page_title: Chris Eccleshall
section_title: Historic guitars
hierarchical_section_title: Chris Eccleshall / Historic guitars
caption_attribution_description: Eccleshall Scimitar electric guitar
context_page_description: Christopher J. Eccleshall was an English luthier, guitar designer, guitar dealer and authorised repairer of Martin, Gibson and Guild guitars, and also received the blessing of Mario Maccaferri to make reproductions of his Selmer-Maccaferri jazz guitars.
  His main business was making custom-built acoustic and electric guitars, although he also produced a standard range of solid body electrics under the name "Electric Lady." He also made solid-bodied electric mandolins, acoustic mandolins, mandolas and bouzoukis.
  Eccleshall originally trained as a violin maker with W. E. Hill and Sons of Bond Street, London, who at the time were the number one violin company in the world. He was also an engineer in the Fleet Air Arm. Later he moved to Ealing Strings on Ealing Common, London. During this time Eccleshall still found time to make and repair guitars, eventually becoming so busy, especially with work on multiple instruments owned by Rory Gallagher, that he set up his own workshop and went into making guitars full-time. British guitar makers were virtually unheard of at the time, but Eccleshall was one of the first to win recognition, along with Tony Zemaitis and John Birch.
context_section_description: Eccleshall was responsible for rebuilding Pete Townshend's smashed guitars until he found it too upsetting to continue. Until his death he kept an SG body with a Meher Baba sticker from that era. He was Rory Gallagher's favoured guitar technician from 1971 to 1985, rebuilding and re-fretting his battered Fender Stratocaster 18 times (and replacing the neck once), and was responsible for disabling the Strat's vibrato mechanism using a wooden block, a modification he was later also commissioned to apply to Eric Clapton's "Blackie".
caption: Custom-made Eccleshall Scimitar
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