egg Race!

It was rather a shock when somebody told me these videos had been re issued. The filming took place at Pebble Mill Studios in Birmingham, an area I knew very well indeed from riding my butcher’s delivery bike round those streets. It “aired” in 1985. quite a few of my family were in the audience. (Insert emotional comments here)

Besides a very much younger version of myself, we have Tony Wilson, a special friend who had been my works manager and would have loved the Ullapool Guitar Festival. We miss you, Tony.

And Eddie Green, another much valued friend and colleague and lately author of "The Mechanics and Construction of the Acoustic Guitar"

Those of you who have ever been involved in filming will know the way this works. My comment at 12.40 “I'll give you a saw if you stay any longer” was a slightly peeved, off the cuff remark because they were really getting in the way, and I was annoyed. But of course, the producers loved it, so we had to film it again and again until we had it just right and they had all the angles covered. I was even more peeved by then, and seeing it played now I can still feel the tension, and we all look a bit murderous.

But we won!

I still have my trophies!

Eddie's Book