PATRICK JAMES EGGLE 96 CONTOUR TOP
Named after a state route in Georgia, the 96 is Patrick James Eggle’s now quite long-running answer to the souped-up Stratocaster. How does it fit into the empire?
PATRICK JAMES EGGLE 96 CONTOUR TOP £4,110
What You Need To Know
1 Patrick Eggle has been making guitars for a while…
Yes! I think we can class him as a veteran having burst onto the scene in the early 90s with wellreceived guitars such as the Berlin. Famously, mass production wasn’t for him and he left the operation in 1994. After a spell in the USA, where he continued to build, concentrating on acoustics, he returned to the UK a decade later where his acoustic instruments became highly regarded. In 2014 Patrick turned his back on acoustic making and switched to electrics.
2 Does he work on his own, then?
No. Currently, Patrick has eight guitar-making staff who produce approximately 28 guitars a month. To put that into perspective, a ‘small’ brand like PRS Guitars builds around 100 guitars a day in its USA facility.
3 Can they still be custom ordered?
Absolutely. You can order your dream on the PJE Guitars website then they’ll hook you up with a dealer of your choice. Lead time is around seven to eight months.
When you think of Patrick James Eggle, it’s quite possibly his exceptional single-cut Macon that springs to mind, but he’s far from an only-Gibson-inspired maker. Patrick’s Oz model, for example, applies stellar craft to the original production electric and the 96, here, interprets and modernises the Stratocaster platform as so many makers have done since the 80s heyday of what we loosely call the ‘SuperStrat.’
But whatever the build, Patrick’s guitars are unified by the craft, which is never short of exceptional. We hadn’t seen a picture of the guitar prior to its arrival, so we got our first glimpses on opening the case. From the light weight and a neck shape to die for, you just know this one is no different. Okay, you might be thinking, this is just a modern HSS S-style that we’ve seen countless times before, but like any great musician taking on a well-known standard, it’s all about the interpretation of that melody or the reharmonisation of the chord changes. And, of course, this is about much more than simply plonking a humbucker by the bridge.
