The Different Strummer

I never really warmed up to headless guitars.  Oh, they were really cool looking and there’s no denying Andy Summers had real style playing a Steinberger for The Police.  But I guess I’m old fashioned.  I need a head to keep me oriented.  Still, present me with something made out of airplane material like this Modulus Graphite Flight 6 Monocoque, and I’m interested, even with no head.

Turns out this guitar is a study in contradictions.  I actually interviewed the man responsible for designing and producing this guitar—I’m pretty sure it was Modulus Graphite founder Geoff Gould, but it was so long ago, I forget.  Modulus Graphite was, as I’m sure you know, basically known for making hollow carbon fiber necks for basses and, occasionally, guitars.  Gould, who worked as an engineer in California’s aerospace industry, got the brainstorm that he could build a stronger, more uniform and more stable by using the tough and strong carbon graphite, which was employed in making lightweight but highly stress resistant components for aircraft.  This was around 1977-78.

Of course, Kaman/Ovation had already had that idea a decade earlier, but for guitar bodies (and tops), not for necks.  And, about the same time Gould was working out his neck ideas, Ned Steinberger was developing his headless, graphite basses and guitars in New York.

Gould’s idea was pretty good and well-received by bassists.  The company had a good long run, only closing down in 2013.  Modulus Graphite’s heart was primarily set on basses, but they did make a number of guitar lines, including the Genesis series and some interesting Blackknife models.  These guitars all had heads.  As near as I can tell, Modulus Graphite’s guitars were never as popular as their basses.  But then, bassists have historically been much more receptive to innovative technology than guitarists, who tend to be stuck in the wooden mud, as it were.

Probably partially inspired by Steinberger’s creations, Modulus Graphite decided to try its hand at a graphite headless guitar.  This effort resulted in 1983 in the experimental Flight 6 Monocoque guitars.  The Flight 6 name is obvious because the carbon graphite that makes up the entire guitar is aircraft material (“flight”) and it’s a 6-string guitar!  Duh.  Monocoque is a term used primarily in the aerospace industry basically meaning surface bearing structure.  In other words, the object’s “skin” provides the structural strength, like an egg.  There is no “frame” or internal structural support.

Basically this is a self-enclosed “tube” of molded carbon graphite.  I don’t really know how they made this thing, but the neck and body are all one and hollow.  There’s a brass plate at the end of the neck, to hold the strings and no doubt to provide access for wiring this puppy.  According to Gould, since this was a “high-tech” guitar, and so as to not take away from the novelty of the guitar design itself, Modulus Graphite equipped the Flight 6 Monocoque with basic guitar electronics.  The pickups are standard Seymour Duncans, a Custom at the bridge and a Jazz at the neck, with a threeway select and simple volume and tone controls.  The tuners are Gotohs.

If it was me I’d have tricked this out like a B.C. Rich, with as much tricky electronics and I could squeeze into this melted Steinberger.  How about a phase switch and coil taps?  And a preamp circuit?  I’m fine with the simple volume and tone, though.  I never could get into fiddling with micro-adjusting each individual pickup’s tone, but that’s just me.  Oh well.  Everything is, after all, a matter of taste.  But this doesn’t mean that any of this makes this guitar inadequate in any way.

This guitar really is a work of art, questions about electronics preferences aside.  It is really comfortable and, assuming you’re going to pump it through some effects, gets the job done.  Gould told me approximately how many of these were made, and it wasn’t many.  I forget the figure after all these years, but it was in the neighborhood of 20 or so.  Enough to qualify as pretty rare.

As I said, most guitar players would rather play a Les Paul or a Strat than a headless carbon graphite monocoque thingy.  Tastes for headless guitars and other oddities come and go.  One thing to consider, though. It’s been more than 30 years since the Modulus Graphite Flight 6 Monocoque guitar appeared.  It’s ultra-light.  Don’t know about you but 30 years on from my prime, I appreciate anything that’s lighter rather than heavier to schlepp around these days.  Prepare for take-off!

Seat-backs straight. Prepare for Take-off. from MyRareGuitars.com

I never really thought much about Japanese guitars back in the day.  By the time they started showing up, I fancied myself a “folksinger” and was plunking on Harmony and Guild acoustics.  I didn’t pick up an electric again until late in the decade and Japanese guitars still weren’t on the menu.  But I kind of shared the standard opinion.

The truth is, of course, that Japanese guitar designers probably could have made copies of Fender Jazzmasters—and, indeed, except for a smaller size and certain details, they did with some early guitars—but they weren’t really trying to.  The Japanese weren’t really thinking about “copies” yet, like they would a decade later.  But they did have their eyes on guitars being made in England by Jim Burns!  As is obvious the moment you ogle those big pointy horns and the nifty multi-part pickguard on this Montclair.

Later, when I became interested in these strange beasts, my opinion began to change quickly.  While these guitars looked a little goofy at times, I began to learn that they weren’t so poorly made, after all.   As Jack Westheimer use to tell his associates about their role, they were there to sell guitars, not set them up.  Make sure the neck angle’s right, set the saddle intonation, adjust the action, optimize pickup height, and these guitars often turn into mean playing machines.  And they don’t sound like a Strat.  That’s the whole point!

Anyhow, I’d seen other Montclairs and really didn’t have a clue about them.  Who made them?  And for whom?  That is, until I started to look into it recently.  I still don’t know who imported/sold Montclairs.   They’re actually fairly plentiful, relatively speaking, so it must have been someone kind of significant.  But now we know a bit more about who actually built this guitar.

This Montclair is basically identical to an Ibanez Model 3904.  Montclair was just one of the labels produced by Hoshino at its Tama factory beginning in 1962.  In addition to Ibanez, other brands made by Tama included Continental, Goldentone, Tulio, Jason, and others.

According to internet sources—notoriously unreliable—Hoshino/Tama began producing guitars inspired by Burns London—especially the Burns Bison—almost from the beginning.  For sure by 1963, they produced the Models 994, 1802, 1803, 3902, and 3903, the final digit signifying the number of pickup units.  These same sources suggest that these Burns-style guitars were produced at least into 1966.  The Tama factory was closed down in 1967, so that would be the outside limit in any case.  There’s really no way to tell when this guitar was made.  I’ve assigned 1964 to it because I’m pretty certain the 3904 was in production by then.

The Burns Bison was famous for introducing the “Wild Dog” effect. I actually bought a Burns just to experience that sound.  Which was a bit underwhelming.  Actually, it was just two pickups out of phase.  I guess “wild” was a little milder in the early 1960s than today!  Oh well.  The Tama-made Montclair didn’t feature the Wild Dog effect.  But it was relatively sophisticated.  Four sliders activated each pickup, though, as was often the case in the ‘60s, the differences were more subtle than distinctive.  The two other switches let each pair of pickups alternate between solo and rhythm modes, basically toning things down with a capacitor for chording behind your lead singer.  The rollers are tone controls, the knobs volumes.  The 2-piece maple neck is reinforced with a generous piece of mahogany, an idea borrowed from classical guitars.  Plus there’s an adequate truss rod.  The body’s a big chunk of premium mahogany.

In retrospect these Montclairs were pretty decent guitars, available amazingly early, given the old prejudice against Japanese guitars.  No, it’s not a Strat or a Jazzmaster.  But if you have a yen to light up a rave on Apache or Little Deuce Coup, you could do a heckuva lot worse than plugging in a well set-up Montclair Burns Bison copy.  And you’d sure look clean and cool, Fender guitars notwithstanding.

Vintage Surf n’ Turf from MyRareGuitars.com