Article from "Sounds" magazine, August 1980.
Pictures by Robin Murraye-Rogers.

Reviewed by Gary Cooper
RRP £384.70 inc VAT

The idea behind the Activator has been rumbling around for some while now. Jack Golder and Norman Holder have just about a complete line-up of bass guitars thus far: the excellent six string short scale, a good eight string and quite a few fine standard four string basses. Now the Activator comes along and it is a very different instrument from all previous Shergolds.

The first differences are cosmetic. Gone is all the clumsiness of design and control apparatus which has often made Shergolds look slightly amateurish to me in the past. The awful lumpy pick-up selector has been replaced by two professional flick switches, the body is a nice sunburst finish, far more attractive than the glistening polyester black which so many of Shergold's previous review basses have been finished in. And, surprise of suprises, the fingerboard is now in rosewood rather than maple.

The body is still obeche, [and though] this must contribute to the very slightly neck-heavy feel of my sample, I didn't feel that the sustain suffered.

In addition to the very 'woody' look Shergold have laminated the body with strips of mahogany and maple which give it a sort of straight-through look although, in fact, the neck is on of those excellent Shergold bolt-on jobs, with no obtrusive heel to worry about.

On the mechanical side, the Activator uses large open-backed Schallers, about which I have no complaints. The nut is plastic but this doesn't matter as they use a zero fret. The bridge, however, is of a very curious design. The strings loop through into a back baseplate and then pass through a clear perspex housing which acts as a string guide.

The bridge saddles were excellent. Large metal, sharp edged (for better intonation) items which the strings sit accurately upon. These are controlled in every direction - a spring loaded phillips screw running through the perspex bridge block for intonation and two tiny grub screws for individual saddle height. Another plus is the provision of a double strap button so that the bass can be stood up securely.

Control gear is unusual. There is a single master volume control plus two controls for equalisation, two on/off flick switches (one for each of the two large, adjustable poled, single coil pick-ups) and a very novel push button with a coloured indicator which flicks in the active circuitry.

Power for the beast comes from two PP3s, which are simply inserted from the rear of the body.

Once you've got used to the low weight of the Activator it soon settles down to be a nice bass to play. The full two octave neck (unusual) is beautifully profiled and mine was well finished with excellent quality fat frets. Intonation was perfect and the fitted Picato strings were as good as they always are - which is very good indeed. Access to the very top may be slightly impeded by the back of the body but not significantly so.

On to the sound and the controls. Unless you depress the 'active on' switch the only controls which work are the master volume and the two pick-up on/offs. Push in the switch, however, and things become very interesting.

Instead of having two [passive tone] controls, Shergold have opted for a form of parametric circuitry where the neck end pot gives you around plus or minus 14dB of cut and boost and the bridge end pot control the frequency chosen. In practice I found that the parametric system worked very well indeed, there are plenty of usable sounds.

Curiously, though, I didn't use the bridge pick-up much at all once I'd finished playing around with it. The sound induced by switching it into the circuit was just too harsh and edgy for my ears and I preferred to use the neck pick-up on its own most of the time. [I was left with the] faintest feeling that the whole sound lacked real attack and this, maybe, has something to do with the wood of the body.

On balance, the Shergold Activator is a significant advance for both Shergold and British Production guitar making generally. It is a far nicer looking, ergonomically satisfying and generally more professional and artistic bass than anything they have made before and it sounds truly excellent.

Reviewed by Valac Van Der Veene
RRP £349.37

Caught between the twin horns of a Shergold dilemma - 'The Activator'. Once of the buzzes of doing guitar reviews - aside from the bad fretting - is sometime a manufacturer entrusts you with a prototype. These trial batch instruments can radically differ from final production models.

So, in the words of auto mag competitions - 'using your skill and judgement' - work out what the hell you'll be seein' in the shops later on. Difficult huh? Gremlins may not have been flushed 'out of the woodwork' before we get the gear. Bear this in mind as you read on.

The neck is one piece maple, feels like a Telecaster in its depth and profile - while the width is more like a Gibson. Frets are super accurate, wide, nice 'n' low on the rosewood, plastic bound dot inlayed fingerboard, and a twin octave span is a feature on the 25½ inch scale.

Head has the now familiar four rotary string guides and Schaller machines. The nut is craftsman-cut bone - but it's really the leading fret set ¼ inch away that marks the start of the scale - a Shergold feature I have doubts about.

Neck meets body at fret 20 - easy access to real highs, while the exotic arabesque wide-cut horns allow plenty of room for rapid hand movement in the top regions. The body loses the traditional hunk looks of previous Shergolds. Inspiration appears to come from recent Japanese instruments for styling - and is a seven piece laminate job. You could twist the imagination and visualise the old Burns Bison shape here, though the body weight - light - would shatter that illusion fast. (Bisons needed surgical appliances to use for any length of time). There's also subtle chamfering on the body - top rear.

Any less scrupulous manufacturer will tell you the body's made from 'selected hardwood'. Jack Golder uses such material and isn't ashamed to call it obeche - a close-grained, pale mahogany type wood. The smaller laminate stripes are dark mahogany.

The twin offset double cutaway design is also scalloped - (like some Aria's and Kawai's) at the body end, which has two strap buttons [set on the inside edge of the] shallow radius, about 4 inches apart. Finish is a graduated semi sunburst, ranging from antiqued bronze/yellow to the tobacco brown edging (shade depending on yer brand, chief).

Pick-ups on our model were the old style, un-encapsulated twin pole humbuckers, which will be substituted for normal resin packed types on later models. I won't complain that the body on this machine is microphonic, and can be played - by hitting the various areas - giving a syndrum sound - in anticipation that things will improve when superior pick-ups are fitted.

Using a chamfered perspex block as a bridge is unusual and not - I think - attractive, though it's acoustically sensible. Strings pass over massive chromed brass saddles, which are multi-notched so string spacing can be adjusted - without borrowin' yer chick's nail file, maaan - and slot into 'V' shaped notches in the bridge bass plate.

Controls are simple for an active circuit guitar - I trust they'll be better marked on subsequent models. The circuitry is a boosted parametric equaliser - which simply means that 'activating it' brings a rich variety of tones plus the added thrust usually associated with the unhealthy practice of using wah pedals. It's good, clean and effective, power being supplied by two 9 volt batteries buried in a body recess.

The knob nearest the bridge is 'master volume' - below that is a frequency shift (kind of full bass to treble control) - also giving a wah effect if rotated rapidly. Third in is a cut or boost control which, when set in the mid position (zero) with the circuits on gives the same level as the unactivated guitar. Whacking it up to +5 brings in the added balls you'd associate with walls of Marshalls at full wick. This array is completed by a push type, circuit on/off button, with a visual indication of positive mode (gotta sound technical sometimes!)

Overall sound quality is disturbing 'cause I can't define it - somewhere between a Rickenbacker and an old Epiphone solid. Sustain is average and even accounting for a pick-up improvement, I think the body's far too light - and dare I say - the choice of wood could be wrong? For clunk, chunk rhythm players, or those favouring delicate West Coast runs - the clean tonality is ideal.

The most worrying feature at this [stage] is the price which places the 'Activator' face on to US/Jap competition which to be honest can offer better quality and more substance for £350. Even priced below £300 the guitar I tried would still exhibit [one very un-Shergold feature] - a flexible neck. This I can only put down to a poor neck joint, and the thin metal used for the four-screw neck fixing plate.

By being more adventurous in body design, Shergold have produced a 'real wood' guitar which could easily get lost in a shop window among the rest of the 'furniture'. Coloured bodies and blazing stripes would be great instead of Habitack. An encouraging prototype from an established manufacturer of repute - but in danger of having its virtues obscured by its oversize price tag - providing an aerosol of gremlin killer is sprayed around before they reach the distributors.