Back at the beginning of the 1980s I became enamored of the New Wave of British Heavy Metal (I didn’t make that up; that’s what it was called) and especially the sub-genre that emerged from it called “neoclassical metal.”  Music by the likes of Randy Rhoads, Tony MacAlpine, Yngwie Malmsteen, etc.  So, naturally, a little later, I became interested in guitars especially designed for shred-meisters…and those wannabees who actually had to buy their own guitars.  The Ibanez Saber was one of my favorites.

Neoclassical metal has nothing to do with classical music in general, except maybe that sometimes it reminds me of Chopin or maybe occasionally Bach on steroids.  And, that it almost never employs the blues scales so ubiquitous in rock.  Nor does it have much in common with classical guitar—an idiosyncratic finger-style learned from musical scores—except for one thing: classical guitarists and many neoclassical shredders like wide, flat (almost no radius) fingerboards.  This is certainly not universal, for metallurgists, at least.  Narrower fingerboards with a decent radius fit the hand nicely when you’re chording.  Wider, flatter fingerboards make it easier to play fast melodies, keeping the notes clean and separate.  Since I play classical guitar, it was natural that I’d be at home on a guitar built for shredders.

Ibanez RS540S Pro-Line Saber

However, I probably would never have known this piece of arcane obscuranta had an art director I worked with at an advertising agency not played in a band.  He favored his Stratocaster, but his working-horse guitar was an Ibanez Saber.  I was the copywriter, so we were the “creative team.”  On rare occasions, between jobs, we’d jam a little, to get our creative juices going.  Every once in a while a nearby conference room would be in use and the account executive would come in and ask us to turn it down.  Yeah, right!  Everything up a notch…  In any case, as a guitar player, I found myself mildly competitive with my team-mate, so I was mightily pleased when I, too, got ahold of my own Ibanez Saber.  

The Saber was part of the 1986 Ibanez Pro-Line Series that essentially replaced the Roadstar II line of guitars.  It was the Roadstar II line that really established Ibanez as a powerhouse guitar brand—partly for the quality and style of the guitars and partly because they hit the market in the early 1980s just at the time that most young guitar-players couldn’t remember the resentment against Japanese products that lingered in Americans for many years following World War II.  With the Roadstars, Ibanez finally began selling enough guitars to become really profitable.

The Pro-Lines weren’t necessarily an “improvement” so much as a next evolutionary step.  I don’t know exactly why they ware called the Pro-Line but Ibanez was beginning to garner a lot more professional endorsements, and the Pro-Lines were what a lot of them played.  The top of the line was the magnificent 1770, with sleek lines and push-button controls.  The others included a trio of uniquely styled SuperStrats: the super-thin-bodied Saber (played variously by Frank Gambale, Jennifer Batten, Reggie Wu, Scott Henderson, Larry Mitchell), the teardrop-shaped Radius (which would become the Joe Satriani signature guitar), and the Power, kind of reverse offsets (played by Alex Skolnick).  All were perfect for the virtuosic styles popular at the time.

The Saber was/is a remarkable guitar if your taste runs to light-weight and powerful.  That super-thin mahogany body is almost invisible, a mint that melts in your mouth.  The neck is also pencil-thin but relatively wide and flat, perfect for blazing runs.  These necks are really fast if the action is set up right.  The pickups are IBZs, which was a collaboration between Ibanez USA and DiMarzio, and they’re screamers.  Finally, these had Ibanez’s “The Edge” version of the Floyd Rose locking vibrato, a knife-edge unit that’s feather-touch sensitive, if you like that sort of thing.  I don’t dive-bomb, so I’m happy with a Mosrite, but the Edges are sweet.

The Saber, Radius, and Power lasted as such through 1990.  By 1991 the Saber had become the Frank Gambale FG series, the Radius had become the Joe Satriani JS series, and the Power was gone.  

Also in 1991 Nirvana released Nevermind and music changed.  Oh, all the fine neoclassical metal players continued to play.  Some changed styles, some didn’t.  But all of a sudden guitar players wanted funky pawn shop guitars, “alternatives.”  For the next few years guitar-makers struggled to figure out “what’s next” and always seemed to be 2 steps behind.  

I liked those new guitars, too, but then I like pretty much all guitars, so that means nothing.  I never did learn to shred.  Maybe I will some day.  Still love that Ibanez Saber, though. 

By Michael Wright

The Different Strummer

Heavy Metal Thunder: 1988 Ibanez RS540S Pro-Line Saber from MyRareGuitars.com

My first guitar was one of those legendary acoustics with 3/4″ action, outfitted with heavy gauge (one gauge only) Black Diamond strings.  I was seven.  My teacher, an authoritarian Austrian gentleman, insisted I practice 1 hour a night.  I did.  I cried.  My fingers bled.  I was so happy, somewhat later, when someone ordered a Gibson ES-225, returned it to the store, and it became mine, outfitted with flatwound strings, of course, and a factory Bigsby.  So, it might surprise you to learn that I hated that guitar.  I hated those P-90 pickups.  I hated the ugly sunburst.  I was so glad when the neck twisted and I got rid of it.  So, it might not surprise you to learn that I’m not fond of thinlines.  Even when they’re as cool as the Yamaha SA-15.

It’s no wonder Yamaha produced some cool guitars.  Yamaha may be Japan’s oldest manufacturer of Western-style musical instruments.  In 1887, Torakusu Yamaha developed a reed organ in Hamamatsu, Japan, starting a factory the following year. In around 1900 Yamaha began making pianos and those were the primary musical instruments the company would be known for thereafter, although Yamaha would later branch out into electronic organs and wind instruments (not to mention motorcycles, vacation resorts, lifestyle products, and semiconductors!).  

It appears that Yamaha began selling Yamaha acoustic guitars in around 1946, but there’s some buzz out there that those might have actually been re-branded Suzuki products.  Yamaha developed the “Dynamic Guitar” probably during the 1950s.  These were similar to a Harmony “Convertible” guitar I once got from Montgomery Ward as a kid, meant to be strung either nylon or steel.  Yamaha Dynamics are way better than most other acoustic guitars made in Japan at the time.

In 1960 Yamaha established Yamaha International Corporation in Los Angeles, creating probably the first American beach-head for a Japanese musical instrument company.  This was still primarily for selling pianos, but it would include guitars once Yamaha decided to export those.

Picture: 1968 Yamaha SA-15

1966 seems to have been the seminal year for guitar-making.  That year they brought the Spanish luthier Eduardo Ferrer to redesign their classical guitars.  Yamaha also introduced its FG line of steel-string guitars.  And its first solidbody electric guitars, the SG-2 and SG-3.  I’ve always suspected that the SG-1 was earlier, but that’s not the party line.  Oh, and their first amplifiers.

I’m not sure that Yamaha exported its earliest electric guitars, at least, to the U.S.  Acoustics may have preceded electrics.  I don’t recall seeing any Yamaha electrics during the 1960s, but then I was living out in “fly-over country” back then.  I have a Yamaha catalog that was sold as being from 1966, but the code on the back is “692” and the Japanese, being a generally meticulous race, often coded their periodicals and that would make it a 1969 catalog.  The electric guitars feature in it are all “semi-acoustics” and, since those were not introduced until 1968, that reinforces the later date.

In any case, the electrics in that ’69 catalog include 3 equal cutaway guitars (SA-50, SA-30, SA-20), one bass version (SA-70), a full-body single-cutaway jazz box (AE-11), and two versions of their asymmetrical thinlines, the SA-15D and SA-15, seen here.

While Yamaha’s acoustic guitars were pretty conventional, these electric guitars show Yamaha’s penchant for distinctive design.  The equal-cutaway models are not just Gibson clones, but have classy squared-off cutaway horns.  And the asymmetrical 15s…well, I think these are splendid!  

The extended lower horn of these guitars reflects a particularly Japanese obsession with everything Ventures.  The Ventures toured Japan early in their careers and Japanese fans loved them.  When Flower Power eclipsed the Ventures’ Surf sound, they were able to keep their careers alive on the strength of their fans in Japan.  This meant, of course, a love of the Mosrite Ventures guitars, which was, after all, just a Fender Stratocaster flipped over!

The SA-15 was a little more conservative take on Yamaha’s iconic ‘60s solidbody, the SG-7, itself inspired by the Mosrite.  The SA-15 and SA-15D mainly differed only in trim.  The SA-15 seen here was the plainer, with an unbound rosewood fingerboard and dot inlays.  The SA-15D had a bound fingerboard with top-edge-inlaid markers (a la Gretsch) and special checkerboard top binding.  The pickups were “noise-free high-sensitivity type”…with “high-performance anisotropic ferrite magnet and pole-piece,” with two volumes and two tones on a threeway switch.  Basic.  Decent.  Great for playing “Walk, Don’t Run!”

I was glad to see my old Gibson ES-225 leave for someone else.  And I’m still not wild about thinline semi-acoustic guitars.  But if I was a fan, I’d sure prefer to go on stage sporting a Yamaha SA-15 for a couple bars of “Telestar.”

By Michael Wright

The Different Strummer

Eastwood Custom Shop SA-15

The Eastwood SA-15

The new Eastwood Custom Shop SA-15 is a fantastic tribute to the legendary Yamaha SA-15. If you’re not lucky enough to own one of the originals, this new guitar really does a great job a recreating the Yamaha…

Salute to the Ventures: the 1968 Yamaha SA-15 from MyRareGuitars.com

Singer, songwriter, star guitarist. Glen Campbell had a fantastically rich musical career – spanning different genres, instruments and playing with some of the greatest names in music. Not to mention stints as TV presenter and award-nominated acting roles! With over 45 million records sold, Campbell was also a true crossover artist like few other musicians before or since – with 48 country hits and 34 pop hits between 1967 and 1980.

His attitude was the he didn’t really care about being bound to “genres”, but just about whether something was good:

“I felt my music wasn’t aiming at anybody. Everything I was doing was because it was a good song” he once said.

From a guitarist perspective, there’s no doubt he was an inspiration to many, being one of the most notable players of baritone guitars – and, for us fans of vintage and rare guitars, a look at his instruments over the years is nothing less than mouth-watering!

Here’s just a few reasons why Glen Campbell was such a musical legend, who won’t be forgotten:

1) He was a former member of the Wrecking Crew

The Wrecking Crew was the greatest assembly of session musicians ever – the L.A. group played in innumerable legendary sessions, and, with Campbell, performed on tracks by names such as Bobby Darin, Ricky Nelson, Dean Martin, Nat King Cole, the Monkees, Nancy Sinatra, Merle Haggard, Jan and Dean, Elvis Presley, Frank Sinatra and Phil Spector.

One of the session tracks featuring Campbell is The Beach Boys ‘I Get Around’:

Despite the Wrecking Crew featuring so many extremely talented people, only Glen went on to become such a massive solo star in his own right – some feat!

2) He was a touring member of The Beach Boys…

Carl Wilson and Glen Campbell ready for another Beach Boys gig

As part of the Wrecking Crew Glen also played on the sessions for Pet Sounds, but, before that, he also toured with the Beach Boys in 1964, replacing none other than Brian Wilson  on bass and vocal harmonies, while Wilson recovered from a nervous breakdown. No small job!

And once a Beach Boy, always a Beach Boy – Glen joined the band onstage on a number of other occasions since.

3) … and Brian Wilson was forever grateful

As a “thank you” to Campbell, Brian Wilson wrote him a wonderful song, ‘Guess I’m Dumb’, one of Glen Campbell’s finest moments – with the Beach Boys singing backing vocals!

Wilson, unsurprisingly, was one of the first to pay tribute to the news of Campbell’s passing:

4) Glen Campbell introduced America to Cream

During his stint as a TV show host, Campbell was the man who introduced Cream to mainstream America. His TV show brought together a very diverse mix of musical acts, which people paid attention to thanks to his popularity as a performer himself. Respect.

Coincidence – or not! – only 2 weeks after Cream’s appearance on Glen’s show, the band entered the Top 10 with “Sunshine Of Your Love”. Other songs on that same week’s Top 10 included The Doors (who Glen had once opened for) at #1 with “Hello, I Love You”. Mason Williams (who was a writer on Glen’s show) close behind with “Classical Gas” while the 5th Dimension (who appeared on Glen’s show & had big Jimmy Webb hits!) were on #3 with “Stoned Soul Picnic”. And that was not all – “Lady Willpower” by Gary Puckett & the Union Gap was at #7 featuring Glen on guitar, and the Vogues had their first Top 10 in three years with (the Glen Campbell-penned) “Turn Around, Look At Me”.

5) He was an award-nominated actor…

What was the last time you heard of a celebrated session musician who went on to join one of the biggest bands in the world, and who was also nominated for a Golden Globe? Exactly – but that was Glen Campbell for you… nominated for “Most Promising Newcomer” for his turn on the original ‘True Grit'(1969)! 

6) … and an Oscar-nominated songwriter!

Glen was brilliant until the end. After announcing his retirement due to Alzheimer’s, Glen recorded his final song, “I’m Not Gonna Miss You” with members of the Wrecking Crew, for the documentary “Glen Campbell…I’ll Be Me.” The result? A heart-breaking beauty that got him nominated for the Best Original Song Oscar at the 87th Academy Awards!

7) Glen inspired a generation of younger rock musicians

Like Johnny Cash before him, Campbell branched out to perform modern rock’n’roll songs in his later years, covering tracks from bands as diverse as U2, Foo Fighters and Green Day on one of his last albums. Musicians who lined up to work with him in his final records include Paul Westerberg from the Replacements (who wrote Ghost On The Canvas), Jellyfish, The Wallflowers singer Jakob Dylan, Chris Isaak, Rick Nielsen and Billy Corgan of the Smashing Pumpkins.

8) ‘Wichita Lineman’

The song, written by Jimmy Webb, is arguably Glen Campbell’s greatest moment. A timeless classic, which also inspired many guitarists to try a baritone guitar!

9) All those guitar solos…

At the end of the day, we can’t underestimate Glen Campbell as a guitarist… what a wonderful player! This video compilation says it all:

10) …and let’s not forget the guitars!

Besides having introduced the baritone guitars to many players, over the years he could be seen playing some amazing guitars, including many Mosrites which, as those who are familiar with My Rare Guitars will know, is one of our favourite brands!

Here’s some of our top Glen Campbell guitar photos:

Glen Campbell and a Mosrite 12-string

Glen Campbellin the studio with a Mosrite Celebrity III semi-acoustic

Glen Campbellin with a Ovation semi-acoustic

Glen Campbell and a Gretsch Country Gentleman

Glen Campbell and a customised Mosrite Californian dobro guitar

Young Glen Campbell with his Teico T60

Read more:

Glen Campbell: the guitar prodigy represented the best of pop and country

Remembering Glen Campbell (April 22, 1936 – August 8, 2017) from MyRareGuitars.com

Before we start a fight, let’s be clear: we LOVE Mosrite here at My Rare Guitars, as Mike himself made clear in previous blogs. They sound amazing, look beautiful, and are some of the most iconic and unique guitars ever made. From a collector’s point of view, it’s a no-brainer: if you can find and afford an original, vintage Mosrite, you should just go for it!

But we all live in the real world, and from a musician point of view, things get a little bit more complicated… and vintage may not be convenient, nor necessarily mean better.

Over the years, there’s been many variations of the Mosrite models: from the Univox guitars in the 70’s, to 80’s and 90’s replicas branded Mosrite, besides other brands making their own versions of the classic design, to varying degrees of success (Hallmark guitars, Danelectro and others).

The thirst for Mosrite guitars has been there for many years – not just because of the Ventures surf-music connection, but also due to it’s connection to seminal rock bands such as The Stooges (Dave Alexander played a Mosrite bass), MC5 (Fred “Sonic” Smith) and, especially, the Ramones (Mosrite was *the* Johnny Ramone guitar).

Fred “Sonic” Smith and his Mosrite

The first problem regarding Mosrite is precisely that – most musicians inspired by those artists, who want to actually rock out onstage, wouldn’t (shouldn’t?) really choose a vintage Mosrite to play. After all, Mosrites are too rare, too expensive for actual rock gigs, now! So no wonder so many copies have proliferated.

And then, there’s the other, more pressing question: were the original Mosrites actually that good?

Some well-known Mosrite issues

Vintage Mosrite guitar

While there’s no question about the build quality of the original Mosrite guitars, and even less doubts about their amazing sound, there WERE some issues which have bothered many players over the years.

Basically, the Mosrite neck were quite idiosyncratic and a big barrier for many, many players who’d otherwise love the guitar: tiny frets, and very thin necks very narrow at the nut – which quite a few players could enjoy but not all – especially if playing lead.

The frets, though, were definitely a big issue. We’ve heard of people who bought original Mosrites and decided to actually re-fret them! Just imagine – you buy a rare, expensive vintage guitar, and feel the urge to actually change its specs – and, by making it not all-original anymore, devaluating the guitar. 

Yep, that’s how bad some people didn’t like those frets.

It’s important to note this because, lo and behold, not even The Ventures were too keen on them! Despite their association with Mosrite (after all, mk I model was called “The Ventures”) they actually preferred to use Fender guitars in the studio, and used Mosrites live just because of their contracts.

The Ventures… and their Fenders!

According to an old blog post we found:

“…remember, it was the Ventures that really started using stringbending….and try to bend a string on an orignal model…there is no fret to use…It’s all but filed off… They had specifically asked that the Mosrite necks have the same frets and feel as their favorite Jazzmaster, Stratocaster and PBass.”

Another interesting thing about Mosrites: they didn’t have a nut!

Mosrite headstock

Instead, Mosrite guitars have a  zero fret that acts as a nut, and behind it, they feature a metallic string slide device to keep the strings in place. Looks weird but, apparently, is a very clever design that helps with the intonation.

Vintage 1964 Mosrite bridge

Another interesting detail is that Mosrites used a roller bridge, not too dissimilar to a tune-o-matic, but the saddles were actually little wheels that would allow for smooth tuning and smooth tremolo action. However, some players say that  that some of them had issues where the bottom of the saddle didn’t conform to the bridge plate, and would cause buzzing – some players would then put a small and thin piece of felt under the saddle!

All told – everything does seem to show that, for such an expensive piece of rock history, the Mosrites (or some of them) did have playability issues most people shelling out thousands of bucks, today, would rather avoid…

Are Eastwood Sidejacks Better Than Mosrite?

Eastwood Sidejack DLX

Now… here’s the million dollar question: are the new Eastwood Sidejack guitars actually better than the legendary Mosrite guitars? As the recent Re-Inventing The Past: From Mosrite to Sidejack blog says, there’s little doubt that the Sidejacks are, today, more popular than the original Mosrites ever were.

Over the past few years, other brands have also jumped on the Mosrite bandwagon,such as Hallmark and Danelectro, who also makes popular Mosrite-style guitars – the Danelectro 64 and Danelectro 66 models, which also look great, though yet again featuring their own take on the famous Mosrite look.

For instance, both the Danelectro 64 and Danelectro 66 feature lipstick-style bridge humbuckers, which can put some players off, as it deviates quite a bit from the original Mosrite look (though it could, of course, appeal to other players who want that kind of tone). They have a less Mosrite-ish headstock, but, on the other hand, have zero fret and Mosrite trem, which some hardcore Mosrite fans might appreciate. 

Mosrite, Danelectro or Eastwood Sidejack?

It’s the same old story – to each their own. Even though Mosrites are legendary, and sound great, not everyone will actually enjoy playing one. Meanwhile, some players will prefer the Mosrite features of the Danos, while others will prefer the different Mosrite features of the Sidejacks, especially of the new Sidejack Pro DLX.

Eastwood Sidejack Pro DLX… find out more

Right now, there’s no question that the Eastwood Sidejacks are the leading models keeping the Mosrite flame alive: they’re not “reissues” or replicas of the Mosrite, but modern, updated tributes to the original.

They definitely feel more playable, and feature a more familar jazzmaster-style tremolo,  besides adjustable bridge. So, while not 100% like an original Mosrite, the Sidejacks are the true heirs, keeping the Mosrite cult alive – and doing it the RIGHT way: by being used by lots of bands who really love to rock out!

While not quite as well-known as the Jazzmaster (yet?), the Sidejack is equally suitable for surf music, punk or indie rock. For fans of the P-90 sound, simply an amazing choice.

Now… better than a Mosrite? Only YOU can tell, really, if you ever have the chance to compare both. Everyone will have their own opinions… but I know which one I’d rather take to my next gig!

Mosrite vs. Sidejack: Which One Is Better? from MyRareGuitars.com

Sure, the instrument was favored by the likes of early blues artists Leadbelly and Blind Willie McTell in the 1920’s and ’30s, but at that time the instrument would have been used as an accompaniment at best, on most cases. That said, their use of the twelve string in blues music is perhaps the main reason the twelve-string began to come to prominence in the rock and roll world of the ’50s and ’60s. Their influence, along with the skyrocketing popularity of the electric guitar at the time gave musicians the idea to see what a twelve string could bring to their songs. The result? In a word… “Jangle!” We all know the sound. It is instantly recognizable as a twelve string guitar, and when you hear it, it truly makes you want to have one.

The following is my top twelve list of songs that evoke that feeling. Whether you love or hate the song, you can’t deny the infectious sound of the twelve string, nor can you help but wonder “would the song be the same without it?” To keep things interesting, I’ve only allowed myself to list one song per artist.

The Byrds – Mr. Tambourine Man

What sort of list of twelve string songs would be complete without mentioning “the Byrds”?! They’re easily one of the first groups to come to mind when you think of that twelve string jangle. Influenced by the Beatles and the film “A Hard Days Night”, Byrds guitar player Roger McGuinn picked up a Rickenbacker twelve string to incorporate into their sound. Their cover of Bob Dylan’s “Mr. Tambourine Man” was the first single to be released by the Byrds, and went on to become the first smash hit in the world of folk-rock.

The Beatles – Ticket to Ride

As George Harrison and the Beatles can be credited with bringing the twelve string guitar to mainstream pop music, they are definitely deserving of a spot on this list. They’ve got more than a couple songs that could stand here in place of “Ticket to Ride”, but that intro riff just showcases the twelve string perfectly. Not to mention, its pretty simple to play!

Rush – Closer to the Heart

Fast forward a few years, and you can hear the twelve string being used in a very similar way to those early bands who pioneered its use. The guitar introduces the song here, and really just sets the tone for the whole song. In addition to the arpeggiated melody played in the intro, this song makes great use of the “full” sound you can get by strumming on a twelve string. With the full band playing, the guitar really fills in its spot and can clearly be heard as a twelve string.

Boston – More than a Feeling

Perhaps their biggest hit, “More than a Feeling” was featured on Boston’s debut album in 1976. Again, we have the twelve string guitar introducing the song with arpeggiated chords. There’s a distinct “pretty” sort of sound you get when you hear a suspended chord resolve on its major counterpart, and there’s no denying that doing so on a twelve string just adds to that “prettiness”! The intro to this song makes good use of this, as well as a chord progression that makes it sound circular and complete.

Tom Petty – Free Fallin

Here’s another example of those suspended chord transitions! In fact, it even revolves around a D chord shape like in the previous song – but with a capo on your third fret. There really isn’t much to this song as far as guitar playing goes, but who doesn’t know this riff? The whole song is based on  those simple chords being strummed on a twelve string guitar. It simply wouldn’t have the same vibe if a six string was used in its place.

Bon Jovi – Wanted Dead or Alive

Anyone who grew up in the ’80s or ’90s will know the opening riff to this pop-rock anthem. Heck, anyone who listens to the radio should know it! For the “ballad” era of rock and roll, this song stands easily as one of the most recognizable. The descending Dm arpeggios in the beginning of the song are played on a twelve string, and the octave pairing of the G strings is what really gives the riff its mysterious, “shimmering” sound.

Led Zeppelin – Over the Hills and Far Away

Of all the great songs Zeppelin has written with a twelve string guitar, I always come back to “Over the Hills and Far Away” as my personal favourite. If you think it’s fun playing that intro riff on your six string, pick up a twelve string and give it a go. Instant satisfaction!

Pink Floyd – Wish You Were Here

Just by reading the title of the song, you get the idea that the songwriter is yearning for someone (or something) from the past. Then you hear the subtle twelve string enter with an effect that makes it sound like it’s coming through an AM radio, and the mood is set! It’s one of the most recognizable songs in Pink Floyd’s catalog, and a fantastic example of a twelve string guitar being put to good use.

Wild Horses – Rolling Stones

Stripped back and straight to the point, “Wild Horses” is a rock ballad that gives us the raw simplicity of a twelve string being played as a rhythm instrument. Fun to strum along with, and an all around great song, it’s not a surprise that this one is often covered by rock bands around the world.

Give a Little Bit –  Roger Hodgson (Supertramp)

For whatever reason, it seems that there’s a universal acceptance that the key of D is where the 12 string “belongs”. Roger Hodgson’s “Give a Little Bit” is another one of many that are built around this key using a twelve string guitar. Not that there’s anything wrong with that… it’s another timeless classic!

And You And I – Yes

I chose to put “And You And I” on this list not only because it’s a great song, but also because the twelve string is really put through its paces here. From the opening of the song with its brilliant natural harmonics to the strumming patterns used in the verses of the song, the twelve string really shines in the forefront throughout.

The Eagles – Hotel California

Featuring one of the most well-known twelve string riffs in rock and roll history, “Hotel California” is likely one of the songs to have been on the tip of your tongue when you read the title of this article. It’s a classic that’s here to stay, and it’s hard to imagine the recording without the mysterious jangle of the twelve string.

4 x 12: Eastwood 12-String Guitars That’ll Blow Your Mind!

If you felt inspired by those twelve 12-string guitar songs, here’s a look at four amazing Eastwood 12 string guitars:

Classic 12:

Eastwood Classic 12

The Classic 12 is the perfect choice for that jingle-jangle Sixties vibe… it’s a veritable time-machine! Groovy.

Sidejack 12 and Sidejack 12 DLX

Eastwood Sidejack 12 DLX

The Eastwood Sidejack 12 is a totally rockin’ twelve-string guitar! Inspired on the legendary Mosrites as played by surf-music greats The Ventures and punk-rock icons the Ramones, the Sidejack 12 STD or the Sidejack 12 DLX (with Bigsby) go further than your jingle-jangly and can rock, too:

Surfcaster 12

Eastwood Surfcaster 12

This Eastwood Surfcaster 12 has got to be one of the most special 12-string guitars around! A tribute to the original Charvel Surfcaster, the Eastwood Surfcaster 12 is a versatile guitar that will sound great whether you play blues, country, shoegaze or anything in between!

12 Songs for 12 Strings from MyRareGuitars.com

The Different Strummer

It’s odd that I never thought of things this way before but it was encountering Japanese guitars that started me on the road to writing guitar history.  It was probably more about coincidence—and me being cheap—than any sort of far-sighted strategy, maybe salted with a generous dash of aesthetic appreciation.  In fact, it was this very Japanese Yamaha SC-600 that provided the “Aha” moment!

I began shopping for electric guitars in the mid-1980s after I finally started holding on to decent paying jobs.  I’d been an acoustic player for several decades and thought I ought to have a solidbody electric.  I had a radio show at the time and spent a lot of time combing through record bins looking for interesting guitar records.  This brought me in contact with lots of 2^nd-hand stores of various types, where you’d occasionally encounter a guitar.  I was on a record mission at this sort of pawn shop in New Jersey when I found my first, a Japanese-made, 4-pickup 1967 Kent with birdseye maple top and back laminates and this really groovy wide, almost Baroque black and white plastic strips on the side.  It spoke to me and at around $80 was quickly mine.

A few more guitars followed until the day I walked into Lou’s Pawn Shop in Upper Darby, PA.  It’s still there, actually.  That’s when this red beauty reached out to me.  It cost more than $80, but not a fortune.  Back then, Japanese guitars were considered “used guitars,” not in any way collectible.  That denomination was reserved for Pre-War Martins and old Les Pauls and Strats…American guitars.  There were whole books about those.  Nothing about Kents or Yamahas.  Nada.

Every time I would find one of these mysterious beauties, I’d ask the seller, “What’s the story about this guitar?”  And the seller would invariably shrug his shoulders and utter, “I dunno.”  It would kind of annoy me.  But by the time I got to this Yamaha, I’d heard the same ignorant response numerous times.  That’s when, like the Blues Brothers watching James Brown, the light turned on.  I was on a mission from God.  I would figure out the stories of these unloved guitars and tell them.  I called the editor of the then fairly new Vintage Guitar Magazine and asked if he’d be interested in publishing these stories and I’ve never looked back since.  Fortunately, the world has come a long way, baby, since those days in the desert!

So, what was it that caught my eye that day?  Obviously being a nice cherry red helped.  And that distinctive shape, which turned out to have more significance that I knew at the time.  Then I saw that it was a neck-through-body guitar, a feature that was highly prized back then.  Then I cast my gaze over that arm contour, realizing that Yamaha had built a “sandwich” with an alder core between a thin layer of mahogany topped with nicely figured ash.  Slice through that sandwich at an angle and you get a really gorgeous guitar!  I’m usually more of a humbucker than single-coil kind of guy, but these are beefy units and the five-way switch gives you those coveted glassy out-of-phase sounds.

It was only years later that I realized that the Yamaha SC-600 was actually a take—sort of a revival of—on a classic Yamaha design from the 1960s, the “Blue Jeans” models that were unique models, sold only domestically (or at least in Asia), inspired by the Mosrite Ventures guitars so beloved in Japan.  Yamaha kind of got sidetracked in the mid-1970s when its SG series of double-cutaway solids found considerable popularity—and great press coverage—thanks largely due to the endorsement by Carlos Santana.

As much as I liked the SC-600, I think I was pretty much in a minority.  The model was not especially well-received, at least in the U.S., and these were only offered in 1981 and ’82.  The SC-600 had a companion SC-400 that was also a pretty guitar, differing in that it had a set-in neck and the body was flat with no arm contour.  I have no idea it these are especially rare, but with such a short production timeline, they’re probably not plentiful.  Contrary to popular opinion, no Japanese guitar companies were selling boat-loads of guitars yet in 1982.  Certainly I had no one competing against me for that SC-600 the day I walked into Lou’s and the salesman shrugged his shoulders in yet another “I dunno.”

One never knows what path his or her life will take, of course.  I may have been destined to write guitar history even if I hadn’t heard the siren call of those Japanese guitars back in the 1980s.  But finding all those great Japanese guitar designs, pretty much unwanted, unloved, and unknown—and not expensive—certainly turned into a mission from God!

Heeding the Siren Call from MyRareGuitars.com

Vintage 1967 Guyatone LG-160T Electric Guitar

Japanese guitar makers made their names by emulating their competition largely for the American market. That strategy ultimately led to copy guitars, of which this is vaguely an example, although reflective of the peculiarities of Japanese aesthetics.

“Lutes,” in which family guitars reside, made their way pretty much everywhere in antiquity, including Japan, which favors the samisen. The first Europeans to “discover” Japan were the Portuguese, who were granted favored trading status by the Emperor. With the caveat that they couldn’t enter Japan proper, lest they pollute the sacred culture. They had to do their business from Okinawa.

Whether the Portuguese ever brought guitars with them is unknown, but Commodore Perry and the Americans certainly did when they arrived in 1853 on a mission to horn in on the Portuguese monopoly. Perry plied the Japanese ministers with tons of champagne and put on several blackface minstrel shows that featured both guitars and banjos. Perhaps it was the affinity between whiteface kabuki theater and the sailors’ burnt cork (more likely it was the huge stores of bubbly), but in any case Perry returned in 1854 with an open trade agreement with Japan.

Vintage 1967 Guyatone LG-160T Electric Guitar

No, the Japanese didn’t convert to playing guitars (or banjos) on the spot. In fact, Westernization didn’t really begin until the 1920s. One of the main vectors was Hawaiian music. This was big in the U.S. from the early 20th Century on, but it really wasn’t coming to Japan from the Continental U.S. There was a huge Japanese population living in Hawaii and the taste for Hawaiian music—admittedly informed by American (and, ironically, Portuguese!!) influences—came from the original source in Hawaii. It was also in the 1920s that Andres Segovia toured Japan, igniting a passionate embrace of classical guitar playing. And, the 1920s saw the triumph of radio, so all sorts of Western music became available.

The problem was that Japanese music had not yet adopted the “tempered” scale that Western music has used since the 18th Century. That style makes minor compromises in the mathematical intervals of the modes codified by Pythagoras. In the old system you could play in maybe 1 or 2 modes during a piece, but any further modulation sounded out of tune, because it was. By “tempering” those scales, you can essentially switch from any key to another at any time. Anyhow, this process of adopting the tempered scale began in the 1920s, with a lot of interesting hybrid music being created. And making it possible to adopt Western instruments, such as the guitar and Hawaiian guitar…especially once it was electrified in the early 1930s.

Vintage 1967 Guyatone LG-160T Electric Guitar

Guyatone was one of the earliest guitar manufacturers in Japan, having begun making electric Hawaiian lap steels in 1933. It was founded by Mitsuo Matsuki and Atsuo Kaneko (who would later found Teisco after the War).

Once Japanese guitar-makers entered the American market, they kind of gravitated naturally toward the copy strategy. First they produced guitars vaguely based on Fender’s Jazzmaster/Jaguar. Soon in the trenches with European makers, they began to emulate them (think Burns Bison). Then, The Ventures, having grown a bit stale in the U.S., began to tour Japan. The went over extremely well and acquired a legion of lifetime fans. By around the time this guitar was made, various Japanese makers were producing loose Mosrite inspirations. Or “copies,” if you like.

Vintage 1967 Guyatone LG-160T Electric Guitar

This 1967 Guyatone LG-160T is actually pretty sophisticated. The body is mahogany, and features a German carve relief, like a Mosrite. Pairing two single-coil pickups back at the bridge, like a humbucker, emulates Guyatone’s domestic competition Yamaha. These two pickups can function as a humbucker or, using the sliding switch, one single-coil. Ain’t no DiMarzio but pretty clever. This bridge actually has roller saddles to make the vibrato very effective.

By 1969 the true “copy era” had been launched with the first Les Paul and Tele copies, however crude at first.

When you first glimpse this guitar, it looks like a somewhat awkward Mosrite copy. Gaze a bit longer and it almost takes on the look of a Japanese orthographic character. Elegant, not so ugly. Consider it more and your heart begins to warm toward it’s symmetrical asymmetry for sure! Beautiful!

The copy strategy was good marketing (and helped learning to come more quickly), but it tended to obscure how much Japanese culture—how much whiteface kabuki—really contributed to the guitar equation.

Ugly Mugs No. 3: Walk, Don’t Run (Vintage 1967 Guyatone LG-160T Electric Guitar) from MyRareGuitars.com

Vintage 1968 Noble EG 686-2HT Electric Guitar

How, you ask, could anything be odder than a beer conglomerate (Norlin) buying Gibson? (I guess, the more you think of suds and guitars, it’s not so hard to understand!) Well, that’s because Heads & Threads wasn’t about skin tensioners on percussion instruments or banjos. Heads & Threads was originally a pioneer in the importation of nuts and bolts made in Japan founded by Norman Sackheim. Please note his first name, the source of the “Norma” brand name. Like others before him (Jack Westheimer and sporting goods), it wasn’t such a giant step from hardware to guitars, given the times.

Vintage 1968 Noble EG 686-2HT Electric Guitar

Sackheim set up a subsidiary called, following a theme here, Strum & Drum in 1964 to import guitars and drums and related instruments. Like everyone else, Strum & Drum purchased instruments most likely from a trading company. They were the power brokers in Japan and every trading company had a stable of related manufacturers to draw upon, based on what the customer wanted. It’s darned near impossible to identify the makers of Japanese guitars with any precision. Sometimes outstanding workmanship—as in the cases of Matsumoku or FujiGen—are pretty compelling evidence, but there were so many specialty providers (eg, hardware, pickups, etc.), it’s hard to identify conclusive features. This is further complicated by the fact that imitation of successful ideas between companies was an accepted part of the culture, so just because something looked good on one brand’s product doesn’t mean it wouldn’t show up on another’s. Welcome to reality!

Vintage 1968 Noble EG 686-2HT Electric Guitar

That said, the majority of Strum & Drum’s electric guitars seem to have been sourced from the Tombo factory. A few have features that suggest Teisco, with the caveat above. There’s no way to know where the acoustics came from. The older I get, the less important that seems to get, but I also know we collectors have issues…

Norma was Strum & Drum’s major brand. Many were pretty pedestrian solidbody and hollowbody electrics that are interesting as period artifacts, and little else. Of special interest were their sparkle-finished guitars, which are about as cool as it gets with ‘60s Japanese guitars.

In 1966, Norm Sackheim’s son Ron bought the rights to Don Noble’s instrument line. Noble was a prominent Chicago-area accordionist who sold imported accordions and guitars. Some Noble guitars made by Wandré Pioli in Italy appeared, but in ’67 the line was cancelled and the Noble name was added to the Strum & Drum stable.

Vintage 1968 Noble EG 686-2HT Electric Guitar

While all this was transpiring, the Ventures were becoming guitar gods in Japan, and Japanese makers began to build Mosrite “copies.” Long story short, the Noble brand re-appeared on some Mosrite copies sold by Strum & Drum, including this 1968 copy of a Mosrite Combo hollowbody, The Noble Model No. EG 686-2HT.

I’m no Mosrite expert but I own a Combo and this copy isn’t too far off in terms of quality. Mosrites weren’t that great. And, it’s pretty historically interesting. Note the nifty “N” fingerboard inlays and real German-carve top. This guitar was the only Noble model, the only Strum & Drum Mosrite copy, and was only available until late 1969, maybe into 1970. Ironically, The Noble Mosrite Combo copy is probably as rare if not rarer than a genuine Mosrite. Such a world; go figure.

In 1969 Strum & Drum bought the rights to the National brand name—notice the N theme—and brought out the National Big Daddy, one of the earliest bolt-neck Gibson Les Paul Custom copies, in 1970, but that’s another story. Strum & Drum stumbled on into 1975 when it was sold to C. Bruno, who promptly deep-6ed the whole shebang. Seeing promise in the nuts and bolts market, the Sackheims returned to importing those essentials, which they were still doing the last time I spoke to them quite a few years ago. So, that’s what nuts and bolts—or Heads & Threads—have to do with our favorite obsession, and some venerable brand names in guitar history.

The Nuts (& Bolts) of the Guitar Biz – Vintage 1968 Noble EG 686-2HT Electric Guitar from MyRareGuitars.com

Vintage Ampeg Super Stud GE-500 Electric Guitar

Ok, it was the early 1970s so Ampeg can be forgiven for being well behind the curve in the politically correct category (I’m not even sure that political correctness had been fully invented yet at that time). Still, you gotta admire the chutzpah and it’s hard not to like any line of guitars called Stud. Sounds like it should be a Paul Newman movie.

Anyhow, all the yuks aside, the use of the Stud name was kind of eerily appropriate. These guitars were loosely speaking what we’d today call “copy guitars” in that they are based on American guitar designs popular at the time. They appeared just as the whole copy strategy was unfolding. Importers/distributors were producing copies mainly of Gibson guitars, since they yielded the most profit, but also of Fender and occasionally Guild guitars and basses. Even American guitar companies themselves hopped on the copy bandwagon. Gibson itself imported Japanese “copies” of some of its Epiphone models, and both Martin and Guild marketed lines of copy guitars until they wised up to the potential threats to their business.

Vintage Ampeg Super Stud GE-500 Electric Guitar

The Ampeg Studs were part of this whole copy scene, but they were aptly named because, unlike many of their competitors—the Ibanezes and Arias of the world—these were really over the top. They really were Studs!

Ampeg has always been better known as an amplifier company, although the very name refers to an amplifying “peg” or leg for a doghouse bass fiddle. Indeed, Ampeg’s first stringed instruments were electric Baby Basses in the 1960s. In 1969 Ampeg struck a deal with then hot guitar designer Dan Armstrong, who came up with the idea for those wonderful Plexiglas “See-through” guitars and basses. These were made into 1971 when Armstrong left the arrangement over a financial disagreement.

While rough copies of Rickenbackers and Mosrites appeared in Japan as early as 1968, followed by some somewhat crude Les Pauls, it was really the Plexiglas Ampegs that the Japanese manufacturers pounced on, producing near and pretty exact copies by 1970. That kick-started the whole copy movement.

Vintage Ampeg Super Stud GE-500 Electric Guitar

Around the time that the Plexiglas guitars and basses disappeared, Ampeg was sold to Selmer Band Instruments in Elkhart, IN. It was the Selmer incarnation of Ampeg that decided in 1973 to bring in the Studs.

The Ampeg Studs included 5 guitars and 2 basses. Three guitars, including this model, were based off of the twin humbucker Gibson SG: the Stud GE-100 with a stoptail, the Stud GET-100 with a vibrato, and this Super Stud GE-500. Two guitars were based off of the Fender Telecaster, the Heavy Stud GE-150 with two single-coil pickups and the GEH-150 with ‘buckers. Two Fender-style basses included the Little Stud GEB-101 with one single-coil pickup and the Big Stud GEB-750 with a single and mini-humbucker. Except for the Super Stud seen here, most of these had laminated bodies with either grained cedar, grained cherry, or a black finish.

This Super Stud has a one-piece maple body. It might have been better named as Heavy Stud because this is one hefty axe. The neck is bolted on rather than set in like a real SG, but, as much as I love set-neck guitars, you have to admit that it sure is easy to get a great set-up on a bolt-neck guitar, especially if it’s not premium grade. That said, this is a pretty darned good guitar. The abalonoid inlays look great on stage but are kind of cheesy up close, unless you’re like me and love any kind of bling. These ain’t DiMarzio pickups, but they’re quite adequate, especially if you’re going to pump this through a nifty Maestro effect pedal or two, and why wouldn’t you? And a little (or big) Ampeg amp.

There’s an illusion that 1970s Japanese copy guitars were legion. Twasn’t so. Most came in in relatively small batches and are nowhere as plentiful as some think. The Ampeg Studs don’t come around all that often, so they’re probably pretty rare. There’s no way to date these precisely because before 1975-76 most Japanese guitars did not have serial numbers, related to my previous point. They weren’t numerous enough to worry about returns and warranties. The Ampeg Stud line was only available from 1973-75, so you have a less than 2-year window to date with.

Linda Ronstadt’s “cowboys” certainly didn’t play Ampeg Studs, however apropos they might have been on that tour bus. Nevertheless, all of us who play guitar have a little bit of stud in our DNA and deserve to play a Super Stud! Plus, you getcher money fer nothing and yer chicks for free!

1973 Ampeg Guitars Ad (Stud Series)

1973 Ampeg Guitars Ad (Stud Series)

Getcher Money Fer Nothing & Yer Chicks For Free! (Vintage Ampeg Super Stud GE-500 Electric Guitar) from MyRareGuitars.com

Vintage 1967 Standel Custom Model 202 Electric Guitar (Red)

Standel was originally founded by Bob Crooks of Temple City, CA (a northern suburb of L.A.), in 1953 to make high-end tube amplifiers. The company describes itself as a “boutique” manufacturer, meaning it was basically a custom shop. Transistors—which can amplify an electrical signal in a way that’s analogous (!) to tubes—were invented around the same time, but it took some time for them to be applied to musical instrument amplification. I’m no amp expert, but the earliest application of transistors to guitar amps I’ve encountered was by Kay and its Vanguard series that debuted in 1963. Bud Ross, in Chanute, KS, built a reputation for hot-rodding amps by putting tuck-and-roll vinyl on them, and, in 1965, produced a transistorized amplifier that he took to NAMM and Kustom amplifiers—also “big” in both senses of the word—were off and running. I don’t know when Standel embraced the new solid-state technology, but it wasn’t long thereafter.

Kustom, like Standel, would go on to produce—or really commission—its own line of guitars. Exactly when Standel introduced its first guitars is a mystery remaining to be solved. Likewise, who made most of Standel’s guitars also remains to be elucidated. By 1969, at least, Standel was sourcing its guitars from legendary luthier Sam Koontz in New Jersey. This Standel Custom guitar is from before that arrangement.

Vintage 1967 Standel Custom Model 202 Electric Guitar (Red)

Pretty much inspired by the Country-Western bands that congregated in and around Bakersfield, CA, a whole bunch of guitarmakers sprang up in Southern California, including Semie Moseley and others. Standel did sell some solidbody guitars with a tell-tale German carve around the top that I suspect might have been built for them by Semie. But Crooks apparently preferred hollowbodies, since most Standels are made that way.

Looking at the Southern California guitarmaker landscape at the time—excluding Fender and Rickenbacker, of course—the most likely source for this guitar is Murph. This looks for all the world like a Murph Gemini. Murph guitars were made in another northern L.A. suburb of San Fernando, CA, by Thomas Patrick Murphy from 1965-67, mainly as a vehicle to help promote the pop music act put together by his children. The best known models were the Squier and a heart-shaped Satellite that Dan Forte (aka Teisco del Rey) loves to feature. The Gemini was a thinline hollowbody with a pair of f-holes. The Murph Satellite had a headstock with a little Woody Woodpecker peak at the tip. Visit www.murphguitars.com for more information on Murph guitars.

Vintage 1967 Standel Custom Model 202 Electric Guitar (Red)

You can’t just look at a Murph and this Standel and say “Aha.” There are both similarities and differences. In addition to the similar body shape, the Standel head shows its own resemblance to Mr. Woodpecker. Murphs had more than 10 coats of paint; this appears to be plastic-covered, but could be really just very thickly painted. Both lines had 3-bolt necks. The Gemini had a similarly shaped pickguard with extensions up under the pickups, although these pickup covers are unlike any Murphs. The bridge and vibrato are also different. The Murph Gemini used a threeway toggle, but the Squier used a sliding switch, as here. The two biggest differences are the presence of an elevated “belly on the top,” yielding a mild German carve, sort of. Murphs had flat tops. Lastly, Murphs did not have zero frets. Of course, Standel could have deliberately sourced hardware from a different supplier just to make their guitars different.

So, like those annoying History Channel shows where you sit through an hour to find out that they can’t really prove that the wreck they’re exploring really is the Santa Maria or not, we can’t say for sure that Murph made this Standel. If they did, that would place it somewhere between 1965 and 1967, probably closer to the latter. If Murph did supply Standel’s guitars, then Murph’s demise in 1967 might explain why Standel switched to Sam Koontz a year or two later.

All Standel guitars appear to be quite rare. Until we find an example from another known maker that’s identical, origins will never be conclusive. Who knows? We could even find out that, for awhile, at least, Standel did, in fact, actually build its own guitars! And, for the record, give me a small amp any day!

All Amped Up (Vintage 1967 Standel Custom Model 202 Electric Guitar) from MyRareGuitars.com

Vintage 1960’s Silvertone Mosrite Electric Guitar

Here’s the original description from the 1969 Sears catalog:

Solid Body Electric Guitars Triple pickup (7 combinations). Three pickup selector switches. Solo selector switch for quick tone changes. Vibrato tailpiece produces Hawaiian and other special effects. Roller-type bridge adjusts. Ebony fingerboard. Edge-bound body. Highly-polished flame sunburst yellow, shaded to red, shaded to mahogany color. With vinyl-covered lined chipboard case. 1445L–Shpg. wt. 14lbs. $5 monthly. Cash $78.95 2 x 13 7/8 x 41 1/4 in.

1960’s Silvertone Mosrite Guitar (Back Catalog Memories) from MyRareGuitars.com

Mosrite Electric Guitar, The Ventures Model (Blueburst Finish)

It wasn’t long after we moved back to Toronto from California that I acquired this guitar. You have to understand – I’ve bought and sold more guitars in the past 20 years than there are Beatles fans in Liverpool. When you are in the business of buying/selling guitars, you simply cannot afford to get attached to them. Yes, it is hard some times, but in the end this is what pays the bills, so you have to let them go.

That is why this one is so incredibly special. I knew when I first saw her, it might not leave. In fact, in the early years of myrareguitars.com, I used to have a BUY NOW button and a price, just to test my resolve. Every couple of months I would get an offer near my asking price – that would scare the hell out of me – so I would jack the price higher to ward off temptation. But a few years ago I simply surrendered to the fact that I could never part with it at any price. Funny, because I hear stories from guitars players all the time about the guitars they covet and can never let go and I never really had that feeling. But now I did and I completely understand.

It’s not “vintage”, but it is “rare”. In the late 90’s and early 00’s, a Japanese factory was making these incredible Mosrite replica’s. Some had the tailpiece stamped with “excellent” instead of “Moseley” or “Vibramute”. The lower cost ones were selling in the $1,000 range (Excellent) and the “Vibramute” ones were the top end selling for 2-3 times as much. An enterprising young fellow in USA was importing them in low quantities (probably 50 or 60 at a time) and selling them in the early EBAY days. That is how I found this one.

It has a serial number of “0000”, which is cooler than the other side of the pillow. To this day I am still unsure of the factory that made them, but I can tell you this – the quality and craftsmanship is over the top.

There are very few guitars that I keep in my “collection”, this is one of them.
Check out these photos:

Back Catalog Memories: Blueburst Mosrite, Ventures Model from MyRareGuitars.com

From the Temple of Doom (I): Koob, Albert, Patricia, and Adeline

By Michael Wright
The Different Strummer

Imagine someone telling you about an old-time music store that had a huge stash of unsold guitars from the 1960s, plus some guitar effects from the ‘70s lying around in its upper floors in Newark, NJ. Well, you can bet it didn’t take long for me to beat a path to the door of Newark Music City (calm down; this was a long time ago and, while the company still exists, it’s long gone from Newark). Even though I was late in the game, there were still unmined treasures to be had. A real Temple of Doom!
I pulled a lot of good stuff out of Music City and owner John Ciarfella was great to work with. The store was full of New-Old-Stock gear, not to mention a bunch of vintage pieces taken in on trade over the years and just never sold. Maestro pedal effects, replacement Victrola parts, Japanese guitar hardware. Plus this NOS c. 1966 Kapa Continental No. CO-XII-V 12-String, culled from a huge pile in their old cardboard boxes stacked in a corner on the 3rd Floor. All leftover from when John’s father ran Newark Musical Merchandise and distributed Kapas, but was never able to sell. More about the Kapa later.

But the trip to the trip was the upper floors.  Music City was actually two joined 4-story buildings on a corner near the “new” Newark performance center.  The stairs were rickety and the floors unfinished, everything dusty.  The 2^nd floor was full of old shelving and drawers filled with the NOS stuff.  The stairs between the floors and buildings were a maze.

After I’d bought a number of things on several trips, John took me up to the 4^th floor of the corner building.  That had originally been a speakeasy and on the 4^th floor was a Burlesque theater.  It was still there.  The proscenium stage, all the seats, tattered curtains.  Water damage and some graffiti by locals who’d broken in through the skylight.  It was awesome, almost dwarfing the Kapa find.

But, unlike the KAPA, I couldn’t take the theater home with me. Kapa was a brand started by another music distributorship begun in 1960 and owned by a Dutch immigrant named Koob Veneman in Rockville, BD.  Veneman’s father had operated a music store in Holland and distributed guitars carrying the AMKA brand, an acronym made up of the first letters of his childrens’ names (K was Koob).  In 1962 Veneman decided to plunge into the Guitar Boom and manufacture his own line of solid- and hollowbody electric guitars and basses in nearby Hyattsville, MD.  He named the guitars KAPA after his family, himself, son Albert, daughter Patricia, and wife Adeline.

KAPA began in 1963 or ‘64 (sources differ) with three solidbodies, the Challenger (sort of a two-pickup mini-Strat), the Wildcat (three-pickup version), and an occasional single-pickup Cobra, made from scraps.  KAPAs were famous for their ultra-thin necks, made by KAPA, not Höfner as some online sources claim.  Until 1966 the pickups, which looked like Höfners, were made by KAPA.

In 1966 KAPA’s lumber stock got thinner and they began using Pix pickups made in Germany, the same as used by Höfner (but not made by Höfner).  They also switched from threeway toggles to sliding on/off switches about this time.  KAPA also introduced the Jazzmaster-style Continental in ‘66, including the 12-string example seen here.

KAPA guitars were actually quite well made, very easy to play, and give off a nice vintage ‘60s vibe.  They made upwards of 120,000 of them, so they’re not especially rare, but then, not too many people ever thought they’d be of interest to anyone in the future!

1966 Kapa Continental 12-String HS

Unfortunately, KAPA doesn’t seem to have been very concerned about consistency, and you’ll find Continentals with Challenger decals and vice versa, and dating is primarily a matter of guesswork.  In 1968 KAPA added a Minstrel teardrop-shaped solid to the line and in 1969 some thinline hollowbodies with bodies made in Japan.  However, by then sales were in decline and in 1970 Veneman shut KAPA down, selling leftover supplies and machinery to Micro-Frets and Mosrite.  Veneman sold Bradley copy guitars during the 1970s.  In the 1980s the shop got into the mailorder music biz.  The shop still exists, but as a premier Guitar Center location.

In any case, besides being a relatively rare ‘60s soldibody 12-string, this KAPA Continental carries the cachet of having been found unsold in a musty old corner of a musical Temple of Doom in Newark, NJ, next door and an obscure staircase away from a mothballed attic burlesque theater!

Michael Wright, The Different Strummer, is a collector and historian whose work is featured in Vintage Guitar Magazine.

From the Temple of Doom (I): Koob, Albert, Patricia, and Adeline from MyRareGuitars.com

In all my years of scowering ebay and the inetner I can only remember seeing 3 or 4 of these. This one in a pearl white is quite rare. It is in near mint condition, and all original parts, great neck, a fine player. Check out these photos:

Vintage 1967 TOKIA Hummingbird Electric Guitar (White)

Vintage 1967 TOKIA Hummingbird Electric Guitar (White)

Vintage 1967 TOKIA Hummingbird Electric Guitar (White)

Vintage 1967 TOKIA Hummingbird Electric Guitar (White)

Vintage 1967 TOKIA Hummingbird Electric Guitar (White)

Vintage 1967 TOKIA Hummingbird Electric Guitar (White)

The Tokai Hummingbird was abviously inspired by the 60’s Mosrite guitars – exagerated double cutaway and angled P-90’s with a tremolo – but it had a “normal” strat style neck profile, not the super skinny Mosrite neck. Back in 2005 we made an Eastwood re-issue of this guitar and like the original, it did not sell too well. Yes, it was a cool guitar, got a little traction in the surf guitar crowd, but in the end we decided to discontinue it in 2009. So I was pleased to get my hands on this original last month.

New Vintage Guitar Arrivals: 1967 TOKAI Hummingbird Electric Guitar from MyRareGuitars.com

1968 Guyatone LG-350T Sharp 5 Vintage Electric Guitar

It shows my age (everything does now anyway), but around the time I was hitting my teenage years, I discovered what was then still a fairly obscure band called The Ventures and their record called Another Smash. At least they were obscure for northern Michigan. This was also about the same time that I figured out I wasn’t going to be either the next Johnny Unitas or Al Kaline (a famous slugger with the Tigers). My dream became to learn those songs, which I eventually did more or less and I still play some of them to this day. The Ventures went on to have a bunch of hits, perhaps the most famous of which was their streamlined version of Johnny Smith’s “Walk, Don’t Run.” Their popularity eventually led to a relationship with Semie Moseley and yielded the Mosrite Ventures guitars, which was literally based on a tracing of a flipped-over Strat! Plus the groovy German carve around the edge that Semie had learned from Roger Rossmeisl.

Even though the Ventures seemed to keep increasing their record output, their popularity didn’t quite keep pace. In the US, that is. At a time when Jimi Hendrix and Fresh Cream were all the rage, the Ventures just didn’t seem relevant. What saved the Ventures’ career during those lean years when they were eclipsed by Bob Dylan and the Beatles was an astonishingly virile popularity in Japan. The Japanese obsession with the band extended to everything Ventures including Mosrite guitars. By the mid-‘60s, when Japanese guitarmakers finally began to become competitive in the American market, they hit upon a strategy of imitating the competition. Which, at the time, was European guitars. Among the early Japanese imitations were the violin-bodied copies of EKO’s popular copies (of Hofner’s copies of Gibson’s…well, you get the picture).

1968 Guyatone LG-350T Sharp 5 Vintage Electric Guitar

Wholesale copying of American guitars would come later, but the honor of the first American design to be copied probably goes to the Mosrite Ventures. By 1966 or ’67 many Japanese guitarmakers were building guitars inspired by Mosrites, with extended lower horns and/or German carves and/or slanted neck pickups, etc. Among the earliest and goofier of these in Japan were these Guyatones.

Guyatone was one of the first guitar manufacturers in Japan. It was founded in 1933 by Mitsuo Matsuki and Atsuo Kaneko and began selling Hawaiian guitars with the Guya brand name. After the War, in 1951, the company switched to using the Guyatone brand. Guyatones were among the earliest Japanese electrics to come to the US, imported by Buegeleisen and Jacobson with the Kent brand name.

1968 Guyatone LG-350T Sharp 5 Vintage Electric Guitar

This 1968 Guyatone LG-350 Sharp 5 is actually kind of a flipped-over Mosrite, ironically enough! It’s hard to tell from the photos, but it’s finished in a really cool dark metallic blue color. The pickguard is also blue. Its single coil pickups are not typical of most Guyatone guitars that made it to the US. This was a pretty high-end guitar for Japan at the time. The edges aren’t exactly German carve, but they are beveled. The vibrato is a pretty interesting in-body design that emulates the feather-touch of a Mosrite. An unusual feature for the time is covered tuners, sort of like European Van Ghents. And you gotta love that headstock! This is a sweet guitar way ahead of the usual quality you find in Japanese guitars of this era.

By the time this guitar was made, other guitars closer to Mosrite were beginning to appear made by Teisco, Kawai, Firstman, Aria, Zen-On, Humming Bird, Suzuki, Minister, Audition, Monica and others. And the first near-copy had made it to America in the Noble EG 686-2HT, a variant on the Mosrite Combo, marketed by Chicago’s Strum & Drum. By the early 1970s Mosrite knock-offs had become standard, like one of the most famous, the Univox Hi Flyer. But as sharp as those are, that’s another story!

A Sharp Venture (1968 Guyatone LG-350T Sharp 5 Electric Guitar) from MyRareGuitars.com

1967 Heit Deluxe V-2 Vintage Electric Guitar

Whatever the reasons for their popularity in the Pacific, it should come as no surprise that when the Japanese guitarmakers hit on the strategy of copying popular guitar designs, the Ventures’ Mosrites were near the top of the list. Which partially explains this ca. 1967 Heit Deluxe V-2.

Actually, the first “copy” guitars by the Japanese were of their European competition. European guitarmakers from Italy, Germany, and Sweden were among the first to begin supplying the beginner-grade demand of American post-War Baby Boomers, just hitting adolescence as the ‘60s dawned. The success of EKO’s violin-bodied guitars and basses—a not-so-subtle nod to Paul McCartney’s Hofner—yielded a host of Japanese knock-offs by the mid-‘60s.

1967 Heit Deluxe V-2 Vintage Electric Guitar

Once the notion of “copying” took hold, it didn’t take long for the Japanese attention to turn to other models. And it didn’t take long for them to begin eyeing those swell Mosrites played by their beloved Ventures. Perhaps as early as 1966, but certainly by 1967, a variety of Mosrite-inspired guitars were coming off Japanese production lines and making their way to American shores carrying a variety of brand names, including the Heit Deluxe seen here. These Mosrite-style guitars ranged from vague tributes such as those by Humming Bird and Guyatone to the first really exact copies like the Mosrite Avenger by Firstman.

1967 Heit Deluxe V-2 Vintage Electric Guitar

This Heit Deluxe is almost certainly a version of the V-2 made by Teisco. It is identical to those shown in the indispensable book ‘60s Bizarre Guitars‘, except for the two-way sliding selector switch instead of the usual three-way toggle. Most guitar fans automatically think “Teisco” for anything Japanese, but the picture is far more complicated, of course! When you actually study Japanese guitars, you find a remarkable consistency in pickup use. While there are a few exceptions to prove the rule, Japanese manufacturers almost always used distinctive and exclusive pickup types. The ones shown here are variants on the little DeArmonds used by Harmony and are almost always found on Teisco-made guitars. As you might expect, there’s a lot of variability in the output of these pickups, but they can be quite excellent, as here on this guitar. This particular guitar is a little more reminiscent of the Mosrite Joe Maphis or Mark I than the Ventures model, but the inspiration is absolute. These are great guitars, with nice slim necks that play swell if you set them up right. As with many ‘60s solids, this has a mahogany body, although a lot of these guitars used sen, a native timber related to mahogany.

Less is known about the Heit brand. It was used on a number of Japanese and possibly early Korean acoustic imports in the late ‘60s marketed by G & H Imports (GHi) located at 475 Westminster Place in Lodi, New Jersey, a small town not far from Passaic near the junction between the Garden State Parkway and I-80. Presumably G and H were partners in the venture, but their names are unknown at this time. You can find their 1968 catalog and price list at www.vintaxe.com (a subscription site). This model is not shown that year, which is why I suspect ’67, but it could be slightly later. ‘60s Bizarre lists these as “c. 1968,” but that don’t mean it’s necessarily so. Other models shown in the Heit are not Teiscos, but could be Kawais. Other Kawai guitars have been spotted carrying the Heit Deluxe brand. The Deluxes were Heit’s better models, but that’s almost one of those distinctions without a difference. Pickups ranged from one to four. The acoustics look dreadful which is why I suspect a Korean origin. GHi apparently distributed to other retailers because in ’68 a half dozen Heits would set you back between $18-35 each!

1967 Heit Deluxe V-2 Vintage Electric Guitar

Of course, you won’t find your Heit Deluxe for $35 any more, but you’ll still pay a heck of a lot less than for a genuine Mosrite! And, you’ll have a sweet little ‘60s guitar (well, not really so little; these are pretty substantial) to chomp down on whichever version of Walk, Don’t Run you prefer to play!

Let me know if you know anything more about GHi or who G and H were!

Walk, Don’t Run! (1967 Heit Deluxe V-2 Electric Guitar) from MyRareGuitars.com

1968 Kustom K200A Electric Guitar

I remember seeing my first Kustom amp around 1967. Blue sparkle vinyl. Even in an era of hippies, tuck and roll vinyl was groovy. For better or worse, when I needed an amp for a band I ended up with this humongous 350-watt Mosrite, but that’s another story.

Kustom amps were the brainchild of Bud Ross and Fred Berry of Chanute, Kansas, who came up with the idea in around 1965. They were among the earliest solid-state amps (Kay’s 1963 Vanguard line was the first). Actually, the tuck and roll part began in the late ‘50s. A friend brought a trashed Fender Bassman amp to Ross who repaired it and re-covered it with tuck and roll, and very quickly other amps started coming in for the Ross treatment. Kustom amps were soon known as some of the badest powerhouses of the late ‘60s.

1968 Kustom K200A Electric Guitar

Ross designed a companion guitar in 1966, but that, according to Ross, got expropriated by the Holman-Woodell factory in Neodesha, Kansas, and became one of their Wurlitzer models. In 1967 he hooked up with Doyle Reeding and Wesley Valorie who began producing the Kustom guitar line. These guitars were carved out of two pieces of wood and sported a neat catseye soundhole. They remind one of Rickenbackers, but these were pure Kansas. Some came in cool “with-it” finishes like greenburst, though the top-of-the-line 1968 K200A shown here is natural ash. The better guitars came outfitted with DeArmond humbuckers; the lower models had single-coils. Kustom guitars hit the street in 1968 and were offered.

1968 Kustom K200A Electric Guitar

Kustom guitars were really quite well made—certainly better than the Holman axes made in nearby Neodesha—and are fascinating pieces of ‘60s American guitar history. Ross estimates that between 2000-3000 were produced between 1968 and ’69, though since it was really a small operation, those numbers may be very generous. They were basically distributed through Kustom amp dealers. I certainly hadn’t heard of them until a dealer friend offered me one and how could I resist? Could you?

Once I had a Kustom guitar I had to have a Kustom amp, of course. I got that from my old friend Marvin Povernik of Torresdale Music in Philly. Floor to ceiling guitars and amps with a big pile in the middle of the tiny little shop. It was one of those Marvin moments. “Marvin, I need a Kustom amp.” “Dig behind those over there, I think there’s one in there.” Five other amps and an inch of dust later my little black tuck-and-roll K-25 slid out from under a loaded shelf. Perfect! Not powerful, but plenty loud for a married house, if you know what I mean. And, easy to carry around for a guy who hated PE…

Tuck & Roll (1968 Kustom K200A Electric Guitar) from MyRareGuitars.com

The guitarMatz is an innovative wall mounting system that displays your guitar in front of a 48” x 18” graphic of your choice. The system works with a steel wall mounted guitar hanger that holds a channeled frame. The graphic sits inside the frame and a guitar hook securely bolts into the wall mount. The guitarMatz is designed and built in Canada out of heavy-duty epoxy eCoated steel and it is built to last. The result is a large wall graphic that looks great either with or without your guitar hanging on it. But the best result is, that with this art piece, you may be able to convince your spouse into allowing you to hang your guitar in the family space.

GuitarMatz: Wall Mounting System for Guitars

How did I get here you ask? Well I spent years searching. I looked at all of the available methods of displaying guitars trying to get my guitars out of the basement. First I found the rather overpriced museum style framed boxes that look more like a coffin than a cool place to display your prized Mosrite. They didn’t look right for me. Then I found and purchased a Rockcase by Warrick – with its flightcase aluminum frame and plexi window, it is very cool, but it looks way too much like it just came off the tour bus. My Rockcase is in the basement holding my Johnny Winter autographed Firebird, it never made it over the couch. Then I looked at the giant multi-guitar cabinets that take up half a room and will cost you your vacation to Disney. That really wasn’t my style or in my budget.

But what I did like the most, were the custom framed collectable guitars that fill all the memorabilia shops in Vegas. Big, bold and exciting with photos and graphics relating to the guitar, their only problem was the guitar was just an expensive signed art piece that you couldn’t play. So I put my years of marketing, design and visiting guitar shops together and created the guitarMatz. It is a simple logical way to display your guitar. It looks great because it is a frame and you choose the graphic that best suites you, your guitar and your room. And the best thing about the guitarMatz is that your guitar is right there… just pick it up off the hanger and you can noodle away for hours while everyone else watches some mindless dance contest.

I am very excited about how great the response to guitarMatz has been from guitar players, retailers and their spouses. We are now developing some very interesting licensing deals and some special artist programs for new and exciting graphics. And we also have the flexibility to allow you to create and upload your own photos and graphics. Just jump over to www.guitarmatz.com to check them out.

MyRareGuitars.com will soon be offering the complete line of guitarMatz as one of their ongoing products.

Do yourself and your guitars a favor, take them out of the case and put them up on your walls on a guitarMatz. They will look amazing, you’ll play them more and if you’re real lucky they may even make it to your living room.

Grant Ivens, rgd, is a Toronto musician, writer, creative director, TV producer, married with two talented young daughters, and is currently working on several new products aimed at bringing his ‘brandSimple” design sense to the music industry via his product company ShowOff Gear. You can contact him at grant@showoffgear.com

GuitarMatz: How I Got My Guitars in the Living Room from MyRareGuitars.com

Mike Robinson (MyRareGuitars.com)

Thanks for dropping in. My name is Michael Robinson.

I’ve been collecting vintage oddball guitars for most of my life. Perhaps the high prices of “non-oddball” guitars – 1958 Gibson Les Paul or a 1959 Fender Jazzmaster – kept me focused on the weird stuff, but after many years of buying/selling and restoring these babies, I decided to put together a webpage where people like me can gather to learn more about them. That is why www.myrareguitars.com is here. I’ve assembled hundreds of photographs under the Guitar Pics and Stories heading. Need to figure out what kind of guitar you have? Check out the pictures. Need a walk down memory lane to see that first guitar you ever owned? Check out the pictures!

Recently I’ve begun collecting NEW oddball stuff from outside USA. Why? Many of my old favorites from the 1960’s have begun re-issuing their guitars. Four years I re-discovered EKO of Italy, 3 years ago Burns from London. Two years ago I discovered DiPinto Guitars>. Wow! Then the Italias came on line. I am constantly on the lookout for more guitars that fit into this vein. As I find them, I negotiate with the manufacturer to make these guitars available in the USA and Canada. I handle all the importing issues so you can buy them here at www.myrareguitars.com.

A couple of years ago I decided it was time to start my own brand to re-create some of my favorites like Mosrite, VOX, Airline, UNIVOX Hi-Flyers, Coral Hornets, etc. That was the start of EASTWOOD Guitars. In our first year we sold over 500 guitars and built up a huge list of great reviews at Harmony Central . Thank you to all who contributed! Our goal is to develop 5-8 new models every year – in limited quanties – recreating many of the gone but not forgotten classics from the 60’s and 70’s. If you have any suggestions, let me know. Keep an eye on the “coming soon” page, where we post pictures of the upcoming prototypes.

Many of my newer guitars are sold on EBAY simply because of the wide audience. If you want to see what other buyers have experienced in dealing with me, take a look at my eBay feedback . I always have a wide variety of guitars on sale there, but the cream of the vintage crop can be found here on the Affordable Vintage page. If you are looking for a deal, I have some guitars that are available in our demo section. These pages are updated weekly, so please drop by often. Please send your feedback and comments !!! This page is a work in progress. I want to find ways to make your experience a better one. Let me know what you need to see here and I will do my best to accommodate!

Sincerely,

Michael Robinson

P.S. SIX years ago I posted some info on EBAY about my quest for guitars that are “Even Better Than The Real Thing” to illustrate my passion for otherworldly guitars. I think this piece is still valid today, so I’ve included it here. Enjoy!

About from MyRareGuitars.com

Vintage 1966 Standel Model 101 Custom Deluxe Electric Guitar

Fast forward to the go-go ‘80s. Not about stocks or dancing. Go-go because I was buying guitars hand over fist. Weird guitars. Mystery guitars. One of those guitars snared in my trap was this Standel. I held back at first because there was some damage to the pickguard near the jack and I had no idea what this thing was. But plastic can be fixed, right? Once I started looking into this guitar, I was glad I didn’t pass.

Roll the tape further forward and I still don’t know much definitively about this particular guitar. Standel was begun as a tube amp company by Bob Crooks in Temple City, California, near Los Angeles, in 1953. The solid-state amps came in around 1965. As indicated, he was pretty successful, so it was a logical next step to cash in on the guitar boom and introduce a line of guitars. In around 1961 or 1962 Crooks approached a young Semie Moseley, who’d been making waves hot-rodding the guitars of local Country-Western stars, and asked him to design a guitar that was “as close to being a Fender as possible without being a Fender.” Moseley said sure, grabbed a Strat, flipped it over and traced the outline upside down. Voila, the first Standel guitar! Moseley build about 25 of these guitars for Standel, but the project languished for reasons unknown. It was this design that became the legendary Mosrite Ventures guitars of 1963.

Vintage 1966 Standel Model 101 Custom Deluxe Electric Guitar

Following the brief association with Moseley, Crooks began selling Dobros made in El Monte, California, by Emil and Rudy Dopyera, who came out of retirement to revive Dobro brand resonator guitars. That lasted until 1965 when Semie Moseley purchased Dobro. That same year saw Standel’s association with former Mosrite employee Joe Hall, the man who made the famous Hallmark guitars. These were pretty much Mosrite knock-offs. It is entirely possible this guitar is one of those; the CTS pot code is 137 6532, dating it to August of ’65. Some reports have Crooks getting some guitars from another guitarmaker named Bill Gruggett of Bakersfield, California.

After the brief stint with Hall, Crooks turned eastward to the Harptone Manufacturing Corporation in Newark, New Jersey. Harptone is still known today as a manufacturer of high-quality hardshell cases, but during the ‘60s they also did some guitarmaking (they’d done some before World War II, as well). Their chief luthier was the somewhat eccentric Sam Koontz. Koontz built custom-made archtops and ran the set-up and repair functions at Philadelphia Music Company, the principal importer of German-made Framus guitars. From around 1966 until around 1969 Harptone/Koontz built a variety of interesting, mainly thinline hollowbodies carrying the Standel brand.

Vintage 1966 Standel Model 101 Custom Deluxe Electric Guitar

But this is not about them. It’s about this odd guitar. Obviously, this is kind of a cross between a Burns Bison and a Mosrite Ventures. A lot of features are clearly Mosrite, including the German carve top and zero fret, though Koontz used these, too. This is a heavy guitar, probably made of mahogany, though it could be maple. The single-coil pickups look a lot like those made by Micro-Frets, but there’s no reason to think there’s a connection. They are pretty good pickups, with 3.88 kO of output. But check this out. They are epoxy potted. Now, who did that? Another fellow with New York/New Jersey connections, Dan Armstrong. Could he have done these? Dunno. These are replacement knobs, by the way, though everything else is original.

Other curious characteristic include a neck-tilt adjustment and two sets of volume/tone controls. The red switch lets you toggle between them. I guess that’s so you can pre-set them for lead/rhythm. The neck is nice and thin, but with a round profile that gives it a feeling of heft. The tuners are actually Grovers.

So, made by Moseley? Timing wrong. By John Hall? Bill Gruggett? Who knows? But probably not. By Sam Koontz? Most likely, though he didn’t do much with solids. Help from Dan Armstrong? Tantalizing, but unknown. In any case, despite its goofy looks, this is actually a pretty good quality guitar. Definitely a middle-level-plus axe with some professional features. Perfect for “Walk, Don’t Run” and “Pipeline.” Through solid-state or tubes, your choice! And even with the spotty pedigree a way cool blast from the past! Glad I grabbed it when I had the chance…

Hey Man, What’s That Sound? (1966 Standel 101 Custom Deluxe Electric Guitar) from MyRareGuitars.com

James Jameson and his P-bass helped to define the Motown sound.

1. Fender Precision Bass
This is the bass that started it all. And all through its many incarnations the P-Bass is, and will always be the industry standard and the safe choice for any application. The bass was so damn popular that you would see ads that read “Band Looking for Fender Bass Player”. It was a distinction that grew out of a way for band leaders to let the bass player know that he could leave his upright at home. It also denoted a preconceived style of music that the bandleader or producer wanted. The “Precision’’ had one pickup and basically one sound, but that sound kicked ass! If you want to hear a few of the P-Basses signature sounds check out James Jamerson’s Motown recordings, and the edgy Precision bass sound on Joe Cocker live at Woodstock’s “With a Little Help from Me Friends.” Even in today’s world of 5, 6 and 7 string basses the P Bass makes a statement when it is produced at a gig or an audition. It says “I understand and respect the roots of bass playing.”If you’re a bass player of any serious stature and you don’t have a Precision Bass, then you better have a Jazz Bass.

1964 Rickenbacker 4001S Bass Guitar

2. Rickenbacker 4001 Bass
Rickenbacker instruments have been paired with Vox amps over the years, evidenced by the Beatles, Tom Petty (Mike Campbell), and REM to name a few. Interestingly I believe that Ricks are to Fender and Gibson guitars what Vox is to Marshall and Fender amplifiers. Okay point made, now onto the 4001. The first time I saw the Rick 4001 was on the cover of Magical Mystery Tour. There it was, right next to George holding an early rosewood Strat. I listened closely to the record that was included with the cover and could hear a discernable difference in tone from Paul’s previous bass sound. Actually it wasn’t that different because again Paul’s Rick was strung with flatwound bass strings. But unlike the Hofner bass the Rickenbacker’s fate did not lie solely in the hands of the man from Liverpool. Chris Squire armed with a Ricky and some roundwound Rotosounds quickly became the captain of the good ship 4001. His playing on Fragile is mindblowing, and I know it is safe to say that his playing influenced players like Stanley Clarke and Jaco Pastorious, as well as a generation of checkerboard wielding Rickophiles. Again the bass was equipped with two single coils and a very cool pickup cover over the back pickup reminiscent of the old Rickenbacker “Frying Pan” lap steel. Even the great Lemmy from Motorhead played a 4001, adding another sound to the palette offered by the great bass from Cali.

1977 Fender Jazz Bass Guitar

3. Fender Jazz Bass
Leo sure must have loved jazz and as any of us in the guitar business know, you ain’t gonna make a million dollars selling instruments made for jazz. But, Leo’s second offering in the world of basses was sure a home run. Unlike his Jazzmaster which was as unjazzy an instrument as you can possibly imagine, the Jazz Bass actually sounded great playing jazz. Legendary jazz player Ron carter played a JB with great style and dignity, but it was Jaco Pastorius that brought the Jazz Bass to another level. Jaco utilizing the back pickup on his defretted JB created a lyrical smooth sound that was truly magical. Years later another bass master the great Marcus Miller played the Jazz Bass with great distinction. Rock players as well enjoy the J Bass, like Geddy Lee, Dave Brown (Santana) and John Paul Jones.

Mike Watt with his 1963 Gibson EB3 Bass Guitar

4. Gibson EB3 Bass
The bass that Jack Bruce played, and played so well, was an also ran in the bass race of the rock and roll era. I personally believe that the EB3 was destined to die a fiery death if not for the great Jack. In reality the EB3 was a victim of the amplifiers of the era. The high output of the massive neck humbuckers over drove the preamp section of most of the era’s Neanderthal bass rigs. It never sounded clean, but it was Jack Bruce that went with it, and played with the back pickup, which is a smaller mini humbuckers design. This growl became Jack’s signature sound. Any of you who want to hear Jack and his EB3 at their best you must go out and get his first solo album after Cream called “Songs for a Tailor”

Jack Casady with his Guild Starfire Bass Guitar

5. Guild Starfire Bass
Often copied but never improved upon, the semi-hollow Starfire bass was to my ears the best sounding semi of them all. Guild instruments are and always will be underrated and a best buy for the buck. This bass, made famous by Jack Casady of the Jefferson Airplane had two versions, the first produced from 1965 to 1969 sported a single coil pickup, and the latter featured humbucking pickups. The one Jack used was the single coil version, and it sounded chunky and percussive. I am sure Jack’s technique had something to do with it, but it was an awesome sound. This is one bass that begs for round wound strings, to enhance the bite of the single coils. The Gibson EB1 was a muddy version of the Starfire basses.

Ricky Danko and his Ampeg AUB-1 bass

6. Ampeg AUB-1 Bass
There can be little doubt that the Ampeg AUB-1 is one of the most unique fretless basses ever made, with its offset body and cut-thru f-hole. A striking look, for sure, but it also sounds amazing. This model (and the fretted version, the AEB-1) are very rare and hard to find now – only around 1150 AEB-1 and AUB-1 basses were manufactured between 1966-1968. But thanks to being used by artists such as Ricky Danko (watch “The Weight” from The Last Waltz film) it has become the stuff of legend. The AEB-1 was also used by Adam Yauch in the Beastie Boys. Thankfully, the Eastwood tribute models are fantastic alternatives if you can’t afford an original. Both the Eastwood EUB-1 fretless and EEB-1 are still available and well worth checking out:

Eastwood EUB-1 | ORDER NOW, Only $898 USD

Paul McCartney with his 1963 Hofner Model 500/1 Bass Guitar

7. Hofner Model 500/1 Beatle Bass
Paul McCartney, Paul McCartney, Paul McCartney. What the hell was this guy doin’? What was he playing through? What kinda strings was he using? Now I think Paul would have sounded great if he was playing a cigar box strung up with rubber bands played through a transistor radio but that’s my hang up. Paul was the man, and that little bass sounded great in his capable hands. The 500/1 premiered in 1956 and it featured a set of mini humbuckers and a spruce top. That combination would usually spell disaster especially at higher volumes, but it didn’t. And by the way I’ll finish like I started, all you aspiring Paulie Mac’s use flatwounds, use flatwounds, use flatwounds.

1959 Danelectro Longhorn Bass Guitar

8. Danelectro Longhorn Bass
No matter how cheap you think this bass was, it was a killer sounding low frequency machine for sure. Those anemic “lipstick” bass pickups sounded so good, whether coming through an amp (preferably a big one) or through the console in a recording studio. Legend has it that the bass part for “Take a Walk on the Wild Side” was recorded with a Longhorn by 60’s electronic wiz Dan Armstrong. (his son Kent told me). The Danny was light weight, and as sexy looking as Phoebe Cates getting out of the pool in “Fast Times at Ridgemont High”. And great news is that the reissue ones sound as good as the originals.

1977 Music Man Stingray Bass Guitar

9. Music Man Sting Ray Bass
Well Leo you did it again! This bass was the first mass produced active electronic bass. It was made available in the summer of 1976, to rave reviews. The massive pickup produced a sound never heard before, and the pole pieces were the size of a dime. The Sting Ray had a volume control and a bass and treble control as well. This way you could add or cut bass and treble separately, way snappy. You could for the first time get a sound that wasn’t a Fender or Gibson sound. This bass became synonymous with cats like Bernard Edwards of Chic and Tony Levin (of everybody).

Dave Alexander and his Mosrite bass

10. Mosrite Ventures Bass
Of course, Mosrite was not just about the guitar! The Ventures bass was famously used by, obviously, the Ventures, but it also put its mark in the dirtiest corners of rock’n’roll thanks to being used by John Entwistle in The Who and, especially, Dave Alexander in The Stooges. Available with one or two pickups, the Mosrite Bass is one of the few models ever made featuring hot, P90-style pickups – rocking! Once again, Eastwood paid tribute to Mosrite, and their Sidejack 32 bass is the ideal choice for punk rockers, fans of Dave Alexander or anyone looking for a bass with extra kick.

The 10 Most Important Electric Basses in Rock & Roll History from MyRareGuitars.com

Product: Eastwood Guitars Sidejack
Price Paid: $479
Submitted 04/28/2006 at 02:26pm by John W.

Features : 10
This is a follow-up to my review (John W. 2-28-05)

Same as review. Everything is working perfectly with no complaints. I am desparately trying to wear this thing out! I will perish before it does, place your bets now.

I didn’t know I would become accustomed to this flat (12.00″+) fretboard and slightly chunky neck (slightly larger than “standard thin”).I have gits from 7.500″ radius to 16.000″ and still play them and enjoy each one, but this particular set up at the 24.750″ scale is perfect for my hand @ 9.500″ hand spread (pinky to thumb).

I still dream about a Wizard neck with compound radius and a 24.750″ scale. Maybe someday I’ll throw some money at it. It would be soooo nice to have the best of both radius worlds! (I’m trying to get Warmoth to make one of these, but they don’t make a Wizard at shorter than 25.500″). Maybe Mike Robinson (Eastwood) will make us one??

One extremely nice change for the Sidejack has been loading it with D’Addario Chromes (ECG24). These are High finish ribbon wound that are ground FLAT. They call them jazz light gauge @ .011, .015, .022, .030, .040, .050″. These strings sound bright and clean and play so smoothly (NO FRICTION) that it is truly effortless which makes playing easier with obvious technique improvement. They bend very easily considering their gauge and chords blend so well it makes standard ribbon wounds sound terribly bad. Single notes have a quality that is clean with no overtones and they require LESS pressure to note, removing intonation sharping that can occur with light gauge strings.

I put a set of Chromes (ECB82) on my Bronco bass also. Perfect sound! Slap, flap, clean, mellow; it’s all in the tone knob and playing technique.

Sound : 10
You can get any sound out of this guitar with good amps, etc. It needs no mods or “hot rodding”. The pups are clear!

Action, Fit, & Finish : No Opinion
Constructed better than all the things I’ve played for years. I require extremely low action with no buzz. I have it with this guitar.

I always pay attention to the left or right of torso centering of the guitar’s scale. (Too far left of center chest, you have to reach abnormally far with the left arm as a RH player). It occurs on guitar models like the Mosrite and others. Just look at the amount of body real estate to the right of the bridge on some guitars (from playing position) and where the body relief shaping is located).

This guitar does shift the scale to the left 2.000″ more than my Fenders and Dano, so it would be a problem EXCEPT that it’s a mid-scale length at 24.750″. There is some extra reach but it’s ok with the shorter scale.

Reliability/Durability : 10
Durable period.

Customer Support : 10
Better than perfect. Just like my wife! (she will read this).

Overall Rating : 10

Guitar Review: Eastwood Sidejack DLX Guitar

Bonus clip: The Baseball Project on the David Letterman show (June 19, 2008, Steve Wynn, Scott McCaughey, Peter Buck and Linda Pitmon):

Guitar Review: Eastwood Sidejack DLX Guitar from MyRareGuitars.com

1966 Wurlitzer Gemini Electric Guitar

Check out, for instance, this rare bird. A 1966 Wurlitzer Gemini, made at the Hollman-Woodell guitar factory in Neodesha, Kansas. Part of Wurlitzer’s THE WILD ONES series (which included the more pedestrian-looking, but still pretty rad Cougar and Wildcat models), these were made to compete with the best of the domestic market. High end tuners (Klutsons), a wonderful chunky bound neck (like a Fender V shape, but a bit thicker), and a great look highlight the Gemini.

Other cool features include stereo pickups. That’s right – the guitar is wired in stereo, so that the neck pickup is one channel and the bridge pickup the other. With a stereo cord that has a “Y” splitter, that means you can send your bridge pickup to one amp and your neck pickup to another. There’s a traditional 3 position toggle to select the pickups, or set it for both and use the blender knob on the treble side horn. It’s a trippy sound to stand in between two amps with the split signal. Put the tremolo and reverb on one of them, and it’s a great sound. You can also run both pickups, of course, into one amp with the proper cord.

Each pickup has a rocker switch labeled “Jazz” and “Rock”. Predictably, the JAZZ setting cuts the output and trebles, offering a m ore rounded mellow tone. The ROCK setting opens the tone up a bit, boosting the treble and volume. It’s a very versatile guitar, with a high end feel.

The vibrato, with its very stylish W cutaway feels like a cross between a Bigsby and a Mosrite. It has the position under the hand and sound of a Bigsby, but with a hint of the feathery lighter touch of the Mosrite. The bridge has separate plastic posts that intonate very well and allow for the vibrato to return to pitch consistently. The balance is wonderful as well. It’s an odd shaped guitar, but it’s very comfortable to play standing or sitting.

And, obviously, it’s one of the best looking guitars to come out of that king of all great-looking-guitar decades, the 1960’s (sorry all you pointy 80’s fans). If the Airline Reso-glass futuristic model most associated with Jack White earns the nickname of the Jetson model, well what is the Gemini? It out Jetsons the Jetson model itself. Maybe it’s the Spacely model. Or the Cogswell’s Cogs model.

1966 Wurlitzer Gemini Electric Guitar

So why didn’t they catch on, if they’re so great? Well, a lot of great companies couldn’t withstand the relative slump of the late 60’s and the birth of quality imports. Think of Danelectro, Valco and Kay all going south within a year of each other. Also, maybe they didn’t have enough capital to make enough noise outside of their Kansas factory. Maybe they just weren’t lucky enough to be in the right place at the right time.

But if you’re looking for any areas where the guitar itself hurt its own chances in the hyper-competitive guitar market of the late 60’s, there are a couple. Wurlitzer could have done better in the finish and the pickups. The finish on all three Wild Ones models had a habit of peeling and cracking. This white Gemini (all three models came in Red, White and Blue) is in surprisingly good shape. It does, however, have the same pickups as the other models, and this isn’t a great thing. While the pickups (the same as one the famed LeBay 2X4 – they were made at the same factory) look to be between the size of a DeArmond Silverfoil and a P-90, sadly they don’t share tone with either of those great pickups. They are clean and solid, tone-wise, but their output is very low and they can’t overdrive the dirtiest of amps. They can get a pretty good snarl going with a nice preamp or a good overdrive pedal, but they aren’t going to sound too tough going straight into most amps. Power and tone-wise, the popular guitar they sound most like (output-wise) is the Fender Mustang.

These are incredibly rare. Most estimates put the entire Wild One line at under one thousand guitars. Of those, the Cougar was the most popular, followed by the Wildcat, leaving the Gemini as the rarest of the rare.

Cool shape. Awesome retro vibe. Stylish. Super rare and hard to come by. And they could use a pickup upgrade. Maybe the more standard MONO wiring. Sounds like a guitar that might be just right for a cool company that re-issues rad guitars from the 60’s (hint, hint, Mike). If enough of you make enough noise, maybe this one could come back from the past.

1966 Wurlitzer Gemini Electric Guitar from MyRareGuitars.com

First some quickie suggestions right off the bat for you guys and gals.

Phase 1

1. When using a wah wah and a distortion always have the wah wah before the fuzz box (how’s that for old school?) in your chain. You want to effect your guitar signal before you distort it. When using a clean boost that should be last in your chain right after your distortion units.
2. Use as few pedals as you can. The more effects you use the more your sound suffers. If you are using more than 5 or 6 pedals try using an A/B switch and set up two loops to keep the chain as short as possible.
3. If you like a tight sound, ceramic speakers are a good way to go. In general AlNiCo speakers tend to be a bit more saggy. But there are some Alnico speakers that are clean too, these tend to be the higher quality ones. And as they break in the ceramics tend to be tighter and cleaner.
4. Lower output pickups tend to be thinner eq wise, and subsequently a hotter pickup tends to be darker sounding. If you want to use a lower output pickup for the reason that they reproduce your playing dynamics better, you must use a higher output amp. Again, if your guitar is a high output axe you can use a smaller amp, and still achieve a nice fat sound.
5. Shorter scale guitars make light gauge strings feel extra light, and consequently longer scale guitars make light gauge strings feel a bit heavier. This is why back in the day when light gauge strings were not readily available, guitar players preferred Gibson guitars over Fender.

1962 Fender Telecaster Electric Guitar (Vintage)

Phase 2
Next on the cavalcade of hits, I will give you some examples of typical setups for certain types of music. Remember you can mix and match these suggestions for your signature sound.

Clean Country Sound:
This is a sound made popular by country pickers since the 1960’s. It’s a clean sound, very little if no distortion at all.

• Guitars: Fender Stratocaster, the bridge pickup for a bright twang with a bit less output and fatness then the Tele bridge p/u. You can also get a great albeit a more modern country sound using the between the pickups sounds (2nd and 4th) on the Strat. For all you Eastwood fans check out the Wandre and the Joey Leone Signature Models for a great bunch of aforementioned country sounds.
• Gretsch models w/ DeArmond Dynasonic pickups give you a great country sound with alot of dynamic range for subtle to ear splitting tones. For those of you who want to dabble in some cool country tones try the Eastwood Classic 6 for a very reasonable starter country axe.
• A Gibson thin line arch top like a Byrdland is also a great clean country axe, don’t believe me? Ask Roy Clark and Hank Garland (Mr. Sugarfoot Rag). One of my idols Scotty Moore (of Elvis fame) played an L5 and an ES-295 during his years with the King.
• Amps: The cleaner the amp the better, period. A Twin Reverb comes to mind immediately as well the solid state high wattage steel guitar offerings from Peavey like the Nashville and Session 400. Amps with at least a 12-inch speaker will help you get that twang. If you are the only guitar player in the band consider using an amp with a 15-inch speaker. You can also use a smaller amp at a lower volume with a mike on it.

Gritty Country Sound:
Same guitars choice as above, just crank your amp up. 10 inch speakers are okay for this application. The Marshall TSL Series, Fender Deluxe. Vibrolux, and Super Reverb will make you smile.

Heavy Rock Sound:
Again I remind you I am an old school guy so I say….

• Guitars: Gibson SG w/ humbuckers is my choice for ultimate heavy rock guitar. It cuts and yet is still as fat as your fifth grade Home Ec. teacher. Tony Iommi, Angus Young, and Glen Buxton (the most underrated heavy rock guitar player) are shining examples of what an SG in the hands of a capable axe murderer can do. Gibson Les Paul Customs like Steve Jones and Mick Ronson used to play also kill.
• Those pointy guitars from the 80’s, Jackson, Charvel, Ibanex JEM and ESP’s are all a bit more edgy and hotter then a stock SG or Les Paul.
• I also love the sound of P90 equipped solid body axes for a great crunch sound, maybe a more punky sound is a better explanation. Les Paul Jr.’s ala Johnny Thunders and Leslie West are prime examples of this guitars sound when cranked. I am sure these guys influenced Billy Joe Armstrong in his choice de axe. Again, Eastwood offers some great single coil guitars of this ilk, the P90 Special, Stormbird and JR Elite just to name a few.
  1962 Fender Telecaster Guitar – Sunburst
• Amps: Marshall, Marshall and more Marshall. The JTM 800 is numero uno in my book, as well as the JCM 900 for a more modern shred vibe. I was also impressed with the Carvin stack offerings back in the day. THD, Randall, and Peavey also have really good sounding shred generators in many configurations.

Marshall Guitar Amps

Rock and Alternative Sound:
This is a potpourri of suggestions, please take one and pass the rest back.

• Guitars: Well take your pick, I am just gonna rattle em off….first the off the wall ones. These are the “next big things.” Maybe? Remember Cobain’s JagStang? Gretsch solid bodies from the 70’s and 80’s ugly as your neighbors AMC Gremlin. Silvertone’s and Danelectro’s from the 60’s. Link Wray, Jimmy Page, duh! Kramer’s from the 80’s, Eddie something or other played one of these. Carvin solidbodies from the 80’s. Still a great deal on Ebay. Ovation guitars form the late 60’s and 70’s (the Deacon, the Breadwinner, and Tornado.) The pickups were nasty sounding, but oh so cool. Legit ones. Fender Telecaster, Rickenbacker solid and semi-solid guitars, Gretsch arch tops, Mosrite solidbodies, and Gibson solidbodies guitars w/ P90’s.
• Amps: The Vox AC-30 is a seriously important amp in the history of rock and roll, for a very good reason, it’s an original. History tells us that early Marshall’s are in essence copies of a Fender Tweed Bassman. So the Vox is the only original amp design of the “Big Three”. Best news about that is that it sounds great! The Vox AC-15 is also a slammin’ amp. Portable, strong and ballsy just like my first wife.
• Fender Deluxe Reverb, crank it up and feel the magic. The singularly most versatile amplifier in the history of guitardom. This little dynamo is IMHO the best sounding amp ever made (Blackface models produced from 1964 to 1967).
• The Silvertone/Danelectro Twin Twelve. What a great/cheap amplifier should be. Two twelve inch speakers (usually Jensen’s) a killer tremolo and reverb. Most models I have seen run four 6L6’s in the output section. Although I own an early Danelectro Twin Twelve which runs a duet of 6L6’s that is a great amp. Also any of the Valco made amps will do the trick (Supro, National, Airline, Montgomery Ward).
• There are so many great boutique amps out there that are really well built and versatile. They are expensive, usually very expensive. Also they are tough to try out as many of these amps are not in music stores. Making it hard to test drive them . And if they do have one, that’s the problem they only have one, so you can’t a/b them with your favorite guitar plugged into them. Some of the ones I have either owned or played are Victoria (a tweed Fender vibe), Matchless (some Vox like models). I also really liked the early Bedrock amps that were basically JTM 45 clones.

Getting Your Own Sound with Guitars & Amps from MyRareGuitars.com

Remember my friends knowing what guitars your favorite players play is part of getting a sound similar to them, but it is only a small part of it.

Gibson SG Electric Guitar

Gibson SG: Tony Iommi, Angus Young, Sister Rosetta Tharpe, Frank Zappa, Eric Clapton

Fender Telecaster Electric Guitar

Fender Telecaster (stock): Roy Buchanan, James Burton, Steve Cropper, Muddy Waters, Joe Messina

Telecaster (modified): Mike Stern, Keith Richards, Danny Gatton, Clarence White

Gibson ES-335 Electric Guitar

Gibson ES-335: Larry Carlton, Dave Edmunds, Johnny “Guitar” Watson

Gibson ES-345: Freddie King, Alvin Lee, Elvin Bishop

Gibson ES-355: Chuck Berry, B.B. Kink, Keith Richards

Fender Stratocaster Electric Guitar

Fender Stratocaster (stock): Buddy Holly, Jimi Hendrix, Jeff Beck, Mark Knophler, David Gilmour

Fender Stratocaster (modified): Hiram Bullock, Robbie Robertson, Adrian Belew, Stevie Ray Vaughn

Gretsch 6120 Archtop Electric Guitar

Gretsch 6120: Brian Setzer, Chet Atkins, Eddie Cochran

Gibson Les Paul Electric Guitar

Gibson Les Paul: Mike Bloomfield, Slash, Joe Perry, Duane Allman, Jimmy Page

Gibson Firebird Electric Guitar

Gibson Firebird: Johnny Winter, Eric Clapton, Howlin’ Wolf, Stevie Winwood, Pat Hare, Clarence Gatemouth Brown

Gibson Flying V: Albert King: Jimi Hendrix

Gibson Melody Maker: Joan Jett

Gibson Byrdland: Ted Nugent, Roy Clark, Eric Clapton

Gibson Les Paul Junior Electric Guitar

Gibson Les Paul Junior: Lesley West, John Lennon, Bob Marley, Johnny Thunders, Mick Jones

Fender Jazzmaster Electric Guitar

Fender Jazzmaster: Elvis Costello, Thurston Moore & Lee Ranaldo, Kevin Shields, J Mascis

Rickenbacker 12-string Electric Guitar

Rickenbacker 12-string: George Harrison, Tom Petty, Roger McGuinn

Airline H44 Electric Guitar

Airline Resoglas Electric Guitar

Airline/Supro Resoglas: J.B. Hutto, Jack White, PJ Harvey

Epiphone Sheraton Electric Guitar

Epiphone Riviera/Sheraton: John Lennon, Otis Rush, George Harrison, John Lee Hooker

Gibson L5-CES Archtop Electric Guitar

Gibson L5-CES: Wes Montgomery, Scotty Moore, Paul Simon (L5S)

Other Notables:

• Gretsch Country Gentleman: George Harrison, Steven Stills, David Crosby
• Mosrite (several models): The Ventures, Joe Maphis, Rick Wilson (B-52’s), Johnny Ramone
• Silvertone/Danelectro: Jimmy Page, Link Wray, Hubert Sumlin, Elmore James, R.L. Burnside
• Kay Electrics: Jimmy Reed, Howlin Wolf, Lonnie Johnson

So if you are interested in getting a sound similar to any of these artists, a good place to start is with their guitar choices. I would say that may be 20% of it, the amplifier would be another 20% and the rest is technique, approach, and attitude.

There are some other aspects that would affect your sound, the type of picks you use, the gauge of your strings, and any effects you might use.

In my world I would say use as few effects as you can, I know they are part of the song, blah,blah blah. If you need a harmonic effect like a chorus but feel you need to flange at some point in the show get one of those multi units like the Line 6. And remember the more pedals you use the farther away are you from the sound of your guitar.

Now as far as the amps go, those of you who are familiar with my column know I am a traditionalist. As far as I can see there are three categories of amplifiers.

Clean Amps:
These amps are clean sounding, with plenty of headroom and eq to pick from. Twin Reverbs, Ampeg, and Lab Series amps are a few. Also some of the older Peavey solid state amps are real clean amps. You can always get a dirty sound with your favorite pedal if you need it.

Dirty Amps:
Marshall JCM 800 and 900 Series amps, many tweed Fenders, the 100 watt army of amps like Crate, Krank, Soldano, and Randall. These amps will give you the sound you are looking for, if that sound is a crunchy compressed full sound.

Channel switching amps:
These amps are for cats that need both clean and dirty and like the idea of the two sounds coming from the same amp. These amps are personified by Mesa Boogies, Rivera era Fenders, and combos like the Marshall TCM Series.

And remember folks – “got and questions?”..”go lean on Shell’s Answer Man”.

Famous Guitarists & Their Guitars from MyRareGuitars.com

Below, I lay out the answers, based on the classic traditional surf sound of the Sixties. Whether you want to nail the sound with vintage gear, or whether you are on a budget, you’ll find useful guidelines here.

Surf Guitar Gear Basics

Instrumental surf music has its own distinct sound – influenced by both the natural sounds of waves crashing on the beach, the typically rudimentary skills of its early performers, and technological breakthroughs in amplified guitar technology during the hey-day of surf music, the early 1960s. In short, the key characteristics of the surf guitar sound are a clean tube-amp tone and heavy reverb. Not coincidentally, those sounds are closely associated with Fender musical instruments. Back in the day, all Fender instruments were made in Southern California, just a mountain range away from the Pacific Ocean. Naturally, Fender had a huge impact on the early surf musicians blasting out their instro tunes in the music halls of SoCal.

Surf Guitars

Most early surf bands made use of a full array of Fender gear, beginning with the famous single-coil guitars that still define “the Fender sound.” Dick Dale, the father of surf guitar, played his staccato machine-gun sound with the help of “the Beast” a highly personalized Fender Stratocaster.

Today, the Strat remains a favorite choice for surf guitar slingers. The most popular Fender surf machines, however, are the Jazzmaster and its twangy, shorter-scaled cousin, the Jaguar. While nothing tops a vintage Jazz or Jag dated anywhere from 1958 (the first year of the Jazzmaster) to about 1966 (the venerated “pre-CBS” era, when Fender was still owned and operated by Leo Fender), you’ll have to shell out mucho dinero for the authentic item.

Fender Jazzmaster.. proper surfin’ vibes!

Fortunately, Fender has created excellent reissues of its classic instruments. Most players would agree, Made in America (often designated as “MIA”) vintage reissues of the Jazz and Jag come very close to the sound and mojo of the originals, and can be had new or used for less than a king’s ransom. For those on a budget, the Made in Japan/Crafted In Japan models (often denoted as “CIJ” and “MIJ”) come very close to the feel and tone of the American-made models, at about half the price.

A minority of players seek out other vintage guitars popular among early surf bands. Mosrite guitars, made by California’s Semie Mosely, were made famous by The Ventures – not strictly a surf band, but still a vital group in the pantheon of surf music legends. Other popular surf guitars include single-coil models manufactured by Japanese manufacturer Teisco Del Rey, American-maker Danelectro, and the Italian firm Eko. Plus dozens of Japanese guitars churned out during the 1960s and 1970s.

Any of the recent Eastwood Mosrite Reissue models are a great choice if you want to go down the Ventures route:

Eastwood Sidejack, a great option for surf music

That said, anyone new to the surf sound can get by with most any solid-body electric guitar featuring single-coil pickups. For the economy-minded, a Fender Squier Strat is a good choice. Yamaha also makes some surfy guitars loosely fashioned after the wild SGV models of the late 1960s. Other brands to consider are the Danelectro-style guitars made by Reverend, the retro-60s guitars made by Eastwood, reissue Danelectros, DiPintos, and the many Strat-clones made by just about everyone.

Back in the early 1960s, strings were quite heavy when compared to the light, thin, slinky strings favored on most guitars today. If you want a dedicated surf guitar, as opposed to one set up for playing a wide array of rock music, you’ll want to stock up on the heavier guages – high “E” strings of 11, 12, even 13. The true surf sound was typically played on ribbon-wound or “flat” wound strings; these help reduce string-slide sounds and have a mellower tone than the more common round-would strings. However, this is an item of personal preference; many surf guitar players swear by flat-wounds, while most continue to play the cheaper and more widely available round-wounds.

The Ventures, one of the greatest surf bands ever, played Mosrites

One last note: one other characteristic of the surf sound is whammy bar dips. Not the dive-bombing acrobatics of Eddie Van Halen, but a nice quarter or half-tone warble. Any worthy surf guitar should have a bridge set up to create this sound; used judiciously, they will stay in tune. Hard-bridge guitars, such as most Telecasters, lack this feature, making them less desirable among surf guitar players.

Surf Bass Guitars

Surf music played a big role in the acceptance of the electric bass and the movement away from the standup basses used by Jazz, blues, and rockabilly musicians of the 1950s. The surf players ushered in the era of the electric bass, launching the modern rock bass sound. Of course, the surf bands used Fender basses, both the Precision bass and the Jazz bass. Another popular brand was the Danelectro Longhorn bass, with its distinctive double-cutaway body.

Just as if their guitars, Mosrite basses were also used by surf bands, such as The Ventures. The Eastwood Sidejack Bass 32 is a pretty good choice, if you want something similar:

The Sidejack Bass 32… great choice for surf music

Surf Guitar Amps

Think clean, sparkly treble and a round, clear bass tone. That’s the essence of surf amp sound. The most famous and venerable surf amps are the classic Fender Showman and Dual Showman. These were early amp “heads” intended to be played through Fender amp cabinets, typically with big 15″ JBL D-130F speakers. These setups have mountains of clean headroom, sufficient to spread the sweet surf guitar sound across an entire auditorium of stomp-crazed beach kids looking for some fun on a Saturday night. You can still find a bargain on Showman heads by shopping eBay, but snapping up the matching cabs with JBL speakers will cost you a month’s salary or more.

Fender Bandmaster

Other popular early Fender amps are the Twin Reverb, Deluxe Reverb, Bandmaster, Vibrolux, and Super Reverb. Any of these true vintage Fenders will likely put you deeply in debt. Fortunately, Fender has revived many of its timeless designs, which are available as the reissue series. The ’65 Twin Reverb, the ’65 Twin Reverb Special 15, Custom Vibrolux, and the Deluxe Reverb Reissue are all excellent choices for surf music. If you want to lay out serious dead-presidents, the VibroKing Custom comes with a built-in ’63 Fender Reverb (see “Reverb” section, below), while the new SuperSonic combines the tones of the classic Vibrolux, ’66 Bassman, and modern high-gain amps.

That said, there are many other affordable – and not so affordable – amplifiers from which to choose. For novices who want to play at home, the Fender Blues Junior gets great tube tone. Other good choices are the Fender Blues Deluxe, a 40-watt with great versatility, and its beefier brother, the Fender Blues Deville (also sold as the ‘Hot Rod’ series amps). A bargain-basement amp that has excellent surf tone is the Fender Frontline 25R, a surprisingly warm-sounding solid state amp. Of course, you can play through a classic Marshall stack or Vox AC30 (the amp used by the fab British instrumental band, The Shadows). Anything is possible – just bear in mind, you’ll be straying from the classic surf sound.

Another choice (and this is mainly for guitar players with lucrative careers as doctors, attorneys, business execs, and mafia captains) are boutique amps. Many makers, most notably Kendrick and Victoria, have re-created hand-wired amplifiers based on the classic Fender circuits. You’ll get classic Fender tone without having to worry about the reliability issues that come with owning a 50-year-old piece of electronic gear. Unfortunately, the boutique makers seem to focus largely on the tweed-era Fenders of the 1950s, rather than the black-face amps of the 1960s, when surf guitar ruled. So, some of the boutique amps seem better suited to mildly distorted blues than to crystal-clear surf.

Surf Guitar Reverb

Ahhh, reverb. One of the earliest effects created for guitar, and the essential ingredient of surf sound. Originally intended to create an ambient atmosphere, like a large music hall, reverb came to the fore in surf music with the creation of the Fender Reverb based on the G15 circuit. Turned up midway, they do capture the sounds of amplified music bouncing off the walls at a high school hop. But turn the dwell, tone and mix knobs up past the mid-mark, and you start to get the wonderful resonance of a guitar played at the bottom of a well, or in a long tunnel, or perhaps through the barrel of a breaking wave. Coveted by surf musicians, these original tube reverb units are the standard by which all reverb is compared – and by which most fail.

Basically a stand-alone box, tube reverb works by taking the original guitar signal, pushing it through a series of springs mounted in a box, then recapturing and amplifying the sound again before sending it along to the amplifier. Soon after the creation of the tube reverb effect, Fender began adding reverb to nearly all of its popular amp models; however, most will agree that the reverb effect built into the amp itself is a pale and sickly cousin when compared to a true Fender reverb.

Today, you can buy reissue models of the classic Fender ’63 Reverb, but bear in mind, these are not actual copies of the originals. While the circuits are similar on paper, the newer units have circuit board construction, rather than the hand-wired circuitry of the originals. You can, however, find hand-wired reverbs by boutique makers such as Victoria, Soldano, and Kendrick, all based more-or-less on the original G15 circuit. You can also buy a kit and build your own (Weber Vintage Speaker Technology of Kokomo, Ind., is a good source for such kits).

If you can’t spend the $250 for a used reissue much less the $600 or more you will pay for a vintage Fender reverb or a boutique clone of the original, you can go with a variety of pedals, starting as low as $35 for a Danelectro mini-pedal to about $150 for a Little Lanilei reverb pedal that actually uses a spring reverb tank. Other popular models include the Electro-Harmonix Holy Grail and Holier Grail, the Verbzilla, and the Digitech Digiverb, which all get excellent reverb sounds for just over $100.

Finally, you may find that the reverb in your amp works plenty good. You may not get the sputtering “boosh” sounds of a true Fender Reverb, but you may find that it’s enough reverb for your throbbing versions of ‘Pipeline’ and ‘Miserlou.’ Then again, you might be like surf guitar aficionado Jeff ‘Big Tiki Dude,’ who believes that there is no such thing as too much ‘verb.

Good surfin’!

Post by: Gavin Ehringer

Let’s Go Surfin’: How to Get the Classic Surf Guitar Sound from MyRareGuitars.com

This is one of those articles.

Hold on, though. There’s more to it than that. This is the story of a personal journey through the world of music that begins humbly and ends just as humbly as it started. The fact that your reporter (should I say “moi”?) has experienced it at all is amazing enough, for under any other circumstances I might not have found myself in circumstances that presented so ripe an opportunity to learn and understand that most sensuous, invigorating, physically challenging and just plain righteous of musical instruments: the guitar.

Would you rather watch TV or play guitar?

Guitarists: Defining the Breeds

The world of the guitar, from what I’ve seen of the various “shows” held here and there, is populated with individuals whom one could classify into three types: There are collectors who couldn’t give a damn about playing but are attracted by aesthetic or monetary value; there are players who’d probably be better off collecting; and there are those who appreciate how truly awful it is to play poorly and therefore practice like hell out of fear that one day they’ll awaken to find they’re a better fit for category two. (For a hint, reread this paragraph.)

I am one of the individuals from the third category. I live to play the guitar, and if it weren’t for the fact that I’m a responsible adult I’d play the guitar night and day. Actually, it’s as much the music as the instrument – maybe more. Put it this way: To play really well, and play like you mean it, you have to dig in to that fretboard. You have to drive the sludge of misguided assumption and fear out of your hands and out of your brain. To do that takes commitment. It isn’t for babies.

Think about it. To play your best means sacrificing those precious hours in front of the flat-screen, where you might otherwise be perfectly happy growing a big TV butt and shrinking your brain while undertalented, overpaid inflata-babes drive up the advertising revenues and your reserves of testosterone. However, to get to the point where you know that what you’re playing is meaningful and clear of hype. To do that, you’ll have to take your treasured six-stringer through neighborhoods you don’t want to live in . . . at least, not permanently.

If you want to play well, practice hard. That’s what I learned early on in my adventure. On the path I’ve taken, there were players with minds to match their hands; people who saved the partying for after the gig, not before it; people who worked and worked and worked and worked at being better musicians, better thinkers and better teachers. I’ve been fortunate to know these people, and I’ve applied those lessons throughout my career as a journalist and musician.

The Twin Horizons

I soon learned that the many possibilities within the timber of the guitar would establish a certain mark upon which I could focus my own musical efforts. That mark became a line that separated what I was capable of from what I wasn’t yet capable of doing, so in that sense the mark was like the horizon itself. For instance, I knew from the first moment I touched a guitar that it was what I wanted, but it was when I found myself in a circle of very expressive players that I knew the instrument would always hold more than my efforts could reveal. That’s what the guitar is, though. It’s a mystery, or a kind of kaleidoscope. The more you turn it and twist it, the more it displays its infinite randomness and potential. And that’s what makes it so damn fun to play. But the more you play, the more the guitar becomes a philosophy. It’s an approach to listening—a way of sensing and feeling—that lets you know it’s okay to strive and fail before you try and succeed. In that way the guitar is one of the world’s great gifts, which is why so many talented artists have told me that their songs and solos seem to appear from out of nowhere. A good friend recently said there’s no such thing as musical genius. Instead, he said, there’s only the act of channeling from a sphere of creativity that’s far too big for one mind to perceive or identify. It made sense to me. Certainly it’d be more fun to pull some incredible theme out of thin air, or maybe out of a dream, than to feel it was some godlike and wholly intentional act: “That’s it, I’ve done it. I’ve just produced another masterpiece, the likes of which the world shall not see a-gain.” There’s way too much pressure in that. It’ll give you acne.

Well, on with the story. You’ll be impressed, I think, because it’s entirely true and free of exaggeration. It might be a bit more intense than what you’ve experienced on your trip, but then it might not be. After all, the story is really more about the experiences than about—well, moi—so the commonalities will reveal themselves as I relate the events. But hopefully those events will help us define a new philosophy, based partly on the old ones but enriched with something newer and less moi-centric. Here goes:

George Harrison's "My Sweet Lord" was all over the radio

It was a long time ago that I began to play the guitar. I was in the eighth grade, and George Harrison’s “My Sweet Lord” was all over the radio. I’d already learned to play the drums, but since there was little chance that my parents would allow a second set of tubs in the house (the drums belonged to an older brother), I figured my chances would be better with the more compact and more “affordable” guitar. There was one of those in the house too, and it belonged to another brother. I’d been watching him for quite a while, experimenting with his little Orpheus tiger-striped acoustic in the rare dogpoop sunburst. Actually, what I really wanted most was just to pluck those six strings from low to high and follow with a single strum, which was a symbol of the old “Peter Gunn” TV show. Anyway, Guitar Brother eventually relinquished the Orpheus, but rather than deciding I should keep and treasure it the aforementioned two jerks joined with still another brother in destroying it. (Perhaps my oldest brother would have stopped them if he were there. No, he’s classically educated and hates rock ‘n’ roll, so he would’ve helped ‘em.) Hey, but at least it was fun to watch. It also showed me, right at the start of my life as a guitar addict, that there’s always another deal to be had somewhere. So, having owned the Orpheus only a matter of hours and suddenly finding myself without it, I became immersed in the culture of hunter-gatherers. Guitar Bro’ moved up to a Japanese-built Orlando classical, and I got a neighbor’s cast-off Mexican gut-string with the “Missing Tuner Button” feature.

Gibson Hummingbird Acoustic Guitar

One day Guitar Bro’ came home with a replacement for his Orlando, but this one wasn’t about to find itself skewered over a piece of rebar like the Orpheus had. It was a ’63 Gibson Hummingbird in mint–and I mean mint–condition, which had been closeted for eight years by a guy who couldn’t stand the thought of scratching it. (His everyday guitar was a Martin.) From the moment I heard that H-bird, with its thunderous and metallic bass end, woody lower mids and ringing trebles, I knew it would become the sonic standard by which I’d judge every other acoustic guitar. Put it this way: My brother still has it, and I still want it. I want that bitchin’ cherry-sunburst finish, the frets that are wide as skateboard wheels, the fully intact pickguard, the dual-trapezoid inlays, and everything else. Oh, and I’ll take the beat-up Victoria case, with key.

I suffered through a long succession of cheapo guitars, all of them quality-challenged except for the Orlando classical I’d inherited when my brother bought the Gibson. (The Orlando had some truly outrageous Brazilian rosewood. Today, something like that would be a thousand dollars.) But it really didn’t matter to me how bad the instruments were, because I’d practice at least two hours every day, beginning immediately after school. The guitar gave me the power to create chord progressions that reflected the influences of my musical upbringing: the Beatles, the Beach Boys, the Stones, Dylan, and the theme from “Bonanza.”

The Jimi Hendrix Experience: Are You Experienced?

Hendrix, Live at Leeds & The Threshold of a Dream

Interestingly, I wasn’t yet hip to the electric guitar when I first heard Are You Experienced blasting out of the hi-fi in a neighbor’s garage down the street. I wasn’t really aware that Jimi was doing all that with a Strat, but sonically it struck me as some of the most powerful and poetic sound I’d ever heard. Over the years I thought about it—becoming a Hendrix freak in the process—and eventually I realized that the instrument and technique are tools that serve the music, not the other way around. In some schools of thought it’s called transparency.

Music was going all the time in my family’s house. And that, I suspect, is where this particular upbringing differed from others. Oh, there was the occasional silence—after all, it wasn’t an insane asylum or a supermarket—but listening to music was a pretty serious pursuit. As much as we gave our time to it, we gave our imagination to it. So, listening wasn’t just a matter of hearing, it was a matter of believing . . . and the music had to be great before we would believe in it. The fundamental distinction is that music wasn’t entertainment in that house, nor was it something we were “allowed” to have “once we’d reached a certain age.” Admittedly we were Anglophiles or even Europhiles, but that’s because there was so much orchestral music to be heard. It was a sensibility that encouraged a real affection for groups like the Moody Blues, as well as later bands like Hatfield and the North. They had everything: melody, harmonic sophistication, musicianship, great production. The haunting improvisations of the Norwegian guitarist Terje Rypdal, and the sonorous melodies of German bassist Eberhard Weber were a revelation too. Listening to their music teaches you that jazz was never strictly an American art form; there’s a classical-based contingent that’s every bit as important.

The Sparkling Storefront

Unshakeable faith can make for a lonely devotion, particularly when you follow something as nebulous and mystifying as music. But as luck would one day have it, a little shop was opening on a commercial street not far away, just down the street from the liquor store. And on the plain stucco edifice over the storefront a guy was spray-painting the image of a cherry-sunburst Les Paul. Wow. I was in high school by this time, and I was totally ready for a place like that. Not that I’d ever held a real Les Paul, but I’d ogled them in the display cases up at the music store in the mall. But I knew this was going to be different. It had to be, because I could clearly sense it. Shoot, I could smell those old guitars and musty little amps from out on the street. And there were two or three guys in the shop, just casually talking and playing. I scooted past the scaffolding and stepped inside.

Man, the sound was awesome. I can still see this quiet little gentleman sitting cross-kneed on a stool, cranking big, beautiful blues out of a ’68 Les Paul Custom and a blackface Fender Deluxe. He’d slur, squawk and bend those riffs in a way that was so filthy-dirty and lowdown, I knew I just had to get some of that. The sound was huge and authoritative, but at the same time the man’s approach was perfectly languid. It was one of those moments when you simply have to assume the music comes to you. You prepare, you perfect your tools, and then you lay back and play it. Awesome!

Thankfully, the owners of the vintage shop recognized me as one of their own: a happily addicted adolescent guitar nut who’d do anything to taste that magical concoction of six strings and twenty-odd frets. Maybe they thought I might even buy one of the seven or so ’55 Goldtops that adorned the walls there. Think of that: I was this nice Catholic kid whose every move betrayed a lack of experience in the world, and I was hangin’ out with guys who owned and sold some of the most righteous guitars ever made! I went there nearly every day, and tried not to be an ignorant little punk. That was the hard part.

Other people started hanging out at the shop too, and quickly it became a haven for players from throughout the South Bay. (That’s basically the part of Southern California occupied by Long Beach, which I also learned had an inordinately high number of monster guitarists.) If you were deemed by the owner to be good enough, and careful enough, then you could take the guitars off the hangers and play them. The deal with the shop was this: It wasn’t so much the guitar or the amp as an example of collectible history or an indicator of market value. Instead this was a place in search of the perfect recipe. To that end, everything was considered in excruciatingly precise detail. Fretboards were cleaned and conditioned (with linseed oil, now considered a possible carcinogen), pickups and wiring were inspected, and the amps were taken through a comprehensive auditioning process in two key environments–the carpeted, rough-pine paneled shop, and a crude cinder-block storage room at the back. There were catalogs of tubes and transformers, and there was a constant procession of speakers. These guys would put just about anything in a tube amp: Altec, JBL, Gauss, Jensen, Celestion, Eminence, and eventually some cheap no-name jobs with paper domes and extra-large voice coils. If an amp or guitar had the potential to sound great, the people at the shop could get it there.

Fender was the amp of choice at the shop.

What to Play?

Fender was the amp of choice at the shop. But these were no longer standard-issue Fenders. A local technician who’d developed a relationship with the shop owners had come up with a way to install a “clipper circuit” in place of the tremolo control. A friend told me it effectively electrified the front panel, but I hardly cared. Once I got up the nerve to say, “Mom, I need a blackface Fender Twin Reverb with master volume for my new gig”–and finding that she’d go for it–I was ready for my new moniker: “The Mayor of Solotown.” Sure, I tried the Marshall route eventually, courtesy of a road-weary hundred-watter that had been stripped of its vinyl, together with a similarly raped slant cab whose basket-weave grille was decorated with the residue of beer and barf. I just hated the thing. It sounded so dead – so devoid of ambience. I just couldn’t seem to play the room with it like I could with the open-back stuff. Another member of the inner circle urged me to keep the Marshall, saying it just needed fresh tubes. (Actually, he was right.) Well, a little reverb could’ve helped too! So, I took it back to the shop and got two amps: a silverface Twin circa ’70-’71, and an Ampeg VT-22 of roughly the same vintage. Man, that was nuts. I had way too much power, feedback that was totally controllable per distance and proximity, and the juicy Ampeg “cone-cry” that Marshall designs, good as they might have been, didn’t have. Those two amps worked together almost intuitively, and they made my little ’76 rock-maple Osborne solid-body sing like Pavarotti with his meatballs in a vice. I still think it was one of the most amazing sounds I’ve ever heard.

A benefit of being a familiar face was that I could hang around at the shop and play all these incredible guitars, but honestly the owners didn’t expect me to pony up for something truly vintage. I’d just walk in, and within a few minutes I’d be playing a ’57 three-pickup Custom – a guitar that was so good it could almost play itself. I could pick up a Goldtop with those delicious off-white soapbars and a stoptail, or even the co-owner’s customized Olympic white “studio Strat” with Mighty Mite brass hardware, EMG active pickups and a shimmed Jazzmaster neck, and blow out the licks till my fingernails bled. Over time I bought this guitar and that, like a scarred-up Guild Aristocrat and a fabulous mid-’60s Kazuo Yairi replica of a Martin 0018. And of course they knew I’d buy the ’63 ES-345 that someone had stripped bare with a steak knife and spray-lacquered. But no one ever said, “Hey, why don’t you buy something.” We of the inner circle even helped sell guitars, because we could make them sound like they should. I’d demo guitars for buyers all the time, and if I played it they’d probably buy it.

Once, though, I demoed a guitar for a kid just about my age, and I almost wished I hadn’t. I’d been at home practicing like crazy, and after a while I decided I’d visit the shop. There was this kid there, and he was interested in a particular Les Paul (a white Custom, I think). The manager said to me, “Hey, play something to show what this guitar can do.” So, I sat down and . . . and . . . found that I just couldn’t seem to play for beans. It was as if I was just too tired. Maybe I just felt like a trained monkey. In any case, all the whiplash-inducing improvisational skill I’d developed was singularly absent from my cells, and I just plain stunk on that guitar.

The kid still wanted the Les Paul

The kid still wanted the Les Paul. But once he’d left the shop, I told the manager I felt lousy about having played so poorly. His response was one of the profound surprises of my life up to that point: “So, you’ve been playing too much,” he said. “Now it’s time to just listen for a while.” It was far more wisdom than I deserved, but that’s the kind of friend this guy was capable of being. He was honest, and in his business he was equally so. It was another lesson: Be a listener. Listen to others, listen to your intuition, and listen to the silence that coincides with the noise. There’s a musical comparison too, I think. So much of what passes for kick-ass product these days is exactly that, a product that’s out to prove it can kick your ass. Time was, when there was a give-and-take in even the gnarliest music. There was an ebb and flow, and the tension and release that has characterized so much of the best music.

Our favorite albums

The Immersion Diversion

Clearly I was learning more about playing the guitar than I could have at any music school. It was everything in one package: musical, philosophical, technical, aesthetic, nostalgic and futuristic. There was a massive influx of ideas and tastes running from Delta blues and Africana to British progressive rock, on to German and Dutch hard rock, and tongue-in-cheek quasi-classical stuff from the studios and piazzas of Milan. We believed we should be able to grasp it all, and that we should be able to play it all. But that was part of the era. Perhaps none of us had a master’s degree in music, but there was a constant and intensive exchange of ideas and information. We’d bring in our favorite records by King Crimson, Automatic Man, Soft Machine, Caravan, Golden Earring, Be-Bop Deluxe, The Sensational Alex Harvey Band, Mahavishnu Orchestra, Frank Zappa, and even the maniacally virtuoso French ensemble Magma. We’d listen to Taj Mahal, Leon Redbone, Tom Waits, Neil Young, and of course Jeff Beck. The power, the greatness and the grittiness of all that would get mixed together, and there at the confluence of it all we felt that absolutely anything was possible.

The guitars at the shop were generally a cut above, but the one that really had it all was a Flying V dating from about September 1957. It had a honey-colored Korina body so gorgeous, and a neck profile so perfect, that simply holding it was enough to make you forsake any other electric instrument. More than any Les Paul, Strat or Tele, it was the guitar. The tone was monumentally hot—bright, sassy and almost too sensuous for words–and the action over those polished frets and board edges was like something you dream of. And guess what? We used to play that sucker all the time, usually through the shop’s number-one Deluxe with that juicy master-volume setup. Man, it was so effing beautiful! But wait, you’d better steel your nerves for this, because it’ll either make you laugh like an idiot or cry like a baby. Ready? I’ll continue.

Birth of an Angel, and Others

Word had it that our beautiful “V” had been sold to a buyer somewhere down in Texas. But since it was obviously too special to be shipped, his plan was to drive out to the coast and pick it up. We never saw it leave the shop, nor could we have handled seeing it go. But a week or so later the shop manager told us the news. He made the report with an “ouch” of a smile that said all too clearly, “Easy come, easy go.” It turned out that the man who’d purchased the “V” only made it about halfway home with the guitar. He’d been running hard across the Arizona desert in his ’50s Ford pickup when suddenly he caught a whiff of smoke. Something smelled funny, like maybe rubber or wiring. Then he saw the flames licking the edges of the hood up front. Soon there was billowing smoke, fire was everywhere, and just one thing to do: pull over and get the hell out of that truck. He released the door, kicked it open, headed across the blacktop for the opposite shoulder and Kablooey!!! A gigantic pressure wave knocked him on his butt, from which position he could see a mushroom of molten iron and oil roiling toward the blue.

Damn. The Flying V was in the Ford.

It was then that he remembered: The Flying V was in the Ford. He had set it up front with him, leaning it against the bench seat so that he could admire it as he drove along. But as the truck flamed itself to a crisp on that Southwestern highway, the soul of one almighty and godlike guitar silently winged its way to Heaven.

Other axes came and went, and we enjoyed them all. There were baby-blue Strats, Mustangs with racing stripes, Teles and Esquires, a Firebird V that a customer bought and had edge-radiused and refinished wine red, a particularly fine Les Paul Standard with the top refinished in translucent clover honey (like orange juice), and a ’58 blond dotneck 335 that I sincerely wish I’d put on layaway. And if your pickups weren’t up to snuff, good ol’ Bill the shop manager would fix that. He pulled the stock Hi-A units out of my Osborne and replaced them with DiMarzio PAFs that he’d hotrodded with longer magnets. He also installed some pre-amped EMGs and a five-way switch in my Ibanez Challenger II “Buddy Holly” Strat replica. Damn, what a great guitar that was. Wait, there’s something in my eye. Just a minute, the tears will pass.

Excuse me. Once in a while I remember letting that one go.

Robin Trower, Guitarist (Procol Harum)

Fame However Fleeting

Big-time guitarists would come to the shop, too, usually after hours. For example, it was said that Robin Trower came in one night to audition three ’57 Strats that had been brought in for his consideration. And once I was invited to “drop by” with my guitar when Larry Carlton was scheduled to come in and try a caramel-sunburst ES. I was there for it, just waiting. Eventually he showed up, and after a few minutes he took a seat adjacent to me, on one of those funky squash-colored naugahyde ottomans that every guitar shop ought to have. He just started doing his thing, so I immediately jumped in with mine. It sounded good to me, and I could tell he was diggin’ it, so we played that way for at least half an hour. Eventually I packed up my guitar, but I loitered long enough to listen in as Carlton finished his business with the management of the shop. (He said he liked the ES but that the neck would need some work, which I took to mean reshaping.) Then, when I got home, Bill called from the shop and said, “So, after you left, Carlton goes, ‘Jeez, who was that kid!? He’s great!'” It was nothing, really. When you’ve been living and breathing Wishbone Ash for months, and practicing every waking hour, you aren’t going to feel intimidated by a few Steely Dan riffs.

Larry Carlton, Guitarist & Composer

Life goes on, and eventually I was too busy to visit the vintage shop very often. There was a change in management anyway, so the vibe was noticeably absent. In time I became a full-time writer, covering my favorite subject as an editor and contributor with various magazines. But in all the years since those days, when music focused our minds and fueled our fingers, I have yet to hear more than a handful of guitarists who can touch some of the players I knew from that little vintage guitar shop in Long Beach. I’ve lived in cities like San Francisco, Los Angeles and Tokyo, and I’ve met, interviewed and studied with brilliant players. Latin, world music, rock, metal, the studio scene, fusion, and etcetera: all have their names and signatures. But when you find a place where you can immerse yourself in the art of the guitar—where you’re totally free of inhibitions and ready to learn from players of every genre—then there’s no question about it. That’s where you’ll find musicians who are quicker, faster, more fluid, funnier, more powerful, more dedicated, better equipped to improvise and easily equipped to out-rock any of the supposed masters from this or any crop in recent memory. Simply put, it’s the place.

Jeff Beck, Guitarist (The Yardbirds)

The Philosophy Part

What did I learn, and what sort of philosophy emerged from my experiences there? Well, to review them and sum up I’d say it’s as important to attempt as to succeed; that the process is nothing without the quest for the process; that it’s all for nothing but never simply for entertainment; that it’s always worthwhile to want to be the best, even though there is never one “best”; that one should listen to the lessons of accident and random occurrence; that the person that makes the music, though the music fulfills the person; and that if you don’t play as if it were your very last time on this little blue planet, then you’re just wasting your time.

I also learned that you can play almost any kind of guitar you want and sound as good as you want. For instance, I don’t think any of the best players from this particular circle had the money it took to own one of the best guitars in the shop. In fact, I know they didn’t. Those guitars are intentionally priced to remain beyond the reach of the player, so that they’ll neither suffer from player wear nor embarrass the collector who can afford them but can’t actually play. But if you think we ever discussed it or worried about it, you’d be wrong. As I said earlier, we could play the vintage gear nearly anytime we wanted, and it was great. But then we’d head for our own guitars. I had my Osborne, which, if you can imagine, looks like a Rickenbacker 325 with a Mosrite headstock and Gibson-style hardware. Jeff had his lucite Dan Armstrong. Ronnie had a Strat with a fat little Tele neck on it, and Martin had an early issue of the Ibanez Artist in that nice violin finish. With the exception of my Osborne, nearly everything we owned was pre-owned, and certainly everything we played needed some serious tweaking due to overuse.

It’s still a challenge to defend an older guitar against a newer, better-built one. And since I nearly played the Osborne to death—to the point that I’d often fall asleep with it on my chest—I’ve placed it in the deep freeze until I can resurrect it. Instead, I play any of several guitars. For example, I had a superstrat built at ESP Craft House Tokyo in ’85. I hand-picked all the components myself, right down to the slab of northern ash, birds-eye neck and Bill Lawrence pickups. I even had the luthier assemble a Kahler Pro trem with a combination of brass and stainless parts. It has an oiled neck with a lacquered fingerboard, and the body is translucent cranberry. (Don’t ask how I put a belt-buckle dent in the top of the guitar.) Then I have a Yamaha SBG1300TS double-cutaway in gothic black. It weighs more than a Toyota and has a baseball-bat neck, but what resonance! There’s also an early ‘60s Eko model 200 “Mascot” archtop in showroom shape, aged to a delicate apricot blond. It’s small, but like many Eko acoustics it’s loud and very responsive, with tremendous sustain. And I have a four-pickup Eko Cobra that, despite the uprooted frets and shrunken pickguard, still manages to produce a sound that Stevie would’ve swapped his axe for. My current favorite, though, is a beautiful Eastwood Sidejack Deluxe in caramel sunburst. The fretboard is so slick and fast, I just can’t stay away from it. If I were to characterize its sound, I’d say it conjures the tonal balance of a Firebird, or maybe a super-hot Tele. There’s a “long scale” quality about the sound, which I really like.

See? There’s nothing outlandishly expensive. Sure, the Osborne is rare, with a serial number of “0003.” The ESP is tailor-made, and the Eko 200 is a sweetheart Django machine – a total rocket. But I treat each of them as a tool to help reach an artistic goal. It doesn’t take a fabulously expensive guitar to succeed in this respect. Instead you’ll want a guitar that doesn’t hold you back. You can play a guitar that challenges you, but a challenge is distinct from a hindrance. If the pickups are too hot or tend to feed back, you can pull back from “11.” When the intonation is off in the octave register, you can adjust it or deal with it. When there’s a tendency to play one guitar a bit more staccato than you’d like, you can simply relax and play more legato. You can even pick harder, or play fingerstyle, and achieve a similar result. Just make the instrument your own. Teach that guitar how to play and how to sound its best. Then it can teach you in return.

So, if you’re out there, Martin, Ronnie, Rob, Mark, Bill, and especially my old friend Jeffrey, I want to thank you for making me a part of the group. You’ve taught me more than I could ever say, and you’ll always be among my true guitar heroes.

Life in Guitarland from MyRareGuitars.com

Eric Clapton Live… with his trustworthy Strat!

Hi everyone I hope you have been enjoying my column, here’s more stuff to ponder. It seems every time you turn around there’s another list, 100 best this, 10 worst that’s. Well here’s another list for ya! But at least this one does not involve Paris Hilton. I now that some of my listings may be a bit controversial (one in particular) as I said before these are my opinions based on my experiences. Like all things in music they are not right or wrong, just some good-natured opinions that will hopefully stimulate your own thoughts on this subject.

Fender Stratocaster Electric Guitar

#1 Fender Stratocaster: The guitar that defined rock and roll music.
This guitar is as crucial a design and tool as can be expressed. It is unparalleled in it’s uniqueness and sound. Nothing sounds like a Strat, the bridge pickup sounds similar but not the same as a Tele bridge pickup. The same can be said for the neck pickup, and the middle pickup is so unique I cannot think of another guitar sound that can be mistaken for it. And the “between the pickups” sound is what it is truly Strat-esque. Leo was a god among men.

Fender Telecaster Electric Guitar

#2 Fender Telecaster: The most versatile guitar ever made.
The Telecaster, Leo Fender’s maiden voyage into the uncharted world of guitardom. The only guitar that can be credibly used as a rock, blues, country and yes, jazz guitar (even with the stock single coil in the neck position). The best way I describe the Tele when asked why it is my favorite guitar is that my ideas on the Tele are mostly musical ideas not sonic ideas (like the Strat). The Telecaster don’t play itself brother, it’s all there for the taking, but you must be man enough to take it. It’s low maintenance and very consistent from Tele to Tele.

Martin D-28 Dreadnought Acoustic Guitar

#3 Martin D-28: The standard of what an acoustic guitar should sound like.
I dunno I guess I must have been a real jerk when I was young, because I thought Martins were overrated and inconsistent. I was so brainwashed that one day I went into a guitar shop in New York with the sole intention of buying a J-200. While I was there the proprietor said I must check out this Martin D-28, and I did. Let me tell you this guitar was a dream come true, it came alive when you strummed a chord. The top vibrated so strongly I checked to see if it was cracked. It sounded even and true, it sounded so good that I thought to myself “I ain’t good enough to play this guitar.” So I bought the J-200 with the fancy clouds on the fretboard that sounded like a surfboard. BTW I recently contacted the guy who bought that J-200 and it still sounds like a surfboard 20 years later. The D-28 works for all kinds of music, bluegrass, rock and even blues as it is a very underestimated slide guitar ( not many of us have the scratch to play a 28 for slide only though).

Gibson ES-175 Electric Guitar

#4 Gibson ES 175: The best amplified arch top.
I am sure Joe Pass could have played an L5 if he wanted to, and after playing the ES 175 live I understood why many jazz guitar players chose the mid line maple top box. I have found them to be consistent and manageable at higher volumes or when you are set up close to your amp. I also own a Gibson Tal Farlow and have found it to be an ornate version of the 175. I also like the Lawsuit Ibanez 175 copies very much if you don,t mind the narrow neck profile.

Gibson SG Electric Guitar

#5 Gibson SG: The ultimate rock and roll guitar.
Short and sweet here. It’s easy to play, it’s light, it looks amazing, it cuts through like no other humbucking guitar on the planet, and it sounds good with virtually any decent amplifier. Here we go, Young, Iommi, Zappa, Clapton, Harrison, Santana (early w/ P90’s), Townsend (also P90’s). Great lead guitar, awesome rhythm guitar. SG Suggestion: Try a hi-output Humbucker in the bridge position like a DiMarzio Super Distortion it will amaze you; it will still cut like a knife.

Gibson L5 Archtop Guitar

#6 Gibson L5: The standard for what an acoustic arch top is.
I am speaking strictly about the acoustic L5 model only. This is the model that greats like Freddie Green played so well in the big band setting. A little background on the non amplified arch top, I always felt that the guitar player in early big bands served as a chord voice in the rhythm section just as the banjo player did in the New Orleans jazz bands in the early 20th century. They kept the rhythm for the musicians and were barely heard by the audience. Just say it, Gibson L5. Ahhh!

Gretsch 6120 Electric Guitar

#7 Gretsch 6120: Eddie Cochran and Chet Atkins, what else needs sayin?
The match of a visionary guitar player and a Gretsch 6120 seems to very common in guitar lore. This guitar has an arch top design, that combined with the Bigsby tremolo and the Filtron pickups give this guitar a sound that is rockabilly yet with a tweak of the tone controls can be tamed into a great accompaniment guitar as well. I always felt that the sound from this Gretsch was somewhere between an ES series Gibson and a Telecaster (not a bad neighborhood). My experience also tells me that the 6120 sounds damn good plugged into almost any amp I ever heard it with. One of my faves was my 6120 plugged into a Lab Series L5 amp housing a 15 inch JBL E130 speaker. This guitar is great for rockabilly, country, surf, chordal rock rhythm guitar, and any ensemble music.

Martin 000-28 Acoustic Guitar

#8 Martin 000-28: The ultimate blues and finger style acoustic guitar.
Also the OM-35 the long scale version of the 000 body size. I know this might be a somewhat controversial choice but, this comes from my own playing experience as well. I always marveled how the great bluesman would manhandle the guitars they played, in lieu of the fact that many of them had these enormous hands. I always felt that the mass of these hands in comparison to the at most times low budget guitars they played led to the sound they produced. This particular mortal (me!) who did not sharecrop or toil as many of these great men had to do just can’t seem to be able to get that sound from a dreadnought, but when I play a 000 size guitar I feel like Big Bill (Broonzy) himself. I can fingerpick with ease and muffle and mute just like Lightning Hopkins. The even sound of the 000 also lends itself to the unaccompanied nature of solo blues guitar. You may ask “why have I not seen some of these great bluesman play a 00-28?” My answer to that question is two-fold I believe economics is one, and the fact that many of our legendary bles pickers preferred more ornate guitars, and stayed away from the “country guitars.” The Martin 000-28 is a true classic!

Danelectro Solid Body Guitar

#9 Danelectro solid body: The best cheap guitar ever made.
As far a the Danny is concerned, I ask you will it compete with the Les Paul or Strat as your primary guitar? Obviously not, but I ask you is there a more versatile/ quality “off the wall” guitar. It’s an unreal slide guitar (see Lindley in your guitar dictionary). A great rootsy rhythm or lead guitar, and how many of the great Chicago bluesman have you seen playing these guitars? They cut through very well when played alongside other guitars. And the shielding and pickups were very ahead of their times. They look god awful cool, they stay in tune when set up decently. And again I will say that I have never heard a Danny not sound like a Danny through any amp, actually the cheaper the amp the better they sound. I actually prefer the two pickup model for slide and the three pickup for regular application. The twelve strings and odd ball models like the sitar and bellzouki and Guitarlin also sound awesome. The reissues are as good as the originals, and actually play better, although I like the sound of the old pickups better. Go out and buy a half dozen of them right now!!!

Gibson Les Paul Jr Electric Guitar

#10 Gibson Les Paul Junior: Turn it up and bang away a no frills no brainer.
The name “Junior” almost demeans the stature of this guitar. When I say perfect I mean that perfect for the application it is used for. Ask anyone who has ever owned one they all say the same thing – “I should have never got rid of that Jr.”; I am also including all the Les Paul Junior variants as well as the early SG Jr.s as they all serve the same purpose to me. I have always felt that when guitar god Leslie West played his Junior his technique was so strong that it compressed the sound like he was squeezing a golf ball through a garden hose. The guitar reacted so well to his hands, there had to be a reason Leslie played the Junior for so long. First of all has anybody ever heard a bad sounding ones? The only difference I have heard was that I prefer the fatter neck Jr.s as they seen more stable and have a bit mote chunk and sustain. These guitars sound great coming through any amp, although they obviously do not sound as good through a solid state amp. I sometimes wish that I could play my Jr.s more often, but my particular style demands a bit of a more versatile guitar. Yes, the Jr. is not a very versatile guitar, but its still perfect as far as what it does, and what it does is kicks ass!

The Best Of The Rest…

These guitars are great, but not perfect. Let’s say… they are a respectable 9 out of 10!

Les Paul model
Too inconsistent, too many variables great ones are great, bad ones suck. Some are way too heavy, I have seen Les Pauls that weighed in excess if 12 lbs, that’s too much and way too inconsistent. I have always believed from the over 30 years of guitar worship that the Les Paul was the red headed stepchild at Gibson and did not get the attention it deserved. Here’s a hint or two on picking a good Paul – from me to you: #1 if the neck pickup has a high endy squawky “cut” you are well on your way. #2 if it could replace a Tele in a pinch it’s a winner in my book. Muddy, low mid laden Pauls give the model a bad name.

Mosrite Ventures
Great look and design, great sound but, Too thin neck and too small frets, bad tremolo (arm too short and too close to the body and gets “mushy” fast, Not great woods that many times don’t match in weight and density. For a more modern take on the design, make sure to check the Eastwood Sidejack series, which is getting even more popular than the originals!

Gibson ES-335
Some with necks that are unplayably thin. Bridge pickups are not trebly enough (not pickups themselves I believe it’s a design flaw). Great blues guitar in the right hands. A one trick pony.

Gibson ES-345 and 355
The Varitone need I say more? I own several of them but they cannot be my only guitar at a gig.

Gibson L5 CES
Too much pickup for a spruce top arch top. The guitar explodes out of your hand when played proximate to an amp, Useless treble pickup. Yeah I know Wes Montgomery played one (his was a one pickup model), well lets not compare ourselves to Wes okay? I also heard from a reliable source that Wes altered his guitars so they wouldn’t feedback, and that his left hand technique restricted this problem also.

Gibson acoustics: J-200/ J45/J160
Inconsistent, too long to break in, by the time you know whether you have a good one or not you are ready to retire. Buy a used one that sounds good and be happy you got a good one.

Rickenbacker V64 12-string
Aside from the string spacing being too close this is a perfect 12 string electric, but not perfect. Check out the Carl Wilson model if you can find one. George, how did you do it?

10 Perfect Guitars & Their Applications from MyRareGuitars.com

1967 Fender Coronado XII Wildwood 12-String Electric Guitar

Whether some cat took LSD, or anything lighter, while playing this guitar is also unknown. But there’s NO doubt drugs were involved. That’s because this is a Wildwood. And we’re not talking Jersey Shore here.

Well, ok, we really don’t know for sure about the sex and rock. This is a Fender electric guitar, after all, and I don’t think someone bought it to play jazz standards. Or Kumbaya. So that’s a yes on rock ‘n roll. And, anyone who’s ever played rock, by definition, had to think playing it would lead to at least the chance of a score – I know it’s circular logic, so let’s move on to the drugs.

1967 Fender Coronado XII Wildwood 12-String Electric Guitar

The Wildwood concept was invented by a Danish inventor, who hit on the idea of injecting dyes into growing beech trees. As the trees matured, their wood grain colored in green, gold and purple, gold and brown, dark blue, purple and blue, or blue-green. Someone at Fender, thinking this must be what the kids were looking for, bought the idea of making guitars out of Wildwood. Groovy.

The task of designing Wildwood guitars fell to Roger Rossmeisl. Roger is hardly a household name among general guitar fans, but he’s known to cognoscenti. Rossmeisl was born in Graslitz, Germany, in 1927. He learned guitarmaking from his father, Wenzel, who built Roger archtop guitars during the 1930s and introduced the first electric guitars to Germany in 1947.

1967 Fender Coronado XII Wildwood 12-String Electric Guitar

In 1952 Roger came to the US and landed a job with Gibson. The gig did not work out. Persistant, Rossmeisl went West and hooked up with F.C. Hall and Rickebacker. Accounts are fuzzy about the next facts, but by 1956 Rossmeisl was responsible for designing the Combo 600 and 800 series solidbodies, the legendary 4000 bass, and the Capri lines. He introduced both the top-relief German carve to American guitars (cf Mosrite; Semie Moseley briefly worked for Rossmeisl) and the more specific cresting wave design.

That alone would be enough to secure his fame, but Rossmeisl next approached Leo Fender about designing a line of bolt-neck acoustics in 1962 and was hired. In 1963 Fender’s broomstick acoustics debuted with a support dowel running from heel to tail and, significantly, exotic woods. Not new but cool. And not popular.

Roger is supposed to have known the Danish drug dealer and brought him to Fender. The Wildwood acoustic dreadnoughts and thinline electrics debuted in 1966. Which brings us back to this Coronado XII. The colored graining is in nifty green. The construction is solid, though hollowbodies without a log are not my favorite. And, even though my father hailed from Toledo and I’ve lived there several times, the Glass City’s DeArmond pickups have never been on my must-have list.

Fender Wildwoods officially lasted until 1971, but they were hardly a success, and are now a part of guitar legend. Japan’s Teisco company produced some knock-off Wildwood-style guitars, but they were not any more popular. Roger Rossmeisl returned to Germany and eventual obscurity. Leaving us only, I guess, sex, drugs, and rock ‘n roll – and the Fender Coronado XII Wildwood.

Sex, Drugs and Rock ‘n Roll (1967 Fender Coronado XII Wildwood 12-String Electric Guitar) from MyRareGuitars.com

The bottom line is, that Leo made a less than great bass amp that is a great guitar amplifier. Great mistake #1.

Leo Fender does it again!
I list some more of Mr. F’s miscalculations here.

The Stratocaster, arguably the most important guitar in rock and roll history, was originally thought of by Leo as the perfect guitar for his favorite guitar player in his favorite band. The guitar player was Eldon Shamblin and the band was Bob Wills and the Texas Playboys. Those of you not familiar with the aforementioned band and guitar player they were a western swing phenomenon of the 30’s and 40’s with a very big following in California. Leo wanted to create a guitar that would fit into the sound of the band whose music at the time was fertile ground for arch top jazz boxes. So Leo’s Stratocaster was supposed to be a jazz and swing guitar. I ask again when was the last time you saw a jazz or swing guitar player strumming four to the bar on a Strat?

One more from Leo:
Ah yes the Jazzmaster, I guess when the Strat didn’t make the grade with jazz guitar players Leo figured if I put the word jazz in the name that might make jazz guys wanna play them. Again Leo failed at creating a jazz guitar. History tells us that the Jazzmaster as was the Jaguar were copied incessantly by overseas guitar makers. They being so impressed with the upper end, Fender decided to copy them instead of the more popular Stratocaster, another mistake that has went under the radar.

Gibson gets into the mistake game too.
When Fender came out with the Telecaster and it became popular, Gibson said we must get into the solid body guitar world. We all know that Les Paul was consulted and in 1952 Gibson’s first Les Paul showed up. Legend has it that Gibson, a builder of top end arch tops and flat tops could not see themselves putting the Gibson name of a no frills slab of wood with a screwed on neck. So they insisted that their loyal Gibson customers would want the solid body guitar to have an arched top like their “box” guitars.

So they made a two pickup solid body with an arched top and a fancy gold top.

The guitar was not well received by players, as a matter of fact the Gibson players they were after, and thought the guitar was a non responsive, heavy guitar, especially with the 1952 trapeze tailpiece that made it impossible to mute with your right hand. The players who were the new solid body rebels saw the Les Paul as an overpriced, ornamental, non cool guitar.

One aspect of the Les Paul design that has been debated over the years was did the arch top on a solid body guitar actually make a difference in the sound and was the difference a better sound? That question I will leave to you to answer yourself, my opinion is that all design features affect the sound somewhat.

Interesting subtext to the Les Paul legacy is that when Gibson introduced the SG style guitar, players started cramming to get old design Les Paul’s. Gibson seeing this, eventually reintroduced the Les Paul in 1968 after a seven year hiatus.

Another cool mistake was that when Gibson came out with the circa 68 Paul’s they had leftover stock of Les Paul bodies from the 50’s that were already routed for the P90 pickup. The dilemma was that the new humbuckers did not fit the hole in the body. Gibson thought, what do we have in stock that would fit into this P90 hole? Well after acquiring Epiphone (1963ish) they had a stockpile of Epi’s venerable New York mini hum buckers. They made a plastic ring around the pickup to retrofit it into the P90 rout, and figured we might as well call it something different hence the Les Paul Deluxe!! (Didn’t you ever wonder why the Deluxes were initially all gold tops?)

So I think that great ideas sometimes are not necessarily what they were intended to be, but are still great ideas!

Here are some of my own off the wall ideas…

1. Baritone guitars set up for slide: I did this by chance at a gig when I mistakenly brought along my baritone instead of my slide guitar. I took some 11 gauge strings strung up the old baritone and played the gig. The guitar sounded unbelievable! Sustain and tone was awesome. The sound was more like lap steel than a regular guitar strung for slide. BTW the guitar I used was a cheapo Kingston Baritone, later on I used a better guitar and that one sounded great too.
2. Flatwounds on a solid body guitar: I love flat wounds on hollow body guitars, but I have really come to enjoy them on Tele’s and Mosrites (and all their clones). You get that old school Glen Campbell/Joe Maphis sound, great for surf stuff too. Another benefit from this set up is using a fuzz box with the flat wounds on a solid body. You can replicate that hard to capture 60’s studio sound exactly, remembering that many of the studio guitar players in the 60’s were still comfortable with their flat wounds and that many of them were using the same guitar for every session. Check it out! Oh and BTW single coil Fenders, Mosrites work best for this application I find Gibson solid bodies are too muddy with flat wounds.
3. After seeing Johnny Winter playing a Fender XII 12 string strung up for slide, and seeing Blues great Earl Hooker playing a Gibson double neck with the 12 string neck with 6 strings on it I figured “maybe there’s something to this”, and guess what there is! The added mass to the headstock adds an X factor to the sound in the form of added sustain and a magical high mid cut that really sounds very unique. Suggested guitars to try this on a Fender XII, Epiphone Riviera 12 string (great combo w/ the mini humbuckers), and any decent Japanese cheapo guitar if you string it for slide you will not be sorry.

That’s it for now! Keep on strumming and remember Joey Says Experiment!!!

Joey Leone with his Fender Telecaster

Peace and Joy.

Great Mistakes in the World of Guitar from MyRareGuitars.com

Custom Longhorn Guitar by Bill Wagoner (Plymouth, IN)

Here is one of my solutions to the problem. I bought a 1968 Coral Longhorn Body off of EBAY for 65 bucks. It had never been used, no neck, not even a neck pocket, no routing for pickups, no wiring, no pickguard, nothing but a body. Enclose is a pic of the body as I got it and the guitar I made out of it. I did all the wiring, inlays, designed and made the pickguards by hand, assembly, set up, everything.

My inspiration for this project was the old BIGSBY guitars made by Paul Bigsby back in the late 40’s and early 50’s and also the gaudy Cool Italian guitars of the 1960’s. Also I was thinking of the original handmade Mosrite stuff where Semie Mosley would include a fancy pickguard, arm rest and so forth.

My first step was to decide on pickguard material. I went with the white pearloid, or what I call Mother of Toilet Seat, in other words, fake pearl. My pickguard material came from ALL PARTS. I sell their stuff in my store and it is great quality. I knew that I wanted to cover the entire headstock with it but that presented a problem. The neck is basicaly a generic strat type neck but since you cannot bend the thick pearloid I had to make it two pieces. I decided to make the second piece double as my truss rod cover. The neck came from a low priced strat style guitar called a Palmer. Great neck for almost no cost and it plays like a dream.

Next was attaching the neck and body. Since this body had never had a neck, there was no neck pocket. After observing what I call the First rule of guitar repair, I routed out an area to attach the neck about an inch of so deep and also removed part of the material under the fingerboard to get the proper slant to the neck in relation to the body. Due to the fact that I was going to use a rosewood archtop bridge I did not need to worry about where I placed the neck since I could position the bridge anywhere I wanted after the guitar was together.

What is “The First rule of guitar repair?” For every minute you DO something to your guitar, you THINK ABOUT IT for 20 minutes FIRST. If you take your time and approach guitar repairs this way you will make a lot less mistakes in the long run! After attaching the neck, I started on my Inlays. All it had when I started was the boring and traditional plastic dots. I drilled those out of the neck and replace them with real abalone dots. Next I used diamond shaped abalone pieces that I bought from RESCUE PEARL Company and cut them into triangles. Then I routed the fingerboard and added them to make the pattern you see now. You can do a search and find Rescue Pearl on the net, nice folks and very helpful and reasonable prices too. I then started to design the pickguard. I wanted it to follow the lines of the F-hole rather than hide the F-hole as they do on so many hollow body guitars. I used old file folders and cut the patterns from them with scissors after drawing them free hand and then copied them in pearloid. The arm rests and the control plate were done the same way. I used an old Seymor Rail pickup I had laying around and kept the electronics simple since there is a limited amount of space on the body anyway. I also made sure to position all the electronics where they can be worked on easily from the F-holes in the future.

Finally I strung her up and added the ALLPARTS Rosewood bridge. Incredibly, the intonation on this guitar is perfect, no need for tune-o-matic bridge saddles at all. It has a wonderful warm woody tone that is different than any of my other guitars and I just love it. Add to that the fun of making it myself and I have a guitar that will never leave my collection.

Post by: Bill Wagoner (Plymouth, IN)

Frankenstein Longhorn Guitar from MyRareGuitars.com

JD’s was kind of an upscale country sort of place, and countr was not really my bag in those days. But, because of knowing Richard, I could get in free, and they did occasionally have a few decent acts, such as the Everly Bros, or Johnny Rivers -so I had been there a few times. At about this point in time, however, JD’s had a “house band” known as Waylon Jennings and the Waylors. Waylon was a young ex-disc jockey, who had just come up to Phoenix from Texas. His only claim to fame up to that point was a brief stint with Buddy Holly’s band, before that fateful “day the music died.” I’d seen Waylon’s act a couple times, and thought he was actually pretty decent for a local guy. He did a lot of country- folk, or folk-rock kind of stuff then, including several Dylan songs, and a cool version of House of the Rising Sun. He was actually a very good guitarist, a fact which kind of got lost in his later stardom.

Waylon Jennings

Anyway, getting back to my story, my friend Richard one day called me up and said that he was looking for a guitar for Waylon – a Telecaster (he had to spell it out, as he had never heard the word before). Knowing that I occasionally wheeled & dealed with guitars, he thought maybe I could help him get a line on one -cheap, he added, as Waylon was poor.

I said, “that’s what he already has, Richard, that thing he’s got all gaudied up with carved leather and his name all over it”. He said, “yeah, all that leather & inlays & stuff, cost him a lot. He wants to save it for important shows, and get a backup for practice & stuff”.

It just so happens that I had an old Tele, at the time. I had taken it in on a trade for a Japanese Teisco. Some guy at school wanted it, because he thought it looked liked George Harrsion’s Country Gentleman. Anyway, the Tele was just sitting in the closet, as I was into Strats & Gibson SG’s, more proper rock ‘n roll guitars. Teles were for the country dudes, in my book. Besides this one was really OLD (that was not really thought of as a good thing in those days – we wanted new stuff!) I’d say it was at least 10 years old, and it was really plain looking, what with it’s clear finish and matching maple fretboard.

So, Richard picked me up that night, and off we headed to JD’s, guitar in tow. We sat through Waylon’s first set, then we went backstage to show him the Tele. I kept apologizing for it being so old, but Waylon didn’t seem to mind. He was noodling around on it and seemed to like it. He asked, “How much?” I said I would take a hundred bucks.

He said, “how ’bout seventy five?” I said OK (I think I had paid about $25.00 for the Teisco.) He said something about coming back next week for my money. I said , “fine, but I’m not leaving the guitar.” He ignored me for a while, as if we were finished, but he didn’t seem to want to put down the old Tele. Finally Richard piped in and said, “Come on Waylon, pay the dude.” Waylon said he was broke, but the guys in the band managed to come up with the $75.00, and I left, just thankful that I had actually gotten paid, and a bit ticked off that I hadn’t held out for the full hundred.

I never saw Waylon again. Richard told me later that he had done the leather and inlay thing on my guitar too, and that it had become his favorite. I didn’t care. By then I had sold most of my stuff to accumulate the exorbitant total of $398.00, plus tax, to buy a brand new Mosrite.

Like most 60’s guitar dudes, I watched the values of those old guitars climb over the next 30 years or so. “Old” eventually became “Vintage”, and so on. I probably gave away a few hundred thousand dollars worth of guitars, when all is said and done. But that one old Tele, somehow sticks in my mind.

As you well know, Waylon didn’t stay too much longer at JD’s. Just before his recent premature death from diabetes complications, there was an ad in Vintage guitar magazine, selling off a bunch of his old equipment, as they knew he wouldn’t be touring any more.

There were a couple old 50’s Teles, decked out with the leather, etc., going for somewhere between $25,000.00 and $30,000.00. But a guy I know in Nashville, said there was a really special one, that Waylon wouldn’t sell -his favorite. I meant to try and get in touch with Waylon before he died, to ask him where he got that one special 50’s Tele, but unfortunately I waited too long. Maybe I’m better off not to know, anyway.

Post by: Tim Robinette

Ol’ Waylon Jennings from MyRareGuitars.com

Sears Catalog: Silvertone Guitars from Sears

Sears began selling a selection of electric guitars and amps in the fifties, but it is the 1960s that the company sold most of its more popular models. Silvertone was the house name used by Sears for their instruments but these were actually made for Sears by several manufactures including Danelectro, Harmony and Kay. Of course, Sears had their low end and their high end instruments but for the most part they sold some really great guitars and amps at comparatively budget prices. A Fender Strat in 1964 cost $275 compared to the most expensive Silvertone guitar of that time at $199 including case. Putting things in perspective with inflation though, even a guitar costing $100 in the mid 60s would run you a bit over $600 today.

We were all very happy to have our first guitar but play in a band with a Silvertone wasn’t always considered “cool” and most of us got rid of our Sears gear in favor of something else has soon has we had enough money. And, most of us now really regret doing so. In the last several years Silvertones have enjoyed a boom in popularity among both collectors and performers. There are whole web communities devoted to Silvertone instruments. And, as it goes, availability for these instruments is declining while prices for them are escalating.

Sears Silvertone Guitars 1963 Catalog

Opening the pages that feature guitars and amps from a Sears 1963 Fall & Winter catalog reveal a virtual vintage wonderland. The top of the page shows the two infamous Danelectro made guitars with “Amp-In-Case” models 1448 (single pickup) and 1449 (double pickup). These Mosrite shaped guitars had the chambered bodies, lipstick pickups, stacked tone & volume controls and were constructed of masonite. The tube powered amps built into the case were 3 and 5 watts with 5 inch and 8 inch speakers respectively. The larger amp even had tremolo and both shipped with a “How To Play” 45 rpm record. These sold for $67.95 and $99.95 in 1963. Today, a single pickup model in rough but working condition can run around $300. The double pickup model if near mint can cost well over a grand.

Several other guitars are below the Danelectro models including the popular Harmony made “Jupiter” model #1423 at $79.95 and the two Harmony “Rocket” like semi hollowbody models. The double pickup model # 1446 with black finish sold for $149.95 and the Silvertone flagship model # 1454 in red sunburst sold for $189.95 including case and featured 3 DeArmond pickups with separate on/off toggles for each. Both of these models were also equipped with a genuine Bigsby vibrato. One of the 1454 models in good condition recently sold on EBAY for over $800, still a good buy!

In addition to the Danelectro U1 bass guitar model #1444 at $79.95 with case, the page opposite the guitars features the wonderful tube powered Danelectro amps. These run from the little 3 watt “Meteor” amp #1430 at $22.95 to the monster 120 watt half stack with 6 -10 inch Jensen speakers, tremolo and an unusable reverb selling for $239.95. This model #1485 is the one made popular by Jack White of the White Stripes. Also on this page is the 15 watt combo with a 12 inch speaker # 1482 at $68.95 and the bass amp #1483 with 23 watts and a 15 inch Jensen. And then there is the most popular model, the piggy-back 1484 at $149.95 with 60 watts, two channels and two 12 inch Jensens. One of these in good condition can be had today for between $450 and $700.

We all know that regardless of how much you spend on a new guitar, it is not going to sound quite like a 40 year old instrument. If you want a good vintage guitar and don’t want to take out a second mortgage to get one, Silvertones are a good choice. Collectors looking for s Silvertone in near mint condition should be ready to get deep into their pockets. However, if you are actually looking for a guitar to play and/or record with and you are not to concerned with cosmetic issues, about $200 will land you any number of nice Silvertone models. Just keep an eye on the late night auctions and frequently check out the pawn shops and garage sales. If you are a serious musician you should plan on possible replacing the tuning gears and maybe the bridge as these usually were sub-standard on even the most expensive models. If you going to gig with your vintage Silvertone, at least buy a descent case. The stock cases for Silvertone were made of chipboard. If you are one of us that owned a Silvertone and sold or gave it away just remember the words of Joni Mitchell, “Don’t it always seem to go that you don’t know what you got till its gone”.

Post by: Tom Bergey

In Praise of Sears Silvertone Guitars from MyRareGuitars.com

Led Zeppelin helped to popularise the Les Paul in the 70’s, when many great copies were made

Two major issues defined the progress of electric guitars for most of the seventies. 1) Companies outside North America vastly improved the quality of their guitar manufacturing and 2) Companies inside North America – namely Fender and Gibson – took their eye off the ball and did exactly the opposite.

By this time, many guitar manufacturers from the Far East had 10+ years experience under their belts, and the improvement in quality began to shine through. Univox, Kawai, Silvertone and Domino were starting to deliver guitars that – from a price / quality point of view – were beginning to eat into the markets that Fender and Gibson dominated. Not only was the manufacturing quality improving, but the quality of the REPLICATION was reaching new highs. The lawyers at Gibson started to get restless, and young guitar players like myself were also getting restless… I could not wait to go out and buy a UNIVOX Les Paul for 1/5th the price of the real thing! Damn, it was so inexpensive that I could almost afford to smash it on stage! Cool! But as the saying goes, all good things must come to an end.

Towards the end of the 1970’s, Fender and Gibson were loosing market share. That is why we hear so much about the “Lawsuit ERA” guitars. Late in the seventies, Gibson Guitars won a legal battle for patent infringements, which over time, shut down all but a few “copy” guitar manufacturers worldwide. This allowed some elbowroom for Gibson and Fender to rethink and retool their operations to fortify their position in the market. To avoid the same problem happening again, Gibson bought Epiphone and started building some very nice Imported Copy Guitars! Fender opened facilities outside North America under different brand names like Squier.

GIBSON LES PAUL COPIES

Here is a typical selection of 1970’s Fender and Gibson copies. These were all imported from Japan under different brand names. Also a sweet ’74 Gibson Les Paul 55.

Vintage 1970’s Lotus Les Paul Electric Guitar

Vintage 1970’s Hondo II Les Paul Electric Guitar

Vintage 1970’s Kay SG Electric Guitar

Vintage 1970’s Gibson Les Paul 55 Electric Guitar

Vintage 1970’s Silvertone Telecaster Electric Guitar

INSPIRED BY MOSRITE

Here is a selection of Mosrite copies from the seventies, along with one original Mosrite. The GM Custom is actually all original Mosrite parts built by a former employee, Gene Moles, after the Bakersfield Mosrite factory closed. The Univox guitars are popular today because Kurt Cobain of Nirvana used one. I also have some additional Mosrite copies farther down this page, some listed under the 1960’s guitars and the best one on the 1980’s. 

Vintage 1970’s Silvertone Mosrite Electric Guitar

Vintage 1970’s Univox Hi-Flyer Electric Guitar

Vintage 1970’s Univox Hi-Flyer Electric Guitar

Vintage 1970’s Gene Moles Custom Mosrite Electric Guitar

Vintage 1970’s Mosrite 350 Stereo Electric Guitar

If you like those guitars but can’t find a vintage one, Eastwood Guitars is currently reissuing several of these designs: check these Eastwood Mosrite reissues.

The Ventures were very popular in Japan and that is why so many Mosrite copies were made during the 1960’s and the 1970’s. Few of them, however, compare to the real thing as shown on the 1980’s guitar page.

KAWAI GUITARS

KAWAI was one of the better quality manufacturers to come out of Japan in the seventies. Here is a nice selection of their guitars. My favorite is second from right. This guitar is absolutely MINT. It belongs in a museum. Hmmmmm. I guess it is!

Vintage 1970’s Kawai ES-175 Electric Guitar

Vintage 1970’s Kawai Electric Guitar (with 4 pickups)

Vintage 1970’s Kawai Electric Guitar (with 4 pickups)

Vintage 1970’s Kawai Electric Guitar (with 3 pickups)

Vintage 1970’s Kawai Mosrite Electric Guitar

Eastwood – once again! – have reissued a legendary Kawai model, the Eastwood SD-40 Hound Dog, a fantastic re-creation of the Kawai used by bluesman Hound Dog Taylor.

MORE LES PAUL COPIES

Here are some additional examples of Les Paul reproductions from the 1970’s. On the left is a very nice Hondo Deluxe 748 Mark II. Flame top, set neck, humbuckers… all that you would expect from the real thing at 1/8 the price. Next to that a blonde Sekova, a sunburst Hyundai, a Tobacco Sunburst from Univox. Lastly is a fantastic Tokai Set Neck with the historic Sunburst Finish. This is an incredibly nice guitar. The 70’s Tokai’s go for nearly the same price as a real Gibson these days. Once you play one you’ll know why.

Vintage 1970’s Hondo Les Paul Les Paul Guitar (set neck)

Vintage 1970’s Sekova Les Paul Electric Guitar

Vintage 1970’s Hyundai Les Paul Electric Guitar

Vintage 1970’s Univox Les Paul Electric Guitar

Vintage 1970’s Tokai Les Paul Electric Guitar (set neck)

MORE JAPANESE WONDERS

Here is a grab-bag of assorted 1970’s guitars, mostly from Japan.

Vintage 1970’s Tele-Star Electric Guitar

Vintage 1970’s Silvertone Telecaster Electric Guitar

Vintage 1970’s Tempo Electric Guitar

Vintage 1970’s Tempo Electric Bass Guitar

Vintage 1970’s Yamaha Burns Copy Electric Guitar

MORE MOSRITES

A few years back I wrote up a piece about my pursuit for the perfect Mosrite copy. Scattered across the 1960’s through the 2002’s guitar pages you will find almost two dozen different attempts. Here are some of the 1970’s acquisitions. On the left, a nearly perfect 1972 Mosrite Ventures Model. Mint. Next to that are a pair of Univox Hi-Flyers and a Silvertone Slider. This guitar is pretty cool because a) it has a wicked flame fiish and b) it has an individual slider volume for each pickup. This allows for a wide variety of tone setups because you can dial in as much or as little of each pickup you want.

Cool.Somewhere along the way I decided to build my own Custom Mosrite Copy. I wanted to put together a guitar that had the Mosrite look but was built for repeated abuse as a stage guitar. It started with as Silvertone shell, just the body and neck. I put Gibson Tuners on it for stability. Next I selected some wild vintage EKO screamer pickups that were extracted from a deceased EKO 700 4V. Then I had a custom pickguard made at WD Products in Florida. New pots, switches, bridge, etc and a few days locked in a room. Voila! A one of a kind Mosriteko.

Vintage 1972 Mosrite Electric Guitar

Vintage 1970’s Univox Hi-Flyer Electric Guitar

Vintage 1970’s Hagstrom Electric Bass Guitar

Vintage 1970’s Silvertone Slider Electric Guitar

Vintage 1970’s Custom Mosriteko Electric Guitar

SOME FORGOTTEN GEMS

An early 1970’s Conrad Strat and a Lotus Les Paul. The Conrad and the Aria are extremely well build guitars while the Lotus is most certainly not. However, I have a Lotus on my 1980’s page that is fantastic! Next to that is an Inter-Mark frmo Japan. Well built guitar, MUCH better than most semi-hollows from this era. You can’t tell from the picture but this thing is HUGE! 18″ across the body where an LP is about 12″. next to that is an old Lyle SG.

Vintage 1970’s Conrad Electric Guitar

Vintage 1970’s Aria Burns Copy Electric Guitar

Vintage 1970’s Lotus Les Paul Electric Guitar

Vintage 1970’s Inter-Mark Electric Guitar

Vintage 1970’s Lyle SG Electric Guitar

Vintage 1970’s Fender Lead II Electric Guitar

Vintage 1970’s Univox Electric Bass Guitar

Vintage 1970’s Microfret Calibra II Electric Guitar

Vintage 1974 Guyatone Ricky Electric Guitar

Vintage 1970’s Norma Barney Kessel Electric Guitar

Vintage 1973 Hayman Made in England Electric Guitar

Vintage 1970’s JG Made in Italy Electric Guitar

Vintage 1970 Hohn Electric Guitar

Vintage 1975 D

Vintage 1970’s Epiphone Crestwood Electric Guitar

1970’s Vintage Guitars from MyRareGuitars.com

Updated June 2015: We have MOVED all current inventory to REVERB.COM.

CLICK HERE FOR CURRENT LISTINGS

RARE Teisco Beatle Six String JAPAN$499	1965 Mosrite Mark VUSA$2799	2004 Epiphone MD-100DOBRO – KOREA$599 with case	2011 Epiphone Riviera LTD P93$599

1991 Gibson SGUSA$999	2011 Epiphone Firebird Studio China$499	90’s Fender MustangJapan$799	90’s Fender Mustang BASSJapan$799

Washburn HB-35S Guitarw/OHSC, Korea$650	60’s AIRLINE Barney KesselUSA$1350	Mustang 500ItalySOLD	1959/60 Airline ResoglasUSA$2250
			SOLD

NEW 2010 Tradition S2000 Flame Pro Series$979	’78 Ibanez Musician GuitarJapanSOLD	’65 EKO Condor GuitarItaly$1499 SOLD	’64 Fender JAZZMASTER Burgundy Mistemail for price
		SOLD

RARE 1960’s Goya Rangemaster $1250 great condition, all original, OHSC included.

1976 Gibson Les Paul Standard, OHSC. $2250

NEW Normandy Guitars and Bass – YOUR CHOICE: $1799 OBO Your Choice: Alumicaster Tele $1,799.00 USDChrome Archtop Bass $1,799.00 USDPowdercoat Guitar $1,799.00 USDPowdercoar Vee Guitar $1,799.00 USD

60’s EKO 500 3VItaly$1250	’90s GODIN LGX GuitarMint, CanadaSOLD	60’s SilvertoneUSA$499	’67 EKO Cobra GuitarItaly$499

60’s Wandre TrilamItaly$2750	’99 EKO Camaro DLX GuitarSunburst – Italy$699	’59 National Pocket BASSUSA$1359	1950’s Silvertone Hornet GuitarUSA$599

2010 Harmony BobkatKorea$599	60’s Splendor EKO pickupsSOLD	1940’s Stella Acoustic Guitar Mexico – UPGRADES$599	70’s Raven LP StudioJapanSOLD

’62 EKOMASTER GuitarItaly$1699	70’s Ovation MAGNUM IIIUSA$999	1960’s TEISCO Beatle BassJapan$650	Epiphone SG400 FadedNEW – Korea$289
SOLD

Danelectro U2KOREA$249	’62 EKO 500 4V Guitarsilver sparkle, Italy$899	’66 Hagstrom IIISweden$950
SOLD

Epiphone Lucille GuitarNOS OHSC, Korea$799	’62 Welson CRUCIANELLIItaly$949	2002 Danelectro U3 GuitarKorea$499	90’s Mosrite RARE 3/4 scale body, Japan$1399
SOLD	SOLD	SOLD	SOLD

’62 AIRLINE Folkstar$749	RARE 2002 Blueburst Mosrite GuitarSet Neck, Japan	1962 Silvertone Guitar w/ Amp in CaseUSA$1250
SOLD	NOT FOR SALE

1960’s EKO BASS SunburstItaly $799

RARE 1960’s Yamaha SG3 SunburstJAPAN – LINK WRAY Classic! $1149	Hofner Verythin Standard GuitarUSA$1299

1968 Fender Musicmaster II Very good condition. Upgraded graphite saddles (originals included). Bridge pickup: Seymour Duncan. Original Case included. $1150

1959 Supro BermudaUSA $749	60’s Airline Amp-in-Case	1961 Airline Town & Country DLX	60’s Airline Acoustic
SOLD	NOT FOR SALE NOT FOR SALE NOT FOR SALE

1959 AIRLINE 2PDLX	1962 AIRLINE Town&Country	1961 AIRLINE Bobcat	1962 AIRLINE RS-I
NOT FOR SALE	NOT FOR SALE	NOT FOR SALE	NOT FOR SALE

Vintage Guitars for Sale from MyRareGuitars.com

Below: Here are some of the FANTASTIC Burns London guitars. In my opinion, the absolute BEST value in electric guitars today, bar none. The quality is top notch. They are getting awesome reviews by the press in Guitar Player Magazine and even better reviews by the players like you and me at places like Harmony central. This row are my top sellers, there are many more models a little further down the page.

2000's Burns Bison Electric Guitar

2000's Burns Marquee S Electric Guitar

2000's Burns Steer Electric Guitar

2000's Burns Marquee Electric Bass Guitar

2000's Burns Bison Electric Bass Guitar

Below: Here are the five main models of EKO guitars I import from Italy. All but the Camaro are available for under $300. The VL480S guitar is by FAR my #1 selling guitar. I’ve sold more than 50 of these in the past year and they get AWESOME reviews from the buyers. They are extremely well made guitars at wickedly good prices. I guess that is why everyone is so pleased with them! The Camaro is a little more expensive, but a great deal on a killer guitar. Looks like a JAZZMASTER, plays like a Stratocaster, sounds better than both! Why pay $1000+ for a USA Made Fender when you can get a Camaro for under $500?

2000's EKO VL-480S Electric Guitar (sunburst)

2000's EKO VL-480S Electric Guitar (black)

2000's EKO DV-10 Electric Guitar

2000's EKO Camaro Electric Guitar (red)

2000's EKO VT-380 Electric Guitar

Below: Here are the other EKO Camaro 2000 colors. The Camaro 2000 differs from the regular Camaro, as this has a strat style tremolo and the other has a Bigsby. At the end of the line is the incredible ST-YM, Yngwie Malmsteen Signature Model complete with scalloped fretboard! Last year I bought the entire collection for under $1,500, about the cost of ONE Fender Signature Series guitar! The collection includes: Eric Clapton, Jeff Beck, Yngwie Malmsteen, SRV and Jimmy Hendrix. WOW!

2000's EKO Camaro Electric Guitar (white)

2000's EKO Camaro Electric Guitar (blue)

2000's EKO Camaro Electric Guitar (black)

2000's EKO Camaro Electric Guitar (green)

2000's DiPinto Galaxie Los Straitjackets Custom Electric Guitar

Below: Here are a few of the DiPinto Guitars. I just LOVE these things. USA Designed guitars with FANTASTIC quality, most of the models are under $500. Everyone that buys one from me ALWAYS comments that the guitar is MUCH better than they expected. How often do you hear that? Here are some closeup pictures of the Los StraitJackets Custom. Most of these guitars are available in a bunch of different colors.

2000's DiPinto Belvedere Standard Electric Guitar

2000's DiPinto Belvedere Custom Electric Guitar

2000's DiPinto Belvedere Standard Electric Bass Guitar

2000's DiPinto Mach 4 Electric Guitar

2000's Taylor 612CE Acoustic Guitar

Below: Here are a couple of Taylor guitars, one for special events and one for everyday messing around. Then, a couple of re-issues of Vintage designs: The Yamaha SGV which was originally available in the late sixties. It was not too popular then, so why the re-issue I have no idea. I like it, but typically if I like it the mass market hates it! Next to those is one of my all-time favorite designs, the VOX Phantom. I have a cool picture of Ian Curtis of Joy Division playing one. Feels great when it’s strapped on and it is an awesome player. However the body shape does not lend itself to any guitar stand I’ve ever found. That’s why most of these and the Domino copies from the 1960’s are always bashed up.

2000's Baby Taylor Acoustic Guitar

2000's Yamaha SGV Electric Guitar (green)

2000's Yamaha SGV Electric Guitar (black)

2000's Vox Phantom IV Electric Guitar

2000's Burns Marquee Electric Guitar (red)

Below: Here is a suite of new Burns Guitars. I firmly believe that these are the BEST quality re-issue guitars available anywhere. Once you play one you will understand why. I’ve owned plenty of Strat’s in my time and these feel, play and sound WAY better. Try one!

2000's Burns Marquee Electric Guitar (white)

2000's Burns Marquee Electric Guitar (blue)

2000's Burns Bison Electric Guitar (black)

2000's Burns Marquee Electric Guitar (left-handed)

Below: Epiphone G400 set-neck SG copy. Teisco Spectrum Re-Issue and Teisco May Queen re-issue. I will have a bunch of different Teisco coming in a few months. Send me an EMAIL if you want more information.

2000's Epiphone G400 Electric Guitar

2000's Teisco Spectrum Electric Guitar (re-issue)

2000's Teisco May Queen Electric Guitar (re-issue)

2000's Pacifica Electric Guitar

2000's Burns Electric Guitar

2000's EKO VL-480 Electric Guitar (silverburst)

Below: Here are most of the other EKO models, most of which I no longer import. If you are interested in one, send me an EMAIL and I can special order with 4-6 week delivery.

2000's EKO VL-480 Electric Guitar (cherryburst)

2000's EKO Star FR Electric Guitar

2000's EKO Custom 2 Electric Guitar (red)

2000's EKO Custom 2 Electric Guitar (blue)

2000's EKO VSA402 Electric Guitar

2000's EKO Camaro Electric Guitar (red)

2000's EKO Camaro Electric Guitar (black)

2000's EKO Cobra Electric Guitar

2000's EKO Camaro Electric Guitar (blue)

Below: Here they are. The 2002 Mosrites from Japan. Check out the reviews on Harmony Central. Many people – including myself – feel that these are better than the originals. Sure, the originals are more valuable, but if you have one, why play it when you can get one of these and play it all day long!!?? Email for more detailed pictures, prices and availability. All guitars include Mosrite Hard-Shell Case, Mosrite instrument cable. Prices range from $899-$3,795

2002 Mosrite Electric Guitar (black, Japanese re-issue)

2002 Mosrite Electric Guitar (white, Japanese re-issue)

2002 Mosrite Johnny Ramone Electric Guitar (white, Japanese re-issue)

2002 Mosrite Electric Guitar (blueburst, Japanese re-issue)

2002 Mosrite Electric Guitar (ocean blue, Japanese re-issue)

2002 Mosrite Electric Guitar (red white & blue, Japanese re-issue)

2002 Mosrite Johnny Ramone Electric Guitar (gold, Japanese re-issue)

Below: On the left is a NEPTUNE by Jerry Jones, who makes near perfect copies of the old Danelectros. Top quality, USA made guitars. If you ever get a chance to play one you will agree. Next to that is a whole bunch of different models from Italia Guitars. These I am also a dealer for these, so if you are interested in any model, let me know. They are all available in a bewildering number of colors.

2000's Jerry Jones Neptune Electric Guitar

2000’s Guitars from MyRareGuitars.com

I have been collecting guitars for 25 years. Although I have had many different guitars over the years, my preference is for Vintage guitars, which makes eBay a good place to trade because of the wide audience. So consequently you are probably reading this because you saw one of my guitars for sale on eBay. Welcome!

So, what’s up with the phrase, Even Better Than the REAL Thing!???? Read on…..

In Search of Mosrite: The Mosrite Ventures Model circa. 1987

For the past few years I had been looking for a really nice Mosrite Ventures Model Vintage guitar. Prices ranged from $1,500 to $4,000 depending on the year and the condition. Last year an angel descended on eBay with 35 NOS Mosrite guitars that were built in 1987. These guitars were all brand new and were never sold. They were stored in a warehouse for 14 years. Unbelievable! They were auctioned off one by one, week after week, until they were all gone. I bought the 13th one that sold. I was not disappointed.

1987 Mosrite Ventures Model Electric Guitar NOS

The first day I stared at it, the second day I touched it and on the third day I played it. The fourth day I told the family. The fifth day I told the neighbors. The sixth day, everyone came to look at it. The seventh day I rested. What an incredibly beautiful guitar! In fact, I soon realized that it was TOO beautiful! How could I risk pulling it out of the case every day and playing it? It was like having a bad addiction! I needed a fix! It drove me crazy to know that it sat right over there in the corner, taunting me, yet at the same time I could not risk opening the case for fear of damaging such a wonderful instrument! I needed a solution. Then it hit me… Buy a REALLY nice reproduction Mosrite that I could play everyday! EBAY on: search: MOSRITE.

1970's Univox Mosrite Ventures Reproduction Guitar

I started with this UNIVOX pictured above. Nice looking copy but the neck was typical of any reproduction 1970’s guitar and anyone who has played a Mosrite knows, the neck is what it is all about. Next I tried a Teisco model (below).

Reproduction Teisco Mosrite Ventures Model Guitar

Much better quality than the Univox, much better neck, and a good deal for a $300-$400 vintage guitar, but I decided to keep looking.

1970's Silvertone Mosrite Ventures Model Guitar

This is an early seventies Silvertone. A two notches below in looks, one notch above in feel, but not quite there yet. I also found another Silvertone, different headstock, body a little smoother, similar neck with a white pickguard. I suspect this one was makde by Kawai in the early seventies. Curious how the body and headstock are different, but all the hardware is identical! Here it is…

1970's Silvertone Mosrite Ventures Model Guitar (Kawai)

So, after a significant amount of research, and a great deal of time justifying the outrageous price, I purchased the Japanese made reproduction Mosrite, the one with the “excellent” tailpiece. Here is a picture….

1970's Japanese Reproduction Mosrite Ventures Model Guitar

This guitar retails for $1695 and you can get them for around $1000. Pretty pricey for an reproduction Vintage guitar, I must say. Anyway, I’ll be damned if this Japanese Mosrite isn’t one of the nicest guitars I have ever owned! It looks GREAT, the neck feels GREAT and dare I say, it even sounds BETTER than the 1987 Mosrite! Brighter, crisper, it sounds just GREAT. All of this is fine with me because after all, it is NOT a real Mosrite. No sir, I have one of those over there in the corner. The REAL Mosrite is not for playing, so it doesn’t matter anymore what it feels like and what it sounds like, it only matters what it LOOKS like. And so it should be. Who in their right mind would start bashing away on an instrument that can never be replaced? So, when I looked at the situation in this light, it occured to me that the Japanese guitar is arguably… Even Better Than the REAL Thing!

…and so started my quest.

I don’t think I would ever part with the ’87 Mosrite, but I think I have found a way to live with my addiction, and that is to supplement my real Vintage Guitars…. with guitars that feel, look and sound really good, but at a price point that makes it a no-brainer. It’s almost like buying insurance for the ’87 Mosrite. Now I am not playing it as often as I normally would and consequently I’m maintaining the integrity of the Vintage instrument and allowing it to appreciate.

Since then, I’ve been on a quest to find the ultimate in reproduction Vintage guitars that are qualified to add to the list. In so doing, with my efforts and those of others, I hope that this page can serve as a tool for people that are looking for “everyday player” guitars to supplement their Vintage Collection and also for people who would never buy a Vintage Guitar but want The Ultimate Reproduction Vintage Guitars on the Planet.

Please send along your Even Better Than the REAL Thing! guitar stories, along with pictures if possible, and I will include them. Here are a few examples:

Coral Hornet 1960’s

Vintage 1960's Coral Hornet Electric Guitar

For me, love at first sight. A while back I found one in San Diego. That is a picture of it above, a beauty. Unfortunately they wanted $2,000 for it. They probably still have it today. I’ve played one and they are a lot better looking than playing, primarily because the tailpiece is lousy. The intonation cannot be adjusted because it is a vibrato tailpiece with a piece of wood for a bridge that slides around. Every time you change the strings, you wrestle with it to keep it in tune. That aside, I could not get it out of my mind, so I found one on EBAY that had been refinished and needed a little TLC. With a little work, about $200 in parts (Bigsby and Tune-o-matic bridge) and a few hours of guitar love, I ended up with a real nice looking (some say wierd!?)AND a really nice playing 60’s Coral Guitar. The Gibson Bridge combined with the Bigsby Vibrato make this a NICE player. Stays perfectly in tune for days. Compared to an original at $2000, this one cost about $350. Here is a picture of it:

Vintage 1960's Coral Hornet Electric Guitar (Refinished)

Comments from Buyer: “Whooo–it got here! I was jumping up and down, and I was so excited that I dragged it over to a friend’s house last night. Thanks SO much!!!” Ann from CA.

In Search of Mosrite: 1987 Mosrite Ventures Model Guitar from MyRareGuitars.com

The Beatles helped to turn electric guitars into a popular musical instrument, in the 1960’s

It is hard to imagine today, but in the early 1960’s having an electric guitar in your home was rare. In fact, it was likely that your parents were steering you in the direction of accordion lessons. Yikes! The Beatles – and of course others – stopped all that. Suddenly, electric guitars were #1 on every kids Christmas list. Companies that had been manufacturing Accordions for 20 years, retooled for electric guitars. EKO was at the forefront, and within 2 years they were shipping over 10,000 electric guitars to USA per year.

For most North American kids, including myself, their first guitar was an EKO or some Japanese import. Fender, Gibson, Gretsch, Rickenbacker… these were all too expensive for our parents to buy for us. Hence, the foreign guitar manufacturers gave us what we wanted. Tip of the iceberg!

Jimmy Page & Jack White: Guitar Player Magazine

Here I’ve highlights a few of my 60’s guitars, but it only scratches the surface. You’ll see the inspiration for launching Eastwood Guitars in these images below.

Below: A nifty 1959 Fender Musicmaker. I took it to the local luthier and asked him to refinish it, to remove the awful sticker. He said, “What?! That’s a Vintage Sticker!” It took me a while, but now I see his point of view. A couple of Fender Duo-Sonics, which were the inspiration for the Warren Ellis Tenor Series. The Airline Guitars were sold through Montgomery Ward.

Vintage 1959 Fender MusicMaker Electric Guitar

Vintage 1965 Fender Duo-Sonic Electric Guitar

Vintage 1960’s Airline Electric Guitar

Vintage 1960’s Airline Electric Bass Guitar

Below: Perhaps my favorite 1960’s guitars, the Domino’s. I have owned many Domino Californian’s over the years (the VOX Phantom copy). They are fun to fix up and fun to play. Domino made one of the better quality reproduction guitars in the late sixties. The Spartan pickguard was autographed by Edwyn Collins.

Vintage 1960’s Domino Californian Electric Guitar

Vintage 1960’s Domino Californian Electric Guitar

Vintage 1960’s Domino Baron Electric Guitar

Vintage 1960’s Domino Dawson Electric Guitar

Vintage 1960’s Domino Spartan Electric Guitar

Below: If your first electric guitar was in the 1960’s, there is a good chance it was a Teisco. Here are a few from the mid-sixties. The Teisco Del Ray was perhaps the most popular student guitar from the 1960’s. No wonder guitars became so popular in the sixties, would you rather be playing a Teisco Del Ray or an accordion?

Vintage 1960’s Teisco ET-200 Electric Guitar

Vintage 1960’s Teisco ET-??? Electric Guitar

Vintage 1960’s Teisco ET-??? Electric Guitar

Vintage 1960’s Teisco EP7T Electric Guitar

Vintage 1960’s Teisco EV3T Electric Guitar

Below: One last Teisco, a Mosrite Joe Maphis copy, which was also the inspiration for the Eastwood Sidejack Series. Then, a couple of Italian masterpieces: The Cobra is one of a dozen or so NOS guitars that I picked up when the Milwaukee connection flushed their last holdings. The Galanti, on the other hand, is quite a rare bird. I’ve seen a few in Europe, but not over here. It is an extremely well made piece. The Victoria. I must say that this is perhaps one of the coolest guitars I have. This is truly a work of art. Art Deco. What a looker. It was recently re-issued through the Eastwood Custom Shop. The Regent is from Canada, the name Regent was a Canadian label for GUYATONE.

Vintage 1960’s Teisco V2 Electric Guitar

Vintage 1960’s EKO Cobra 12 Electric Guitar

Vintage 1960’s Galanti Electric Guitar

Vintage 1960’s Victoria Electric Guitar

Vintage 1960’s Regent Electric Guitar

Below: A few more Guyatones, the second one has a set neck, may be from the late fifties. Check out the pickguard on the middle one. Awesome! Next to it is an inexpensive Prestige Mosrite copy. Another 2015 Eastwood Custom Shop project was the Guyatone LG-50.

Vintage 1960’s Guyatone Electric Guitar

Vintage 1960’s Guyatone Setneck Electric Guitar

Vintage 1960’s Tradition Zenon Electric Guitar

Vintage 1960’s Prestige Electric Guitar

Vintage 1960’s Teisco Electric Guitar (model unknown)

Below: Far left is a guitar I lust after, but have never owned. I found it in a shop in San Diego but they were asking around $2000 for it. I found the one next to it on EBAY – in a severe state of dsrepair – for $100. I installed a tune-o-matic bridge and a Bigsby. Awesome player! Next to that are a couple of Norma’s and another attempt at copying the Burns pickguard.

Vintage 1960’s Coral Electric Guitar

Vintage 1960’s Coral Electric Guitar (refurbished)

Vintage 1960’s Norma Electric Guitar

Vintage 1960’s Norma Electric Guitar

Vintage 1960’s Norma Burns Copy Electric Guitar

Below: One last entry level Norma, then a totally cool EKO Florentine. I picked this up from the LoDuca remnants. It is a semi-hollow that looks like a cross between an SG and a 335. Believe it or not, it plays like a dream!. Next to that is a Hi-Lo (also available from Ibanez). The funniest review I have ever read on Harmony central was about a Hi-Lo guitar. Crazy! A KAY SG and an unknown…

Vintage 1960’s Norma Electric Guitar

Vintage 1960’s EKO Florentine Electric Guitar

Vintage 1960’s Hi-Lo Burns Copy Electric Guitar

Vintage 1960’s or 1970’s Kay SG Electric Guitar

Vintage 1960’s Teisco Spectrum Electric Guitar

Below: Wickedly popular Univox Hi-Flyer. Eastwood makes an excellent Phase IV replica that is far better than the original. This photo is one of the earliest Hi-Flyer models. Next to that is a “Montclair” Burns copy, just like the Hi-Lo pictured earlier. A Welson Concord from Italy. Nice guitar and hard to find.

Vintage 1960’s Univox Custom Hi-Flyer Electric Guitar

Vintage 1960’s Montclair Burns Copy Electric Guitar

Vintage 1960’s Welson Concord Electric Guitar

Vintage 1960’s Teisco Spectrum 2 Electric Guitar

Vintage 1960’s Domino Californian Electric Guitar

Below: A Stafford semi-hollow body. A beautiful Hagstrom II and a Hagstrom Futurama. Hagstrom made some wonderful guitars with exceptionally fast necks. The greenburst is a Kawai and then a single pickup version of the Domino Baron.

Vintage 1960’s Stafford Electric Guitar

Vintage 1960’s Hagstrom II Electric Guitar

Vintage 1960’s Hagstrom Futura Electric Guitar

Vintage 1960’s Kawai Electric Guitar (Greenburst)

Vintage 1960’s Domino Baron Electric Guitar

Below: Another of my favorite designs, the EKO 700, in two models, 4V and 3V. Equally nifty is the 500 3V. According to my neighbor, one of the best playing guitars in the entire collection, the single pickup 1967 Red Cobra. Next to that is it’s brother the Cobra Bass.

Vintage 1960’s EKO 700-4V Electric Guitar

Vintage 1960’s EKO 700-3V Electric Guitar

Vintage 1960’s EKO 500-3V Electric Guitar

Vintage 1960’s EKO Cobra Electric Guitar

Vintage 1960’s EKO Cobra Electric Bass Guitar

Below: According to me, one of the best playing guitars in the collection, the Goya Rangemaster. Made in Italy. As is the beautiful Red Galanti and the Espana 335. The Espana is identical to the VOX Lynx. The GL Rangemaster is another outstanding Italian guitar. Lastly is a token Airline Bass with a white Gumby headstock.

Vintage 1960’s Goya Rangemaster Electric Guitar

Vintage 1960’s Galanti Electric Guitar (red)

Vintage 1960’s Espana 335 Electric Guitar

Vintage 1960’s Goya GL Rangemaster Electric Guitar

Vintage 1960’s Airline Electric Bass Guitar

Below: More unusual suspects. Another Kawai 4 p/u Bison-like beast. Then, the ever-popular but VERY hard to find 1967 Teisco May Queen. (You can find a nice May Queen re-issue on the 1990+ page and another recent Eastwood Custom Shop model here). A very rare Norma split p/u Barney Kessel design. The timeless Teisco ET460 Del Ray and a simple Sekova Bison.

Vintage 1960’s Kawai Electric Guitar (with 4 pickups)

Vintage 1960’s Teisco May Queen Electric Guitar

Vintage 1960’s Norma Barney Kessel Electric Guitar

Vintage 1960’s Teisco ET-460 Del Rey Electric Guitar

Vintage 1960’s Sekova Bison Electric Guitar

Below: As you can see, we got our walls painted the other day, hope you like it! Anyway, on the left is an AWESOME Kawai Bass. This baby looks, feels, plays like no other Bass from its time. REALLY well made, big and heavy (the picture scale looks small but this is bigger than a Fender Precision). Next to that is a nice Silvertone Mosrite with slider controls. You can see the inspiration for the Sidejack Series in many of these guitars. Interesting because it as an indiviual slider volume for each pickup, so you can dial in an unlimited variety of tones. A 1965 Hofner Galaxie. An early 1960’s Vivona which was made by EKO, and a wee Hi-Tone. Wee guitar, HUGE head. Great canoe paddle.

Vintage 1960’s Kawai Monster Electric Bass Guitar

Vintage 1960’s Silvertone Mosrite Slider Electric Guitar

Vintage 1960’s Hofner Galaxie Electric Guitar

Vintage 1960’s Vivona Electric Guitar

Vintage 1960’s Hi-Tone Electric Guitar

Below: Here is a nice ’62 Fender Musicmaster. Then two sweet GOYA Rangemasters and a wacky Galanti. Cool, Rare, but wacky! Next is one of my current favorites, a 6-string Espana Viola shaped guitar. Extremely well made guitar. This guitar was also made at the VOX factory, and shares all the same parts and finish ast the 335 style Espana pictured way up above.

Vintage 1962 Fender MusicMaster Electric Guitar

Vintage 1960’s Goya Rangemaster Electric Guitar

Vintage 1960’s Goya Rangemaster Electric Guitar

Vintage 1960’s Galanti Electric Guitar

Vintage 1960’s Espana Viola Electric Guitar

Below: A beautiful Ampeg AMUB-1 Fretless Bass. Nice piece. Eastwood has been making some excellent re-issue versions of this in fretless EUB-1 and fretted EEB-1 versions. Next, a MINT 60’s Airline Barney Kessel featuring the very cool “Kleenex Box” pickups, another current Custom Shop Reissue. Next is NOT a Univox Hi-Flyer, but a RAVEN. This is exactly the same as the Univox, but was imported to Canada under the brand Raven. Then, a 9.5 Silvertone Mosrite and a VERY odd and curious guitar labeled CONTESSA. It is from Italy, and looks, feels, smells, just like the JG Italians. Unbelievealby good player.

Vintage 1960’s Ampeg AMUB-1 Fretless Electric Bass Guitar

Vintage 1960’s Airline Barney Kessel Electric Guitar

Vintage 1960’s Raven Mosrite Electric Guitar

Vintage 1960’s Silvertone Mosrite Electric Guitar

Vintage 1960’s Contessa Electric Guitar

Below: On the left is a RARE Wandre Doris from the mid 1960’s. A true work of art. Next is a nice ’67 Fender Jaguar and the ’67 Domino Spartan, costing about 7000% less. Lastly, an EKO Florentine Bass with it’s partner 6-string.

Vintage 1960’s Wandre Doris Electric Guitar

Vintage 1967 Fender Jaguar Electric Guitar

Vintage 1967 Domino Spartan Electric Guitar

Vintage 1960’s EKO Florentine Electric Guitar & Bass Guitar

Vintage 1960’s Fender MusicMaster Electric Guitar

Vintage 1960’s Japanese Burns Copy Electric Guitar

Vintage 1960’s Teisco EP-7 Electric Guitar

Vintage 1960’s Univox U2 Electric Guitar

Vintage 1967 Domino Electric Bass Guitar

Vintage 1967 Mosrite Combo Electric Guitar

Vintage 1963 Supro Res-O-Glass Electric Guitar

Vintage 1967 Supro Stratford Electric Guitar

Vintage 1962 Airline Res-O-Glass Electric Guitar

Below: A mint early 1960’s Airline with original case. This guitar is extremely rare. It is owned by a friend of mine that brought it over last week to tease me! Ouch! Fortunately he agreed to let me share some pictures with you. Thanks David! Take a look, she’s a beauty! (stop drooling!)

Vintage 1960’s Airline Electric Guitar with original case

Though nothing really beats the mojo of owning a true, vintage instrument, at least Eastwood have, over the past decade, done a great job at bringing back some of those gems, as mentioned before. And so is the case with the Airline guitars – let’s be honest: if you can’t find a vintage, white Airline with three pickups, it’s hard not to feel tempted by a new guitar such as the Airline 59 3P:

The Airline 59 3P. A new vintage? Just give it time…

After all, this is the beauty of vintage guitars: they just need time! One day, your brand new Airline might be considered vintage, too…

1960’s Vintage Guitars from MyRareGuitars.com

Vintage 1987 NOS Mosrite Ventures Model Electric Guitar

Below: OK, so here we have some non-Mosrites for you. First up, Aria Set Neck double cutaway. This guitar has many charateristics of the 80’s guitars. Switchable humbuckers with their own little toggle. This was a common theme. Set Neck for sustain matched with a variety of tone controls though multiple pickups and wiring configurations. If you did not play a synthesisor or disco, then you played solo guitar. Set neck, tone controls. That fits the bill. Similar in the Lotus. Set neck with a variety of tone controls. The other issue in the eighties was the post-lawsuit guitars. “If we can’t copy Gibson and Fender, what the hell are we going to do?” Next to the Lotus are a couple of Washburn Eagles that were brought to my attention from a visitor to this page, John Trentes from Cleveland, Ohio. It seems that the Lotus is a copy (and a pretty damn good one at that!) of the late 1970’s Washburn Eagle (that is John’s Eagle next to the Lotus). I found a picture of another one in the ABBA Museum in Stockholm. The only difference is the Washburn Eagle has some nifty push/pull pots for switching to single coil mode where the Lotus added some mini-toggle switches. One of these days I’ll need to get some Mother of Pearl and fix my guitar up with the ABBA neck inserts…. Right. Thanks John!

Vintage 1980's Aria Electric Guitar (set neck)

Vintage 1980's Dixon Strat Variation Electric Guitar

Vintage 1980's Lotus Electric Guitar (set neck)

Vintage 1980's Washburn Eagle Electric Guitar

Vintage 1980's Washburn Eagle ABBA Electric Guitar

Vintage 1982 Burns Marvin Electric Guitar

1980’s Vintage Guitars from MyRareGuitars.com