WALK ON THE FYLDE SIDE

Awarded an MBE for services to the music industry back in 2016, Roger Bucknall has cause for further celebration this year as Fylde Guitars reaches its momentous half-century milestone

- David Mead

It's remarkable to think that a modest workshop in the Lake District not only competes with some of the largest acoustic manufacturers in the world but quite often puts them squarely in the shade, too. Roger Bucknall's instruments have found their way into the hands of some of the biggest names in the acoustic world: Martin Carthy, Martin Simpson, Gordon Giltrap and Davey Graham have all made sonorous music with a Fylde instrument. And from the parallel universe of rock, Pete Townshend, Sting and Ritchie Blackmore have joined the throng of players who regard instruments that bear the Fylde marque as some of the finest on the planet.

Now, 50 years down the line, and with a documentary on Fylde history in the pipeline, it's time to go back to the beginning and consider how the evershifting sands of musical style have helped - and sometimes hindered - acoustic guitar design since Roger first picked up a chisel.

When did you begin building guitars?

"I made my first guitar - if you could call it that - when I was nine. It was made using plywood and hardboard and things, so I don't really count that, but nevertheless, it was there. And then I bought some guitars - cheap and nasty ones - and made myself a proper one when I was about 14. So that would have been 1964. Then I made another one, and then I started making them for friends and neighbours and musicians who I met, until I was almost forced into doing it full-time in 1973. By that time I'd made 10 or 20 guitars."

You have a background in engineering, don't you?