Having a hard time deciding which kind of guitar to learn on? You may be concerned about the price or quality of the guitar or you may simply just be unusure of whether to begin with a simple binary choice of whether starting with an electric is a better option.

That’s all right – most beginners to guitar are completely lost when it comes to choosing between acoustic or electric to learn on. In general, the kind of guitar to choose should be based on the kind of music you want to play (and the artists you want to emulate). Metal, rock, punk and jazz music, for instance, are best played with an electric guitar.

Most guitar players usually start out on an acoustic then move on to an electric guitar primarily because of budget limitations–a decent acoustic guitar tends to cost less than a decent electric guitar, and there’s no additional spending needed for electronics such as amps. However, it doesn’t really have to be that way–there’s absolutely no harm in learning how to play the guitar with an electric!

Both acoustic and electric guitars have their own aspects that can make them better for one beginner but not for another, so really it’s a case-to-case basis. To help you decide which guitar to choose for learning on, here are some points you need to consider.

Learning to play with an acoustic guitar

Learning the basics on an acoustic guitar provides a more solid foundation and tends to develop strength in the muscles used for playing. Acoustic guitars can be a bit more difficult to play because they have thicker necks and strings and a higher string action, but they’re easier to understand and simpler overall–no knobs, cables, amplifiers and dials necessary to get you started playing. 

Beginners can have their acoustic guitar professionally set up to lower the strings closer to the fretboard and/or replace the default strings with good-quality light gauge strings for greater comfort and playability. A proper guitar setup, a tuner, a carry case or bag and probably a few picks are all you need.

You know what they say about learning how to drive: if you learn to drive a manual-shift car, you can easily move on to an automatic. The same principle can be applied to learning to play the guitar. If you sweat it out on an acoustic where you need to apply greater finger pressure for the strings to reach the fretboard, then playing an electric would be like pushing down on air.

So, buy an acoustic guitar if you don’t want to spend much on a guitar (and accessories)–perhaps just the minimum amount necessary–to give the instrument a try to see if it’s a right fit for you, and if you want to play acoustic-style music.

Learning to play with an electric guitar

The strings on an electric guitar are generally thinner or of a lighter gauge and have a lower string action. The necks are thinner too, which means they are easier on the fingers and are more playable.

In an electric guitar, most of the tone produced is shaped by effects pedals and amps, so you’re not limited to just one type of sound unlike with an acoustic–you have a wide range of playing techniques to experiment with. However, this also means that it can be more complicated to set up.

Electric guitar models come with headphone support so you can play without anyone else (like your roommate or neighbors) hearing.

So, buy an electric guitar of you really want to play metal, rock, funk or any other genre that sounds best with an electric. If an electric guitar is a greater motivator for you to play, then by all means go get one!

If you’re still not sure about which guitar to learn on, you won’t go wrong with getting an acoustic first as a beginner– you’ll probably get yourself an electric guitar somewhere down the line anyway, especially if you develop a liking for electrified sounds.

– by Nicky Patterson

Once you’ve finally made up your mind, be sure to head over to Know Your Instrument which has loads of great reviews and tips for people buying their first guitar.

Electric or Acoustic? A Beginner’s Guitar Guide from MyRareGuitars.com

Limited Edition Airline Twin Tone Double Cut – only 24 Made. (Reg Price $499)

Airline Guitars has produced a limited edition Twin Tone Double Cut. Order yours TODAY!

20% OFF this week only. Just $399 while supplies last plus FREE SHIPPING

Specifications:

• Colours: White
• Body: Basswood
• Neck: Maple, Bolt-on
• Fingerboard: Rosewood, Block Markers
• Scale Length: 24 3/4″
• Width at Nut: 1 5/8″
• Pickups: Two Hot-Rail Humbuckers
• Switching: 3-Way
• Controls: 2 Volume, 2 Tone
• Bridge: Fully adjustable Tune-O-Matic
• Hardware: Gotoh style Nickel/Chrome
• Strings: 10-46 D’Addario
• Case: extra – gigbag $39, hardshell case $99
• Unique Features: Limited Edition – only 24 available

Watch this product demonstration by Keith McFadden:

Limited Edition Twin Tone Double Cut – only 24 Made from MyRareGuitars.com

When I was out doing my Christmas shopping this year at the local toy store, I saw a woman pass by with a cart almost filled to the brim. She stopped in the aisle in front of me, grabbed a boxed up quarter sized guitar from the bin, and put it in her cart. She couldn’t have been stopped for more than 5 seconds – enough to see the price tag and then carry on. Now, that’s all well and good if this was simply a toy guitar, but this was a fully functional six string acoustic with a brand name.

Such is the way the world runs: convenience over quality. We microwave manufactured food instead of cook fresh food, we watch over compressed movie streams online instead of buy a video, and we buy guitars from the toy store instead of a music shop. All of these have something in common: they’re cheaper and easier than the alternative. The downside? Well, low quality movie streams hardly give you the experience of a blu-ray, and too much manufactured food will eventually kill you. Many would argue, however, that they don’t know if their son or daughter will “be into” playing guitar and therefore justify spending a “safe” amount. Here’s the problem with this:  going with that “safe” purchase may turn out to be the sole reason that someone gives up playing the guitar.

A guitar set up is a service done to a guitar to ensure it is playing the way it should, including everything from setting the action (distance from the strings to the frets) to the intonation. (Overall tuning of the guitar across the entire neck). Yes, the manufacturer should have done this before shipping too, but a set up isn’t permanent. Changes in weather and humidity, as well as string tension affect the guitar’s set up, and who knows how long that guitar has been sitting in that box since it was last looked at.

String action that is too high will simply make the guitar harder to play. Action that is too low can cause an annoying sound called fret buzz when you play, or even make it so notes don’t sound at all. Intonation that isn’t correct will make it so that even when your strings are tuned, somewhere on the neck they’ll be out of tune. Fret ends can be sharp due to differences in humidity, causing the wood in the neck to literally shrink.

What does this mean for the new player?
Well, they won’t be able to say “man, this action is too high”. They’ll simply think that playing the guitar is too hard. Or if they get fret buzz, they’ll think they are playing it wrong. Ultimately this will lead to discouragement, and they’ll associate playing with a negative experience.
When you buy a guitar from a music store, the guitar will (or should) have been inspected and setup by someone at that facility, and if there are any issues with the instrument soon after purchase as far as set up goes, they’ll adjust it for free. The toy store doesn’t have anyone who can do this for you. If you need to get this service done, it’s going to cost you another $40+. Not to mention the fact that often times these guitars can only be set up “so far.” Many don’t have adjustable truss rods in the neck, meaning that once the neck starts to bow, you can’t really save it unless you want to pay far more than the instrument is worth. The solution to all of this is to invest in a good guitar.

Getting a “good” guitar doesn’t mean it has to be expensive. You can find great entry level guitars at music shops for low costs that are guaranteed to be set up, ready to play, and will last a long time. Sure, you may end up spending a little more than you would at the toy store, but you’ll be avoiding the potential hassle of extra costs. More importantly, you’ll be giving your aspiring guitarist a tool that won’t be inherently discouraging and annoying to play, which will give them their best shot at learning a musical instrument.

What Makes an Entry-level Guitar “Good”? from MyRareGuitars.com

Vintage 1976 Burns Flyte Electric Guitar

Now, the Burns Flyte is definitely a step up from the Tux-master, but not such a very big one. James Ormston Burns (1925-1998) began designing guitars in around 1958 when he made a short scale Supersound guitar for the musician Ike Isaacs. In 1959 Burns teamed up with Henry Weill to form the Burns-Weill company, producing the rather ungainly forebears of last month’s featured Tux-master. Burns and Weills apparently weren’t a match made in heaven and they had parted ways before the year was out. In 1960 Burns struck out on his own, founding Burns London Ltd. And putting out what’s now a legendary line of soldibody electric guitars.

Probably the most famous feature on Burns guitars of the 1960s was the setting called “Wild Dog” on the Bison and some other models. I can remember not being able to wait to plug in mine when I got it. Wild Dog!! A snarl? Growl? Sharp bark? Imagine my disappointment when I learned that Wild Dog was simply a somewhat weak phase-reversal effect like you get in-between pickups on a Strat! Now there was the marketing department run amok!

Burns guitars quickly won the hearts of British guitar players…there were, indeed, few other quality options. Plus, they arrived at just about the time that teenagers were trading in their Skiffle washboards for their first electric guitars in order to play that new music from the Colonies.

Vintage 1976 Burns Flyte Electric Guitar

Meanwhile, in the former Colonies, guitars—especially electrics—had become hot commodities among the young. And there were lots of young folks, the Post-War Baby Boomers, hitting the right age to become a “market.” Savvy businessmen wanted in on the gold mine. Companies as diverse as Norlin (a brewing conglomerate) and CBS (TV, movies, and records) started buying guitar companies (Gibson and Fender, respectively).

Into the corporate feeding frenzy jumped the Baldwin Piano and Organ Company. At least it was in the musical instrument business to begin with! Initially Baldwin was a bidder for Fender, but lost out to CBS. On the rebound, Baldwin set its eyes on Burns of London and in 1965 began importing Baldwin-badged versions of Jim Burns’ guitars.

However, Baldwin’s affair with Burns was relatively short-lived. In 1966 Baldwin struck a deal to purchase Gretsch and they proved to be much better sellers in the U.S. marketplace. Baldwin held on to the Burns property until closing it down in 1970.

Vintage 1976 Burns Flyte Electric Guitar

Burns wasn’t through with guitars yet. From 1969 to 1973 Burns manufactured Hayman guitars for the music distributor Dallas-Arbiter. As part of the agreement, Jim Burns couldn’t use the Burns of London name, but somehow Burns UK was acceptable and Burns resumed making guitar in Newcastle upon Tyne in 1974. Which brings us to the Flyte.

The Flyte—originally supposed to be the Concorde (or Conchorde)—coincided with the debut of supersonic aviation. Hence the swept-wing appearance. If you appreciated weird guitarflesh, this should tickle your fancy. I keep looking at it it just keeps getting weirder, and in an especially good way! Those pickups are called Mach One Humbusters. The Dynamic Tension bridge is pretty interesting…well, no, it’s not. It’s just weird. Indeed, much like Hayman guitars before it, Flytes were well made and pretty unremarkable except for the eccentric appearance.

Vintage 1976 Burns Flyte Electric Guitar

Apparently, Burns UK Flytes were played by so-called Glam Rockers like the band Slade and Mark Bolan (who made a career of eccentric guitars, among other things). Wikipedia lists other Flyte players, but I’ve never heard of any of them, not that that signifies anything. But, you have to stretch to find Flyte fans; they never did take off.

This guitar is #172. I have no idea how many Flytes were produced, but I suspect production quantities were not enormous. They were only made for about 2 years. In around 1977 Burns UK introduced the Mirage to replace the Flyte, with re-designed Mach Two pickups. Burns UK then bit the dust.

Jim Burns gave guitars one more go with the oddly named enterprise “Jim Burns Actualizers Ltd.” From 1979-83, but that met with even less success than Burns UK and the Flyte.

Still, you have to give Burns high marks for chutzpah and if your taste, like mine, runs to the unusual, you should be sure to catch a Flyte the next time one come your way!

Ugly Mugs No. 2: Under the Radar (Vintage 1976 Burns Flyte Electric Guitar) from MyRareGuitars.com

Vintage 1983 Jolana Diamant I Electric Guitar

The short story, of course, is that Russia became Communist after the Russian Revolution of 1917. Fast forward to 1941 and the German Nazi army invades Russia, get’s stalled at Leningrad (St. Petersburg), and the Russian counter-assault commences. The Allies invade Sicily and Normandy. In 1945 everyone meets up in Berlin and Hitler eats a bullet. The victors divide the spoils, with Russia getting control of the Eastern half of Germany (and Berlin), as well as pretty much everything to the east of that. The Soviet Union, the Eastern Bloc, and the Iron Curtain are created and more than 30 years of Communist rule ensues in those areas. Can you say “Cold War?”

Now, you could probably construct an argument about how the Cold War ultimately affected American popular music, but I won’t try. What I find more interesting is that a whole bunch of traditionally guitar-making regions in Europe ended up under Communist rule. Markneukirchen, probably the greatest center of German lutherie, ended up just a few miles over the border in East Germany. Similar areas in nearby Czechoslovakia also ended up in Communist hands, including that where the Jolana company that made the Diamant I seen here was located.

I don’t know about you but I didn’t grow up withCommunist Guitars on my mind. I just knew they wanted to drop an A-bomb on us. As with all of history, reality and geo-politics operate in totally separate realms! Thank goodness.

Vintage 1983 Jolana Diamant I Electric Guitar

Definitive information on Jolana guitars is hard to obtain, even though the brand was one of the most successful in the Eastern Bloc. If you search online, you will actually learn that Jolana guitars represent a pretty heroic story of a man, Josef Ruzicka (1928-2004), who bucked the official Communist dictum that electric guitars represented rock and roll and the decadent Capitalism that music stood for. In around 1953 Ruzicka built his first electric Hawaiian guitar (about as decadent a Capitalistic rock and roll tool as I can imagine, eh?). Thereafter followed some Strat-style guitars, eventually leading to a guitar factory which ended up in Horavice and guitars named for—if Google Translate can be properly translated!—Josef’s daughter Jolana.

Just when the Diamant Les Paul version appeared is a bit murky. If you asked me, I’d say around 1972, but other sources online claim that the Diamant appeared in 1979, with the upscale Diamant I, as seen here, debuting in 1983. This may be true. One curious phenomenon you’ll encounter in online accounts of Jolana and other Soviet-era guitars is a profound inferiority complex that disparages the quality of these instruments. Indeed, as someone with no youthful experience (and an awful lot of aged experience!) with these guitar, I find this surprising. I have not found Eastern European guitars to be particularly different from guitars produced in Western Europe, and the workmanship is generally speaking quite good. Would this hold its own head-to-head with a Gibson Les Paul? No. But neither would a Crucianelli or a Framus or a Hagstrom.

That said, I have noticed that I consistently date Eastern Bloc guitars as being much earlier than they actually were. I’ll eye-ball a guitar and say “1968” when it turns out to be 1979. What appears to be the situation is that Soviet-era guitars aren’t so much badly made as they are really out of date, anachronisms! As if the makers are all at least 10 years behind their Western counterparts! Anachronism shouldn’t be confused with shoddy quality. But then again, if you’re 15 and those were the only guitars you could get, you might see “old fashioned” as a “quality” issue.

Vintage 1983 Jolana Diamant I Electric Guitar

In any case, this is a well made little Les Paul copy. The body is maple with a thick, about ¾” thick carved European spruce top. There’s binding and the fit and finish aren’t bad. These humbuckers ain’t DiMarzios, but they’re serviceable. If online sources are to be believed, this particular guitar is quite rare based on the finish. The vast majority (“90%”) are supposed to have been black, with the rest finished in red, and only a very few done in sunburst, as seen here. It would be hard to judge here in the Western Hemisphere because as far as I know none were ever exported to these parts and you almost never see any—black, red, or sunburst—on vintage guitar dealer lists.

According to some online sources, the Jolana factory produced some guitars branded as Futurama and exported to the UK, where they were played by the likes of George Harrison, Jimmy Page, and Eric Clapton, presumably before they could afford more expensive guitars. Most sources have Jolana shutting down in 1989, about the time that the Iron Curtain came crashing down to end the Cold War, though one source claims to have a 1991 Jolana.

But just when you think the Cold War and Jolana guitars are gone for good, Vladimir Putin chomps off a bit of Ukraine and the NBE Corp. in the Czech Republic announced the return of Jolana guitars. I don’t know if the Cold War has returned (I hope not), and I haven’t seen any new Jolana guitars, but these old ones, Communist overtones and anachronisms included, are pretty interesting artifacts of a time when a guitar like this Diamant I was unknown to those of us raised under Capitalistic Decadance!

Communist Guitars (Vintage 1983 Jolana Diamant I Electric Guitar) from MyRareGuitars.com

Vintage 1961 Fenton-Weill Tux-Master Electric Guitar

This Tux-master actually comes with a pretty impressive pedigree. In 1959 the legendary guitar-designer (and notoriously bad businessman) Jim Burns hooked up with a German chap named Henry Weill to build a line of Burns-Weill electric solidbody guitars built in London. Weills was reportedly the electronics expert. This partnership lasted less than a year and it’s pretty hard to find examples. However, it’s pretty reasonable to speculate that Burns and Weill met more than once over many more than one pint! Then they retired to a band saw to reshape some firewood. These were truly Bizarro guitars, squarish angular monsters all off-balance!

According to online sources (meaning cross your fingers and hope), one of their models was called the Fenton, and that became the source of name of the new company re-formed by Weill in 1960, Fenton-Weill. Whether or not there was a person named Fenton remains one of guitardom’s unsolved mysteries.

Vintage 1961 Fenton-Weill Tux-Master Electric Guitar

Regarding this Fenton-Weill guitar I have in my notes that it was a re-design of the Burns-Weill RP2G guitar model but I have no idea how I arrived at such a conclusion. I don’t need to point out this guitar’s ungainly aspects! That anteater snout headstock, the small, asymmetrical body.

To be fair, this guitar actually has some innovative features. For one thing, the neck is glued in and has a heelless design to improve access up the neck. This is at least a decade in advance of the appearance of that design feature in the U.S. Also, the weird paint job, with the shaded black-burst, was at least 25 years ahead of its time, such aesthetics not appearing until the mid-1980s.

Vintage 1961 Fenton-Weill Tux-Master Electric Guitar

Actually, this guitar isn’t entirely “stock.” The bridge is a Gotoh replacement and the 3-way switch and jack are not original. However, this kind of fits with the gestalt of Fenton-Weills. That’s because Henry Weill was also an early pioneer in sourcing parts from Japan, as it turns out (if online sources are to be believed). Apparently Weill bought pre-assembled pickguards, with pickups and wiring, from Guyatone. Reportedly, Henry “tweaked” them, but the electronics are Japanese. Online rumors suggest that Weill didn’t do the wood-work either. Necks are supposed to have come from Germany. Thus, the presence of a Gotoh bridge doesn’t violate the spirit of the law.

Like most ugly-duckling guitars, this actually plays and sounds pretty well. The original Featherlite vibrato is great for your rendition of Apache or Walk, Don’t Run. I suspect you wouldn’t want to be seen strapping this on for a heavy metal gig, but it does have a cool surf vibe.

When Burns and Weill split in 1959, Weill continued to make guitars badged Weill-London. These seem to be even rarer than Burns-Weill guitars. I couldn’t find a single online image of one, but they no doubt continued the same aesthetic. The Fenton-Weill brand was in play at least by 1963. Weill had his own factory by this time and was also producing amplifiers, plus reportedly producing guitars for Hohner and Selmer.

Vintage 1961 Fenton-Weill Tux-Master Electric Guitar

If you Google-Image Fenton-Weill guitars you’ll get a range of designs that include the square Bizarros some vaguely Supro-ish LPs, a kind of Alamo Jazzmaster thing, and these skinny anteater whatever-they-ares. Some have bolt-on necks, many are set-necks like this. Guitars and basses. The black-bursty finish touches are fairly tyoical.

Fenton-Weills seem to have come in a plethora of model names, “-master” being favored, including Dualmaster and Twinmaster. Minor details differ between models. Consistency was no hobgoblin for Fenton-Weill!

Alas, Henry Weill doesn’t appear to have been much better at business than Jim Burns and in 1965 the Fenton-Weill company was history, imploding in bankruptcy.

I can’t be certain when this guitar was made, but the window is pretty tight: the widest being 1960-65, with 1962-65 being more likely.

Today, sourcing parts from foreign lands is common practice. It was novel when this guitar was made, as were many of the other features. The awkward design, however, is completely original and completely…ugly! So ugly you gotta love it! I know I do…

Ugly Mugs No. 1 (Vintage 1961 Fenton-Weill Tux-Master Electric Guitar) from MyRareGuitars.com

Now, these are all things that are easily noticed and rather simple to change. You can remove fluff, you can use a different pick, and you can practise a different playing style. Some things, however, go unnoticed and can be simply “accepted” for the way they are. Each string is wrapped around a machine head, where it then goes to lay on a nut. When you fret a note, you are pushing the string down so it makes contact with a piece of metal fret wire. At the body of the guitar is a saddle that cradles the string before reaching its ball end where it is held in place.

The size, shape, and quality of each of these components has an effect on how that string vibrates just as different picks and annoying fluff does. The thing is, when you pick up a high end guitar and play it, the “wow” factor you get from its sound is a combination of everything that that was put into its construction. As such, it can be hard to identify exactly what you want in a guitar without trading out components and listening for yourself. Trust me on this though: if you take a guitar with a plastic nut and play an open E chord, then remove the nut and put on a bone one, you’ll hear the difference right away. In this article I’ll talk about some of the examples I listed above, and things to consider when thinking about tone and your playing. Let’s start at the top…

1. The Machine Heads

The most important part about sounding good is playing in tune. While falling out of tune isn’t always a fault of the machine heads, they’re definitely a main contributor. Proper stringing methods combined with a good quality set of pegs is the best way to keep a guitar in tune, and taking it a step further would be to invest in a set of locking tuners.

Apart from tuning stability, you may actually notice a tonal difference from a tuning peg that is built better than another. A peg that is well made will have all of its inside components fit securely, and the mechanism will operate smoothly. Tight fitting, well-built parts make for a much smaller risk of rattling noise, and transference of vibrations from the string to the wood will be superior.

Plastic heads on the tuners definitely add a cool look and vintage vibe to the guitar, but over time these can be notorious for breaking and crumbling off of their posts. To me, that’s a little too much vintage vibe. If you’re set on going the non-metal route, be sure to go with a good quality reputable brand – but even then don’t expect them to last forever. 

2) The Nut

After the machine head, this is the first place the string rests on the guitar. A good nut is one that is made of a high quality material, and is cut to the right size. You don’t want your strings to be lying on the first fret, or too far away from it. Nut slots that are not filed properly can cause fret buzz, make it too hard to play, or even cause strings to slip / get caught resulting in tuning problems. The idea is to use a hard material that won’t decay or chip under string tension, while still being something reasonably easy to cut into shape.

A solid choice for good nut material would be bone. Many players agree that a bone nut yields the best sound compared to others, and luthiers are happy because it is relatively easier to work with than some of the other options. Synthetic materials exist that have been manufactured to mimic bone density like TusQ, and as such behave similarly. Other materials you can use are metal, graphite, wood, and ebony. Graphite is a good choice for instruments with tremolo systems, as it allows the string to move a little more freely. Using a pencil to draw into the nut slots of a non-graphite nut is a trick you can use to simulate that benefit.

Keep in mind that when you fret a note, you are effectively cutting off the string between your finger and the nut. Therefore, the effect that the nut material has on your overall tone is minimal compared to the effect it has on open notes. Some guitars come with a “zero fret” installed which was originally intended for quick instrument production. It’s far easier to file the nut down far enough for the strings to simply rest on the zero fret than it is to get the string height at the nut right without a zero fret.

Perhaps a side effect of this style is that the zero fret may equalize the tone from your open notes with that of your fretted notes. The string sits on “fret zero”, so even when not holding anything down, you get the sound of a string against a fret rather than just the nut. No matter the route you go for material, if you’re looking to replace a nut try and have someone custom make one for your guitar. It’s extremely important that this piece is done right!

3) The Frets

Technically you could use a variety of different materials for your guitar frets, but, unlike the nut, most guitars use either a “nickel-silver” or “nickel-steel” compound. Different levels of hardness can be achieved by adjusting the percentages in this compound. For a high quality fret, you want a very hard fret material. Harder frets are of course more difficult to work with for the luthier, but they will last longer by reducing the amount of fret wear caused by your strings.

What’s more important when it comes to your frets is their shape and size. This is one component that really boils down to your playing style. For quick and easy play, a tall and wide fret is very handy. The taller the fret, the less force you need to apply to make the string meet it. This can be a double edged sword if you aren’t used to tall frets. Yes, it will make playing fast runs easier, but it will also make playing notes sharp easier as you will likely be pushing too hard out of habit. You’ll need to adjust your playing a bit to really benefit from taller frets.

Wide “jumbo” frets are well-liked because they tend to be easier to bend strings across, help greatly with vibrato, and typically feel smoother when sliding up and down the neck. As a bonus, the fret won’t wear as fast as a thin fret as the string spans across a greater surface area.

For the true “vintage” feel, you’ll want a thinner fret. For some, it is easier to play a guitar with thinner frets due to extra space you’ll have between them. As the string makes contact with less surface area with these, intonation should be more accurate here as well (as long as the frets are seated properly!)

No matter the fret size you go with, proper maintenance of them is key. When your frets become worn (and they will), you will need to get them crowned and possibly levelled. Fret buzz, dead notes, string grinding and poor intonation are problems that can be avoided by proper care of your frets.

As always, experiment! Try things you may not have and see what works for you.

Happy playing!

Tips on Tone – Issue #16 from MyRareGuitars.com

Personally, I’m not a smoker. With that said, a situation like this is not at all unfamiliar to me nor should it be to any who are reading this. Remember the first time you had to buy a set of guitar strings?

Nowadays I always gravitate to the same package, but I can remember staring blankly at a giant wall full of different colours, brands, prices and sizes of strings wondering “what the heck?”
So, what string is best? Is there a superior brand? Are the fancy “coated” strings for 10 dollars more worth it?  What gauge should we be using? What’s a “hybrid” pack? Can we replace just one string if we only broke one?
These are all fair questions to ask. In this article I’ll answer each one, as well as address some tips for getting the best tone out of the strings you use.
First things first:

The Brand.

In my experience, the reason people buy a particular brand of string boils down to: recommendation. If you take 2 Stratocasters each strung with a different medium gauge 10 – 46 set, (base set, uncoated… more on that later) you likely wouldn’t be able to say “these are D’Addario, and the other one has Ernie Ball!” (Unless you cheat and look at the colorful ball ends of the D’Addario.)
It’s really not comparing apples to oranges. More like red apples to a different shade of red. The string sizes are the same, the material used is the same, and they are manufactured in the same way. In some cases, they may even be made in the same factory! Rather than being too concerned about brand, you should worry more about your string sizes, or the…

String Gauge

The thickness of your strings is measured in “‘thou”, or thousandths of an inch. To use the example I used above, a medium gauge 10 – 46 set of strings means that the thinnest string measures 0.010″ in diameter, while the thickest comes in at 0.046″. This set of strings as well as the “light” gauge 9 – 42 are the two most common sizes that brand new guitars are strung and set up with. It is for this reason that these are two sizes that many players stick with – the player is familiar with this size of string and not much work needs to be put into the guitar when it is restrung. A lighter size string such as these are easier to manipulate, so fast playing and techniques such as bending require less effort. However, many would argue that a thinner string tends to sound…well… thinner when plucked compared to a larger one. Moving from a 10 – 46 set of strings to an 11 – 48 will certainly result in a noticeable difference in feel, and you may also find that your overall tone changes. That said, there are many fantastic guitar players who are living proof that you can get a HUGE sound from a small string – Billy Gibbons, Eddie Van Halen, and Jimmy Page, to name a few.

There are packs available that combine thicker E, A, and D strings (to provide meatier sounding rhythm guitar) with thinner G, B and E strings to allow for easier play. If you plan on playing your guitar in a lower tuning, a thicker gauge string will make it so your strings remain tight enough to accommodate the lower pitch. It may take a few re-strings before you find the size that suits you, but that’s part of the fun!
PS – If you are converting to a different string gauge, always get your guitar a setup. The string tension will be different, and you will need to make changes to accommodate that.

The Materials

While acoustic guitars are typically strung with phosphor bronze, an electric guitar requires a metal that works better with the magnetic pickups. The majority of electric guitar strings are made of stainless steel, or are a steel core that is wound with nickel. While the steel strings tend to last longer, many players gravitate towards the nickel plated string for its softer touch and easier playability.
Some brands take the process even further, offering strings that are coated in a polymer type material. Elixir strings are a notable example. This addition can prolong the life of the string, and make it a lot smoother to the touch. These ones tend to cost more than their uncoated counterpart, but the argument is that you won’t need to replace them as soon. I personally prefer the uncoated steel or nickel, but again, this is something you’ll have to test out and see what you like!

General Tips

Strings sound different when worn-in as opposed to just being put on. It really is a preference thing, though. I prefer a string that is almost new, while many prefer one that has a week of play in it. Either way, this is why I always prefer to restring the whole guitar when you snap a string. One brand new string with 5 old ones will stick out like a sore thumb both in looks, and the way it sounds. The amount of time to go before changing your strings depends on the player, and how much you play. Some professional musicians get a fresh restring every gig! I tend to go about a month before doing a restring on a guitar I play often.
If a string sounds dead or muffled, check to see if it’s dirty. Dirt can collect in the grooves between windings and cause the string to not vibrate properly. Even a tiny piece of fluff on the string will affect its output and resonance.

Check for dents in your strings before putting them on. If not stored properly, a string can develop a bend in it. Sometimes it will disappear when under tension, sometimes it stays which will alter the vibration of the string. If the notch in the string is located above a fret, it can cause fret buzz.

All in all, don’t be intimidated by the sheer number of strings available. Find one that works for you, or have a different style for another guitar you own. Try things out, and see how they change your tone and playability!

Happy playing!

Tips on Tones – Issue 9 from MyRareGuitars.com

As we age and mature as guitarists, the instrument can become more and more second nature. The mystery and confusion that was once there slips away, and, although replaced with an understanding and love of the instrument, can make us fall into a cycle of repetition and feel as though we’ve “reached our peak”. It’s great to have a thorough understanding when writing or playing music, but sometimes the raw, energetic yet simplistic vibe can only be achieved through exploration of something you may not be totally comfortable with. The cool thing is: if you’ve already mastered the guitar, you’ve given yourself a strong foundation to be able to experiment with a few other stringed instruments that are similar, yet different enough that you will achieve that “fresh” feeling when you pick them up. In this article, I’ll list and explain a few of these you can try out, and hopefully come up with something you didn’t think you were capable of!

Before introducing another instrument, there’s something you can do with a regular six string to mix things up a bit. Experiment with different tunings.

The way the guitar scale is set up, it’s very easy to feel restricted or “stuck” without some serious time spent learning the neck and musical theory. While I do recommend both of these, using an open tuning is a good way to “jump in head first”, if you will. It forces you to forget everything you’ve learned about shapes, and play strictly based on what your ear is telling you. Not to mention, with strings being looser or tighter than they would be in standard tuning, the timbre of your guitar will be slightly different than what you’re used to. The most common places you’ll be able to hear examples of open tunings would be from lap steel and slide guitar players such as Jerry Byrd or Ry Cooder, or acoustic singer-songwriters and finger style players such as Joni Mitchell or Michael Hedges. Try some tunings out, and see what you can come up with!

The first guitar alternative I will list will be the twelve string guitar.

No, this will not change your chord shapes or scales (provided you keep it in standard tuning), but the way a twelve string sounds is enough to make you write and play differently. Just listen to “Hotel California”, “Turn Turn Turn”, or “More than a Feeling”! The iconic fullness and brightness of the guitar tone in these songs is not something that would exist without the use of the twelve string guitar.

Next up is the baritone guitar.

Again, although this time not tuned E to E, you can still fret the same way you would as on a standard 6 string and have the guitar sound good. That’s because a baritone guitar is still tuned with separations of perfect fourths, with one major third separation between the second and third strings just like a guitar. It’s just tuned lower, from B to B. To compensate for the lower tuning, the string gauge is set higher and the neck scale length is set longer. What does this do? It makes for a very chunky, warm, and potentially heavy sounding instrument. That, and it just feels good to fret those thick strings and strum an open E (well, technically open B on the baritone) chord!

Keeping with the theme of using the same layout as the 6 string guitar, up next is the 6 string bass. Some bass guitars add strings to the bass or treble end only, but this particular instrument I’m talking about is 6 strings tuned E to E, just an octave lower than the regular guitar. What this does is give you a familiar instrument with the low end “thump” of a bass guitar. It’s pretty cool to be able to lay down a smooth bass line, and still be able to strum a full chord.

Here’s a tidbit for trivia: the seafoam green Fender guitar that “can’t even be looked at” in the movie “Spinal Tap” is actually one of only two Fender Bass VI’s in this color that exist!

The last instrument I’ll talk about is one that sits further from familiarity than the other’s I’ve listed so far: the tenor guitar.

This is a 4 stringed instrument typically tuned in 5ths (C G D A). While still a stringed instrument, the fact that it has 4 strings that are tuned differently than a standard 6 string forces you to play differently. Some shapes that you would do on a guitar will cross over, but they won’t give you the same result. Barring the third and fourth or the first and second strings anywhere on the neck, for example, will give you a perfect fifth power chord. The size of the guitar, tension of strings when tuned to pitch, and location of the notes (open C string on a tenor will have a much different quality of sound than fretting the same C note on a guitar) all amount to a different experience when writing and playing before even considering the different tuning!

All of these instruments, whether they bring a sense of familiarity or confusion, are a great way to expand your horizons and give you a fresh feeling when you play. Don’t get caught in a rut, try something new!

Happy playing!

Tips on Tones – Issue 8 from MyRareGuitars.com

Vintage 1964 Silvertone 1457 Electric Guitar with Amp-in-Case

Inevitably there’s always an earlier “earliest,” but the earliest amp-in-case I know of was built by Daniel when he was working for Epiphone in around 1936. Nathan I. Daniel was a young electronics wizard who was discovered in the early 1930s by Epiphone’s head engineer Herb Sunshine building amplifiers in the basement of a New York department store (back when department stores really had departments and they did things). In 1935 the Epiphone Banjo Company changed its name to Epiphone and introduced a line of electric guitars and amplifiers called Electraphones, which was almost immediately changed to Electar. These included electric Spanish archtop guitars, Hawaiian lap steels, and little amplifiers designed and built by Nat Daniel. In 1936 Epiphone offered its Electar Model C Hawaiian guitar with an amp built into the case, designed by our friend Nat. For some reason, it didn’t go over very well, and the amp was quickly separated out into the Model C amplifier.

Vintage 1964 Silvertone 1457 Electric Guitar with Amp-in-Case

In 1938 National-Dobro revisited the idea, introducing the Supro 60 Electric Combination and the Portable Supro 70 Electric Combination. Both of these featured a little pearloid-covered Supro Electric Hawaiian Guitar tucked into an amp in case unit. I don’t think any of these earl amp-in-case designs did particularly well, but then there was something called the Great Depression going on, which had to have an effect on sales.

Obviously, Daniel thought the idea was good enough. Daniel worked for Epiphone until 1942. After the War Daniel opened his own plant, Danelectro, in Red Bank, NJ, mainly making guitars and amps for Sears and Montgomery Ward, badged Silvertone and Airline, respectively. They began selling Danelectro-branded guitars and amps in around 1954. People throw the term around all too often—and ignorantly—these days, but those ‘50s and ‘60s Danos were truly iconic.

Vintage 1964 Silvertone 1457 Electric Guitar with Amp-in-Case

And maybe the most iconic of Danelectros were the Silvertone Amp-in-Cases made for Sears beginning in 1962. The first were the smaller black-sparkle-finished Masonite one-pickup No. 1448s with an 18-fret fingerboard and a small 3-watt, 6” speaker tube amp built into the case. These were followed in 1963 by the full-size red-sparkle-finished Masonite two-pickup guitars with a 5-watt, 8” speaker tube amp, the No. 1449.

Vintage 1964 Silvertone 1457 Electric Guitar with Amp-in-Case

Let me get this off my chest. Something’s “iconic” when it represents something bigger than itself. “Iconic” does not mean, as modern advertising copywriters throw it around everywhere these days, “his best album,” or, more often, “very famous” or “extremely popular.” Icons are like symbols or metaphors with greater meaning attached, signaling a bigger message or concept. These amp-in-case guitars are icons because they stand for a whole generation and the changes in American culture that were transpiring in the early ‘60s. They were targeted at maturing Baby Boomers who were doing Beach Blanket Bingo with Annette from the Mickey Mouse Club (or, more likely, imagining that they were), switching from Folk to surf rock, starting bands in their suddenly suburban garages. A population on the go, on brand new Interstate superhighways. See the U.S.A. in your Chevrolet. Well, you get the point. I’ll be quiet.

As with everyone else in the ‘60s, Danelectro got bought out in 1966, here by entertainment giant MCA. Whether due to the ownership change or coincidence, the Dano line was shuffled. The two-pickup 1449 was renumbered to 1457 and a bunch of new models debuted. While the amp-in-case concept seemed to continue to 1969, it was no long the iconic versions we know and love.

Vintage 1964 Silvertone 1457 Electric Guitar with Amp-in-Case

I’ve never played a 1448, but I’ve played this 1457 and the amp is surprisingly good. The 8” speaker and tube output have really sweet tone and really decent volume, more than you’d expect. I can’t say the guitar knocks my socks off, but as primitive as it is, it plays fine and it’s pretty good for a few choruses of “Walk, Don’t Run” and “Apache.” These are pure guitar fun! And, yes, they are iconic…

Garage-Band Dream Machine (Vintage 1964 Silvertone 1457 Guitar with Amp-in-Case) 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

by Vince Schaljo

Here in the great white north, winters can be… well… pretty great and pretty white! Unfortunately they can also be pretty annoying for your everyday commute, just trying to get from point A to point B.
One thing that can really help keep you safe and make your drive easier is, of course, a decent set of snow tires. If you just spent a small fortune on a brand new car, the last thing you want is to slip on some ice and have the thing destroyed!

Snow tires are a small price to pay for a better drive and reduced risk of damage. What does this have to do with guitars? Nothing! But here comes my analogy anyway. If you’ve spent a small fortune on a nice guitar and a nice amp, wouldn’t it make just as much sense as snow tires to want to represent their sound to their full potential? To reduce risk of damage to components? To help the signal flow from point A to point B well?
The term “it’s just a cable” is one I hear far too often, and while it’s true that most cables can get the job done, (to a degree) not all cords are created equal. Taking good care of your cables is important, and using a quality cord where it is required can actually improve your tone. Not to mention using the wrong cords can potentially cause serious damage to some expensive equipment.

One example of an error (and I’ve been guilty of doing this myself in a pinch) would be: not using a proper speaker cable when connecting an amp head to its cabinet. Just because the connector end fits into the input doesn’t mean the cable is meant for that purpose. Speaker cables should be used with your amp to head connection at all times, while instrument cables should be used from the guitar to the amp at all times. Why? The biggest reason is the shielding (or lack thereof) in the cables. Your guitar puts out far less power than the amp does, and as such your cable will need a good amount of shielding to keep unwanted external noise out. An amp that pushes so much power out needs a cable that will allow for more electrical flow, and does not require as much (if any) shielding to keep out the unwanted noise. When you plug an instrument cable from the amp into your cabinet, it struggles to feed signal through. It’s used to the easier flow through a speaker cable. You run a huge risk of damage to your equipment by putting this kind of strain on the amp. Not to mention, the small speaker cable required to make this connection will generally not cost you as much (depending on quality) as a longer instrument cable anyway!

The flipside of this error is: using a speaker cable to plug your guitar into the amp. As I mentioned, a speaker cable typically has far less (if any) shielding. With the low output from your instrument, outside noises have a much easier time getting into the cable which can result in lots of feedback, squealing, and static. It’s a good idea to spend the extra money on a better quality instrument cable for this reason.  You get what you pay for!

Make sure you buy only what you need. If you’re only ever going to be playing venues where you will never be more than 5 feet away from your amp, don’t use a cable longer than 10 feet! Just like when you throw a baseball or shoot a water gun, signal loses strength as it travels. The longer the cable, the more distance that needs to be covered which can actually have an effect on your tone and output.

Lastly, do a good job of maintaining your cables. When you’re packing up, don’t crumple them up and throw them in your car! Not only can this ruin your cables, but it also just makes it that much more difficult to untangle everything when it’s time to set up again. Learn how to properly wrap your cables, and try to keep them from being tied to each other like spaghetti. A small piece of tape or velcro around each separate cable coil is a good way to do this.

Save your money! Take care of your cables, and take care of your equipment by using the right cables!

Happy playing!

Tips on Tone – Issue 6 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 1966 Imperial S-2T Electric Guitar

When I published my first book, Guitar Stories Vol. 1, we promoted it at a few vintage guitar shows and I would invariably get the wit from collectors and dealers, “Guitar stories, yeah, I got a few stories I can tell you.” Of course, they weren’t talking about histories, like I was, but amusing anecdotes about where they’d picked up this or that guitar. I guess most of us pack rats remember where we got things. Oh, maybe not so much the mail-order or internet scores, but back in the day when you looked the seller in the eye and tried to make him blink with a lower offer. It’s hard to forget the story about getting this Imperial guitar.

This Imperial came out of a little piece of Dickens in Philadelphia called Torresdale Music in the neighborhood with that name, in the “near northeast” as we call it, near the Burlington-Bristol Bridge (cheapest toll bridge over the Delaware River to New Jersey and back). Torresdale was a tiny, ancient corner shop just up the street from Chink’s Steaks, a legendary cheesesteak sandwich purveyor, the name of whose establishment has been the source of some local ethnic controversy. (Really good cheesesteaks consumed while sitting in 1940s-vintage wooden booths, highly recommended.)

Vintage 1966 Imperial S-2T Electric Guitar

Torresdale Music was run by Marvin Kopernik, who’d worked for the local music distributor 8th Street Music before becoming a guitar picker, as in flea market habitué, not as in Doc Watson. Anyhow, Marvin’s shop was STUFFED to the gills with old guitars and amps that he’d pick up dirt cheap at yard sales and local swap meets, an endless stream of new treasures lurking behind something else under a shelf to tempt me.

Marvin liked to get a dear price for his wares and he would rarely budge from his sticker price. However, there were chinks in Marvin’s armor. He’d write a little code on the reverse of the price tag. It didn’t take long to decipher the fact that this was what he paid for the guitar written backwards. If it was, say, “501” I’d know that Marvin had $105 into it.

Vintage 1966 Imperial S-2T Electric Guitar

One other chink in Marvin’s armor was that he couldn’t add too fast on his feet. The strategy was to scope out three guitars, decipher what he had into them, bundle them together and offer him a larger, but reasonable sum for the lot. Marvin’s circuits would fry and he’d hear $300 and that sounded like a lot of money and I’d walk out with a really great score!

But, no, this Imperial wasn’t part of one of those deals. You see, in addition to the overstuffed racks out front, Marvin had this teeny, tiny little back room where he’d pile up recent finds and stuff he had no room for in the showroom, like so much firewood. It was kind of painful to see, really. It was lurking under one of these stacks of guitars that I found this Imperial early in my collecting days and when I first knew Marvin. I had no idea what it was other than being Japanese, but it spoke to me.

Vintage 1966 Imperial S-2T Electric Guitar

Much later I found out that this was a product marketed by the Imperial Accordion Company of Chicago. As we’ve discussed before, there was an accordion boom among Baby Boomers in the mid-1950s. Like many booms before and since, it didn’t last and the numerous accordion manufacturers/importers/distributors that had sprung up to meet the demand found themselves in need of new markets. Fortunately, this coincided with the rise in guitar popularity. Also fortunately, the Italian accordion manufacturers, from whom most of the accordion guys sourced their products, were also near a guitar-making area, so they expanded into guitars, many of which were sold by the old accordion companies, including Imperial. By the early 1960s Imperial was selling solidbody electrics made by Crucianelli in Italy. By around 1965 Imperial had added Japanese-made guitars to its line, including this puppy.

Just what this model is is uncertain, but we can extrapolate. This shape is very similar to the older Crucianellis. A c. 1965 catalog has the Model S1 with one pickup and the Model S-3T, a three-pickup with “tremolo.” This is probably a Model S-2T. Very similar Greco guitars from Japan are seen, and most Grecos were built by Fujigen Gakki, the factory that produced most Ibanez guitars as well. The style of this guitar probably puts it right around 1965 or ’66.

Fortunately, this had a thick enough poly finish to survive Marvin’s woodpile. Unfortunately, Marvin’s health didn’t hold up—certainly not helped by too many cheesesteaks from Chink’s—and his shop finally had to close and become a piece of Philly history and legend. Every time I see this Imperial I smile and recall those glory days when I had Marvin’s number and got to revel in his shop’s treasures. How much did I pay? Now, that’s another story…

The King of Vintage – err – Used Guitars (Vintage 1966 Imperial S-2T Electric Guitar) from MyRareGuitars.com

Vintage 1965 Murphy Squire Electric Guitar

One of Dan’s favorite subjects was a truly weird kind of heart-shaped Murph hollowbody 12-string electric guitar, a model called the Satellite, which was truly funky and bizarre. He featured it in a Vintage Guitar Magazine article a few years back. These “heart” 12s are exceptionally rare, but, really, so is any Murph guitar, including this Squire 11-T.

Believe it or not, there actually is a sort of Murph fan club with a Murph history web site run by an Aussie fan named Dan McGonigal and located at www.murphguitars.com. This is the kind of madness and devotion that deserves recognition!

Vintage 1965 Murphy Squire Electric Guitar

As you’ll learn on this site, Murph guitars were part of the Los Angeles-area guitar scene of the wild and wooly 1960s. Or 1965, to be exact. Actually, Murph guitars were the brainchild of a former Midwesterner named Patrick Murphy and were actually originally intended to help promote his children who had formed a family song-and-dance band called the Murphys. Or to have his children promote the guitars, which is a slightly different spin on the tale. The Murphys apparently did a mix of live gigs and recording local television commercials.

In any case, in early 1965 Murphy leased a small factory space and commenced an ambitious manufacturing program. Initially Murphy planned to call his guitars York, but since there were band instruments made carrying that brand, he settled on an abbreviation of his family name, which made sense given the tie-in with his children’s band. Murphy’s scheme was ambitious because he probably had too many designs. These included the aforementioned Satellites, heart-shape semi-hollobodies, plus his most popular model, the Squire, seen here and offered in a variety of other configurations, such as bass and 12-string. There was also a hollowbody Gemini, which looked very similar to contemporary Standel gutars. Oh, did I mention the single cutaway Continental IV solidbody? Or the Westerner, which was a Squire by another name. Or the Tempo I and II guitar kits? Or the acoustic model? Or the Califone model, some 25 or so were made for the record manufacturer Rheem Califone.

Murphy’s plans were so ambitious he even targeted the mighty Sears, Roebuck & Co. and sold them another batch of 25 Murph/Silvertones. At its peak, the Murph factory employed as many as 22 workers. Murph guitars sourced its primary timbers locally but bought a lot of its hardware from the German collective C.A. Gotz Jr., which is still around as a violin maker.

Vintage 1965 Murphy Squire Electric Guitar

The exhaustive Murph lineup was unveiled at the 1966 Summer NAMM show and Murphy lined up a stable of dealers. As with many other small ‘60s guitar companies, these Murphs are decent little guitars with that nice, bouncy single-coil sound that’s perfect for riffing on a surf melody.

As mentioned, by far the most common Murphs were the Squires, which look suspiciously like a Fender Jaguar or Jazzmaster. There’s also more than a little of a Rickenbacker vibe. Indeed, after the ’66 NAMM appearance, according to the Murph site account, “someone” complained about patent infringement and threatened to sue. The “someone” isn’t identified, but you can probably draw your own conclusions as to who was also in the neighborhood and might object. The Murph site implies that pressure was exerted on the dealers, too, who began returning guitars. Sustaining a prolonged legal battle wasn’t in the cards for Murph guitars and the doors were closed in the Spring of 1967.

I have no idea how common Murph guitars are, but an educated guess is not very. As I write this there’s a Murph Squire on eBay, well road-worn, the seller is asking $3,500 for. Good luck with that. They were never pitched as anything but budget guitars and by the time they appeared, there would have been plenty of competition from both European and Japanese manufacturers, not to mention Harmony, Kay and Valco. Probably like so many inexpensive ‘60s guitars, no one thought to hold on to them. Estimates are that only around 1,200 Murphs were ever produced, and of those around 950 were Squires.

Anyhow, muchas gracias to Teisco for bringing Murphs to our attention and even more thanks to Dan the Murph-man for keeping them alive on his tribute site. Now we’ll just have to see how much that eBay Murph guitar fetches, if anything!

Surf’s – uh, Murph’s Up! (Vintage 1965 Murphy Squire Electric Guitar) from MyRareGuitars.com

Often times, a guitar’s poor action is fixed with an easy twist of a truss rod like I explained in my “neck relief” article. However, adjusting the truss rod should not be the primary source for fixing your string height! The guitar is built bearing in mind that the neck will be set properly. Putting too much relief in the neck in order to raise string height can lead to problems elsewhere, so it’s important to set the neck well and then adjust your string height at the bridge. To find a height that works for you, there’s no harm in experimentation! Try setting the bridge to where it’s uncomfortably low, and gradually raise it until you’re happy with the playability. Personally, I prefer to use a measurement tool to quickly dial in a height that I know I’m comfortable with. The “string action gauge” from Stewmac has everything you would need. The bottom of this tool has markings that go up in increments of ten thousandths of an inch beginning with .010. Placing this edge down behind the low E string, the distance from the fret to the bottom of the string should be around .075-.078, so, between the .07 and .08.

On the other side, again place the edge down behind the high E string. The distance I go for on this side is around .063-.065, or, you should just see the .06 marking peaking out underneath the string. The numbers I’m using here are for guitars around a 25″ scale length, assuming standard tuning, and neck relief set similarly to how I described in my neck relief article. From here, you can make minor adjustments to suit your needs! If at this point you are still experiencing fret buzz in certain areas, your neck or frets may need some extra work in order for the guitar to set up well. Sometimes the strings may be too hard to push down in the first fret, or may even play too sharp! It is not uncommon for the nut slots to be cut too shallow. With the right tools, this is an easy remedy. You’ll need a set of files, sized correctly for each string. You don’t want the slot to grab and choke the string, so you actually want to use a slightly larger gauge file than string gauge. As a general rule, try to go .003″ larger. So, for a .010 high E string, a .013″ file would be fine. Some stores offer double edged files that are marked 1-6 instead of a gauge – be sure you know which gauge they are before cutting!

In some cases the number may not necessarily pertain to the string slot you are trying to cut.
The other 2 tools I use are a straight-edge, and a set of feeler gauges to measure the height of your first fret. The idea is, of course, to not cut your slots too deep!

Remember to make sure your neck is set before making your nut adjustments. If you cut it with an over bowed neck, you run the risk of having open-note fret buzz once you straighten it out again.

Laying the straight edge down across the first two frets, try sliding different combinations of gauges underneath until you find a combo that just contacts the straightedge.

Let’s say .040 is the one that worked. Now, you want to add ~.005 to that number to make .045, find the two feeler gauges that total this new number (or close to it), and use them as a “shield” when cutting your nut.

In this case, I took size .022 and .024, stuck them together, and lay them flat on the fingerboard against the nut. Then, I cut each slot with the correct file until making contact with the feeler gauges. It’s a quick and easy way to get your proper nut height set without having to worry about going too low!

After you’ve got your neck set, your string height at both the bridge and nut set, and your intonation dialed in, you should be ready to play!

Happy playing!

Written by: Vince Schaljo

Vincent’s Guitar Workshop – Issue 3 from MyRareGuitars.com

Maybe if you could actually make out the song they’re listening to it might be enjoyable… But instead all you get is the “thud thud thud” from the bass! Why is that, anyway?
It’s all about vibrations, and transference of energy. The speaker receives a signal to start vibrating, which starts a ripple effect causing nearby air particles to also vibrate. If a solid object is in the way, this energy will react in a way dependent upon:
1) the material and size of the object, and
2) the frequency and amplitude of the sound.

The lower the frequency, the larger the sound wave produced. Bigger sound waves have an easier time resonating with larger objects, while higher pitched small waves will bounce off. If your neighbor rolled down their car window, the smaller waves would have an easy escape and you’d actually be able to hear the song.

Different instruments initiate these vibrations in different ways. For example, on a recorder, in order to play the lowest note possible you need to close all the holes before blowing into it. This creates the largest air cavity it’s capable of, therefore creating the largest sound wave and the lowest note.
Have you ever looked inside a piano? You’ll notice that the longest, thickest strings are the ones responsible for making the lowest notes.

A guitar operates in a similar way – the difference being that instead of hitting a thicker, longer string to produce lower notes, you physically change the length of your strings to do so.

The three main things that tell a string what note it’s going to play are its length, tension, and size. On a guitar, your strings are all the same length between the nut and the saddle. In fact, each string is under a similar amount of tension as well (somewhere between 15 and 20 pounds of tension per string). The reason each open string produces a different note therefore, given the same length and similar tension, has to do with the size of the string. A thicker string under the same amount of tension as a much thinner one will create a much lower note. For example, if you wanted to tune the Low E string to sound like the high B, you would end up tightening it to the point that it would just snap. On the other hand, If you tried to tune the High B so it sounded like the Low E, the string wouldn’t have enough tension to properly vibrate. The sizes of the strings on your guitar were carefully calculated by their manufacturer to achieve a proper balance.

Of course – your guitar has more than six notes! When you start playing and fretting notes, you are essentially decreasing the length of each string. Lets say you play an E in the seventh fret of the A string. The distance between fret seven and the nut no longer has anything to do with the note that string is producing – it is now dependent on the shorter distance between fret seven and the bridge. The string hasn’t changed it’s size, you’ve just shortened its length, thus raising its pitch.

So what if your guitar is out of tune? If a string is flat or sharp in the open position, you can increase or decrease its tension by simply turning the machine head to bring it to pitch. However, what if it already is in tune, but when you fret a note it’s sharp or flat? This is when you’ll need to intonate the guitar by slightly adjusting the strings’ length.

Before you intonate your guitar, you’ll want to make sure your neck relief (talked about in my previous article) and your string height (will talk about in my next article) are already set the way you want. If your action is too high, you have to push the string further towards the neck in order to sound a note. By doing this you’re essentially bending the string, potentially making the note too sharp and giving you a poor reading.

Once your action is set, you can test the intonation. The distance of the strings from the nut to the 12^th fret should be equal to that of the 12^th fret to the bridge. If the bridge is placed in the wrong spot on the guitar, automatically you know you’ve got a problem! If it’s in the right spot, then you should just need a few minor tweaks to get the guitar intonated. For this example I’ll be using an Airline 2P with tune-o-matic bridge.

First, play the open A string. Make sure it’s perfectly in tune. Then, play the same A string one octave higher in the twelfth fret. If the tuner reads that the note in the 12^th fret is flat, you will need to shorten the string between the 12^th fret and the bridge by moving the saddle closer to it. If it’s sharp, lengthen the string by moving the saddle away. Repeat this process until each string reads the same note when played open as when played in the 12^th fret. That’s it! Well… hopefully. Other factors can come into play like worn frets, twisted necks, or even applying too much pressure to the string. These are all things that you will, of course, want to fix to have your guitar play in tune all the way up and down the neck.

Happy playing!

Vincent’s Guitar Workshop – Issue 2 from MyRareGuitars.com

Vintage 1980’s Peavey T-25 Electric Guitar

I guess if you have a job working for Peavey in Mississippi you care about CNC-carved guitars because they help feed your family. In any case, I don’t think there are any production guitars made today that don’t come out of a CNC machine, so Peavey was a real pioneer who rarely gets the credit that’s deserved.

According to Hartley Peavey, the original idea for using CNC machines to help build guitars came from the manufacturing of gun stocks, as in rifles and shotguns. Peavey’s chief designer Chip Todd started working on the idea as early as around 1975. Along the way Chip and his crew worked with Hollywood steel guitarist and amp repairman Orville “Red” Rhoads to come up with that nifty circuitry where the guitar is wired so that the tone pot works as a coil tap when it’s turned down below 7 or 8. Peavey also developed and patented a new “bilaminated” neck, which basically fused two pieces of maple with the grain going in opposite directions to combat warping. The result was the T-60 (two humbuckers) and T-30 (three single-coils) guitars and T-40 bass, which were introduced in early 1978. The “T” prefix was shorthand for Todd, though it later got reinterpreted to stand for “Technology.” I’ve always thought the T-60 was a really handsome axe, although I’ve never warmed to frets hammered right into the neck. Obviously, not everyone feels the way I do.

Vintage 1980’s Peavey T-25 Electric Guitar

Originally the T-60 was made of natural-finished ash, but later sunburst finish and I think maple body options were added, as well as a rosewood fingerboard for curmudgeons like me. Peavey’s T-60, T-30, and T-40 were a little, how shall we say, 1970s in their look. They must have been moderately successful because Peavey decided to stick with guitars.

In 1982 Peavey had Chip Todd revamp its T (now “Technology”) line, just before Todd got hired away to Fender. To the casual eye the new T guitars—T-15, T-25, T-26, and T-27—looked a lot like the previous T-60, but there were subtle changes. Todd had lightened the guitars with less dense timbers, added new high-output Super Ferrite “blade-style” pickups, and a variety of pickup configurations. The cutaways were also deepened a bit to improve access up the neck. These new Ts also came with some new finishes, including the jet black seen here and a few metallic paints, including a turquoise and a brown. To my taste, these still look a little too retro ‘70s, but it wouldn’t be long before Peavey got into the weird shapes (like the Razer) that were becoming popular with the heavy metallists of the times.

Vintage 1980’s Peavey T-25 Electric Guitar

The T-15 was a shortscale guitar with a pair of single coils and a bridge/tailpiece assembly. The T-25 seen here has twin humbuckers and the cast bridge. The T-26 had three single-coil pickups in a Strat-style configuration. The T-27 had a humbucker and two single-coils, one of the early guitars to feature this. The T-30 went back to the three single-coils. The T-25 pictured is called the T-25 Special, which presumably refers to the fact that it has a phenolic fingerboard instead of the usual maple.

I don’t think these Peaveys are especially rare, due in part to the fact that CNC machines can pretty much work as long as you want. On the other hand, these later T Series were only promoted in 1982 and by ’83 Peavey was on to the Razer et al. By mid-decade Peavey had move on into much more exotic territory with guitars with fancy figured tops and all sorts of new developments.

Vintage 1980’s Peavey T-25 Electric Guitar

Still, all these T Series guitars are fun to play and are relics of that seminal era when new manufacturing technology was revolutionizing how modern guitars are made. Part of Hartley Peavey’s rationale was that by using machines, he could keep guitar manufacturing here in the U.S. It’s awfully ironic that the adoption of CNC technology would make it even easier to send guitar production to developing countries where you could make them even cheaper. So, I’m not exactly sure what the reward is for being “first!”

T for Two (Vintage 1980’s Peavey T-25 Electric Guitar) from MyRareGuitars.com

No matter the price of the guitar, the fact is that they all operate the same way and all need to be maintained the same way. Recently, I began an article series called “Vincent’s Tips on Tones” (check it out if you haven’t!). In the first issue, I mentioned that a proper guitar setup can have a large impact on your playing, and ultimately your overall tone. In this series, I’ll go further into detail about setting up your instrument and fixing issues that prevent you from playing to your full potential.

For starters, a little about myself:
My name is Vince and I’ve been working as a guitar technician at Eastwood Guitars for the past three years. It is my job to inspect, set up, repair, and prepare the instruments for shipment to their final destination. For the first few entries, I’ll go over the essentials of a basic guitar setup assuming there are no major problems with the instrument.

The first thing you want to do is look over the entire guitar for any blemishes, and make sure the electronics are functioning properly. There’s nothing worse than doing a full set-up only to notice a problem that’s going to require more work. If you’re working on a heavily used guitar, it’s still good practice to familiarize yourself with any damage on the guitar before you work on it. That way, you won’t notice it afterwards and think “uh-oh, did I do that?”

If the guitar looks clean and is working, you can begin the setup. The first thing you need to understand is that whatever adjustment you make will have an impact somewhere else on the instrument. For example, flattening out the neck will both lower your strings and alter your tuning and intonation. For this reason, it’s important to inspect each piece in order, and make the adjustment where necessary. Often times you will need to go back and readjust changes you’ve made so everything will balance! Today I’ll focus on:

 Neck Relief.
Generally speaking, you want your guitar neck to be as straight as possible. A neck that is too far “back bowed” can cause significant fret buzz problems and dead notes, while one that is too far “over bowed” can cause your action to be impossibly high and throw off intonation.
With a keen eye, you can visually check for this by holding the guitar by its body, and looking down the side of the neck from the nut to where the neck meets the body. Be sure not to push on the neck when doing this as you could influence the bow in the neck. What you’re looking for is a bow in the neck. A neck that dips down like a valley is referred to as being over bowed. One that dips upward like a hill is known as being back bowed.

If I’m working on my own guitar or I know what the owner likes, sighting the guitar in this way is enough to know what kind of adjustment I need to make to be happy with it. If it’s for an unknown customer, I prefer to use a measurement method that will turn out the same way each time.

Using a capo, clamp down the strings in the first fret. Then, push down on the low “E” string at the 17th fret. Now, look at the 8th fret. There should be just a sliver of space between the bottom of the low “E” and the top of the fret. If you have one, slide a .010 feeler gauge underneath the string. If it just sneaks under, you’re golden.

If there’s a large gap between the feeler gauge and the string, it means your neck is over bowed and you’ll need to tighten your truss rod. If the gauge pushes against the string too much or doesn’t fit underneath, your neck is back bowed and you’ll need to loosen the truss rod.

Once you’ve determined the state of the neck, you can try an adjustment if necessary. First you’ll need to find the truss rod access, which is typically located where the headstock meets the neck just above the nut. You will need the right sized Allen key or truss rod wrench to make the adjustment (your guitar should have come with this when you bought it). If the key does not fit perfectly snug, do NOT turn it! The last thing you want to do is strip your truss rod!

Once you’ve found a wrench that fits in tight, start by making a small turn counter-clockwise to loosen the rod. You never want to tighten first incase the rod is maxed out. Once you’ve learned that the rod will spin, you can start to make small adjustments whichever direction required to straighten the neck. Counter-clockwise will loosen the rod, while clockwise till tighten. Remember to sight the neck after each turn to see what’s happening with the neck.

When you think you’re happy with how straight the neck looks, you can check the relief again with the capo method, followed by a play test! Many times a simple neck adjustment is all a guitar will need to play smoothly. However, if during your play test there are still problems with the guitar, the issue lies somewhere else – but we’ll get to that in a later “Guitar Workshop”! Next time, I’ll talk about the two things I follow up every neck adjustment with; String height, and intonation!

Happy playing!

Vincent’s Guitar Workshop – Issue 1 from MyRareGuitars.com

Something I’ve always found curious was the discrepancy between “correct” and “incorrect” technique on the guitar. If you ever study classical guitar, you’ll get schooled on proper positioning of the left (and right, for that matter) hand, with the thumb in the middle of the back of the neck and the fingers coming down perpendicular to the strings. This helps maximize your reach and make it easier to fret the often complex harmonic line movements. It works. But then along comes Jimi who plays left-handed upside down and backwards with his darned thumb looped over the edge of the fingerboard and creates genius. Go figure.

Vintage 1973 Rickenbacker 481 Electric Guitar with Slanted Frets

In any case, periodically guitar designers turn their attention to the ergonomics of the guitar fingerboard and implement improvements to the traditional parallel fret layout. In modern times Oregon luthier Ralph Novak employs his patented “fanned fret” concept—with lower frets angled toward the bass side of the head, gradually migrating in a fan-like shape so that higher frets are angled toward the bass side of the body—on his Novax guitars.

Of course, somebody has always done something before, and in this case, conceptually if not actually, at least, it was Rickenbacker who came up with the slanted frets idea in 1973 with its Model 481. Or actually they reportedly did the slanted frets as a custom option as early as 1969. Rickenbacker had a tradition of trying to improve the ergonomics of guitar necks. Back in 1961 Rickenbacker designer Peter Sceusa filed a patent for a parabolic neck profile that was narrower at the top of the back to make it easier for ladies and people with smaller hands to fret the guitar (granted 1963). Who came up with the idea of slanting the frets I don’t know, but the idea was that if you’re resting the neck in the crook of your thumb, the fingers naturally curve forward. Thus, if you angle the frets slightly forward on the bass side, it’s more comfortable to fret, more natural.

Vintage 1973 Rickenbacker 481 Electric Guitar with Slanted Frets

The notion must have been at least somewhat popular because the concept got its own guitar model with the 481 introduced in 1973. Basically this is a solidbody with what’s called the “cresting wave” shape derived from Rickenbacker’s distinctive 4001 bass guitars. Rickenbacker even came up with a pair of high-output humbuckers with 12—count ‘em—adjustable pole pieces each for the 481 which only ever appeared on this guitar. One of the toggles is a threeway select and the other is a nifty phase reversal switch.

Vintage 1973 Rickenbacker 481 Electric Guitar with Slanted Frets

Hard information on the 481 is difficult to come by. The slant-fretted Model 481 was offered for 10 years from 1973-1983, but online references suggest that these are relatively scarce. There was a sort of companion Model 480 which had a similar shape, but different electronics and no slanted frets. Apparently, the Model 481 is favored by a guitarist named Serge Pizzorno of the contemporary band Kasabian, but I confess I don’t know their music (reflective of someone like me advancing on in age).

I love the idea of this guitar, even if for me the slanted frets don’t work all that well. They’re not a real obstacle to playing—they’re not that slanted—but if you favor classical technique, like I do, they’re no real advantage, and they don’t work all that well if you play a lot of barred chords. Unless maybe you’re Jimi, but who is?

Vintage 1973 Rickenbacker 481 Electric Guitar with Slanted Frets

Certainly the Model 481 is one of the more desirable of Rickenbacker’s 1970s output, probably because it’s so unlike the usual Rickenbacker. I love phase reversal switches and I love crushed pearloid shark’s teeth inlays and even the varnished fingerboard surface. That it’s so unusual is probably why I was so attracted to the Model 481 in the first place. Well, come on. You gotta love any guitar with slanted frets. Whether or not the guitar really fits in with your personality.

The Right Slant on a Rickenbacker (Vintage 1973 Rickenbacker 481 Electric Guitar) from MyRareGuitars.com

Here are some additional photos, scroll down to the bottom for videos:

Here is Duke Robillard using his Twin Tone:

…and here is RJ Ronquillo taking his for a test drive.

Airline Twin Tone Honeyburst – Only 12 Made from MyRareGuitars.com

Vintage 1965 Silvertone Teisco 1437 Electric Guitar

Ward’s was probably the first to sell guitars through its catalogs. Aaron Montgomery Ward started his company in 1872 as a solution to the problem of farmers obtaining the items they needed to make life more palatable out on the Great Plains. At the time, the farmer’s only source for household goods was the general store. And their only source of merchandise was the railroads, who charged an arm and a leg. To combat the high prices, the farmers joined to form buying clubs and put together lists. A representative would take it to the big city to buy the stuff and ship it back in one big container. Lot’s cheaper. Ward’s idea was to return to Chicago and put the lists together for them by assembling a catalog and sending it to the farmers direct.

Ward’s concept was so successful that Richard Sears and Alvah Roebuck decided to compete head-to-head with them, starting Sears, Roebuck & Co. in 1893. Sometime between Ward’s founding and Sears’ first catalog in 1894 Ward’s began selling guitars. There’s a guitar offered in Ward’s 1894 catalog with a woodcut and some copy. That very SAME woodcut and copy appears in the first Sears catalog!

Vintage 1965 Silvertone Teisco 1437 Electric Guitar

Sears sold increasing numbers of guitars as the years progressed, obtained from various sources, including Lyon & Healy, Oscar Schmidt, and the Harmony Company. In 1916 Sears purchased Harmony to supply the majority of its stringed instruments, which began appearing carrying the Supertone brand name in 1917. While it was a subsidiary of Sears, Harmony was still free to sell its own brand independently and to make guitars for other companies. Sears, for its part, mainly relied on Harmony for its guitars, except occasionally when a specialty model was sourced from someone else. In 1940 Sears sold Harmony to its president Jay Kraus, after which it operated pretty much as before, with Sears as its main customer, with the Sears brand name changed to Silvertone.

Sears had branched out into retail stores in 1925. By the 1960s, when this guitar was made, Sears was the largest retailer in the U.S. Throughout the 1960s the guitars featured in the Sears catalog were exclusively American-made, mostly by Harmony. However, obviously, as evidenced by the very existence of this guitar, they also sold guitars made in Japan, only just through their retail store outlets.

Vintage 1965 Silvertone Teisco 1437 Electric Guitar

This Silvertone is a Model 1437, otherwise known as a Teisco WG-4L. Except for the logo, it’s a completely stock Teisco. The Teisco company was founded in Japan in 1946 by Atswo Kaneko and Doryu Matsuda. Teiscos were distributed within Japan and probably regionally until the end of the 1950s, when exporting to the U.S. commensed. The first known American importer was the late Jack Westheimer whose Westheimer Sales Corp. began importing Kingston acoustic guitars from Japan in 1959, followed either later that year or early in 1960 by Teisco electric guitars. Jack added the “del Rey” most often seen on these guitars.

In around 1964, Sil Weindling, Barry Hornstein, and Sid Weiss formed Weiss Musical Instruments (W.M.I.) and began importing Teisco Weiss guitars. Westheimer’s focus had shifted toward his Kingston brand, so W.M.I. sort of took over the Teisco franchise. The WG line debuted in 1964 with a plain pickguard, changing over to the very groovy striped metal ‘guard in 1965. W.M.I. undoubtedly provided this guitar to Sears.

Vintage 1965 Silvertone Teisco 1437 Electric Guitar

There’s nothing not to like about this guitar! I mean, how could you resist the look of that pickguard?! And metallic blue paint! Plus four—count ‘em—four chunky single-coil pickups. And I love those typically Teisco rectangular adaptations of Gretsch’s thumbprint inlays. As with almost all better Japanese solidbodies from the 1960s, with just a little attention this can be set up to play quite nicely. The neck is a little hefty for a modern taste, but then so were many others back then. To be honest, you don’t really get that much tonal variety out of four pickups, but it’s still way, way cool. Perfect for a chorus or two of Walk, Don’t Run or Apache!

By the 1970s, Sears was finally featuring Japanese-made guitars in its catalog, but the Sears hegemony was waning, replaced by emerging “big box” retailers such as Kmart. The catalog soldiered on into the 1990s, but its value as a source for interesting guitar—or lingerie—information was long past.

Catalog of Dreams (Vintage 1965 Silvertone Teisco 1437 Electric Guitar) from MyRareGuitars.com

Vintage 1985 Aria Pro II Knight Warrior Electric Guitar Ad

The association between guitars and “getting the girl” is almost as old as mankind. Or at least it seems so. In studies of “primitive men” (who are, of course, not really the same as “early man,” despite their low-tech and seemingly non-evolved conditions), musicians frequently have a special place in the culture. It’s not uncommon for musicians to travel around among different villages, and there is plenty of testimony about these wags being a threat to the virtues of local village maidens. It would take some work, but I’m sure one could fairly easily assemble a list of musicians from the historical period who got into the drawers—and subsequent trouble—of the fairer sex. It would probably be a long list.

Indeed, I recently read Miguel Cervantes’ Don Quixote de la Mancha, one of the first novels written in 1605 and 1615. Guitars are mentioned four times, three in the context of serenading/wooing lovers. Two instances were in the context of guitarists coming to town and seducing the local beauty, before absconding with her virtue and fortune.

Vintage 1985 Aria Pro II Knight Warrior Electric Guitar

Of course, we all play guitars here and if I asked for a show of hands of those of you who first got into music motivated by trying to impress chicks, I imagine the majority of readers would be waving the flag right now! (I’ve never understood why there are so many fewer female guitarists, but the few I’ve known have had to work more at fending off guys than attracting them.)

As I said, there’s a whole sub-class of music advertising that features babes in various states of dress (or not) mugging to get you to look at this or that guitar or amp. Aria’s Knight Warrior ads went one further, fusing heroic fantasy with male libido. A sort of Ivanhoe in skivvies (with his guitar strapped on his back) holds the hot gal he’s either just rescued or is carrying off, to the boudoir, no doubt. (Or maybe those striped silk shorts were supposed to be knight’s pants, not BVDs…) Laughably unsubtle, but it never failed to get my attention, and implant a desire to find out what the fuss over the Knight Warrior was all about. In due time I found this one, suitably after it had gone out of fashion.

Vintage 1985 Aria Pro II Knight Warrior Electric Guitar

Aria Pro II introduced its Rev Sound (RS) Series of guitars in the late 1970s, initially neck-through competitors to Ibanez’s Musician series. Pretty nice guitars. In the early ‘80s, these became svelt bolt-neck, slightly dinky Strat-style guitars with cool switching options. Most Aria guitars for the rest of the decade were based on these Rev Sounds. Next came the Cats and the Knight Warriors, which got pretty good coverage in the guitar press.

Vintage 1985 Aria Pro II Knight Warrior Electric Guitar

I had low expectations when I found this guitar, but Aria’s guitars were consistently better than you’d expect back in the day. Many were built by the legendary Matsumoku factory. This guitar might have been built there, but by the mid-1980s the Japanese had gotten so good at making guitars, this could have been made by any number of superb manufacturers.

There’s nothing not to like about a dark-to-bright red sunburst, in my opinion! The tuners are Gotoh and the vibrato a genuine Kahler, all top-notch. The electronics configuration is a little less ambitious than previous Rev Sounds, but it still has enough horsepower for any Superstrat need. These blade pickups are strong and clear. The simple volume and tone control is really about all you need in a performance context. The tone pot is push-pull, tapping the humbucker to give you single-coil sounds. If you’re not hung up on brand envy, this axe would be perfectly satisfactory, even for a pro.

Now, I admit a redburst guitar doesn’t make me feel like Sir Lancelot and I never used this guitar to try to pick up any chicks (in any sense of the term), so I don’t know if it really would work. At my age, I don’t really see myself trying it out. But I do love the Kitschy way it was marketed with sex and, if you can get past the names and image, Knight Warriors are pretty darned good examples of mid-‘80s extravagance.

Getting the Guitar…But Not The Girl! (Vintage 1985 Aria Pro II Knight Warrior Electric Guitar) from MyRareGuitars.com

Airline '59 2P Electric Guitar (LEFT-HAND) from Eastwood Guitars

The ’59 2P upgrades include: dual VVSC pickups, striped pickgaurd, chrome tone switchplate, rubber body binding and includes the DLX Airline hardshell case. Retail price $1299.

Our Price: $999.00 US

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The Airline Folkstar is a tone cahmbered mahogany body with a resonator cone adn piezo pickup. It also has a mini humbucker on the neck poistion and a blend knob to blend between the two pickups.

Airline Folkstar Resophonic Guitar (Red, Left-Handed)

Airline Folkstar Resophonic Guitar (Black, Left-Handed)

Shipping is $49 North America, $149 to Europe.

Two New Left-Hand Models: Folkstar and ’59 2P (February 2012) from MyRareGuitars.com

Wandre Tri-Lam Electric Guitar from Eastwood Guitars (Blue)

Wandre Tri-Lam Electric Guitar from Eastwood Guitars (Red)

Order before the NAMM show (Jan 18th) and get a FREE Custom Hardshell Case.

BUY NOW: $799

Colours: Blue, Red
Body: Full Hollowbody, Maple Top, Back, Sides
Neck: Bound Maple, Set
Fingerboard: Rosewood, Block Markers
Scale Length: 24 3/4″ (628mm)
Width at Nut: 1 5/8″
Pickups: New York MINI Humbucker
Switching: none
Controls: Master Volume
Bridge: Floating Tune-O-Matic, Custom Chrome Tail
Hardware: Grover Style Nickel/Chrome
Strings: D’Addario #10
Case: Extra
Unique Features: Custom Chrome tailpiece, grilled F-holes
Suggested Retail: $1029.00US

* North America shipping $49. Outside north America $149.

More Pictures of the Wandre Tri-Lam:

Wandre Tri-Lam Electric Guitar (Blue)

Wandre Tri-Lam Electric Guitar (Blue)

Wandre Tri-Lam Electric Guitar (Blue)

Wandre Tri-Lam Electric Guitar (Blue)

Wandre Tri-Lam Electric Guitar (Blue)

Wandre Tri-Lam Electric Guitar (Blue)

Wandre Tri-Lam Electric Guitar (Blue)

Wandre Tri-Lam Electric Guitar (Blue)

Wandre Tri-Lam Electric Guitar from Eastwood Guitars (Blue)

Wandre Tri-Lam Electric Guitar from Eastwood Guitars (Red)

New Wandre Tri-Lam from Eastwood Guitars from MyRareGuitars.com

Check out this new demo from our friend Mason Stoops. Mason does some great research and shares some interesting historical info about the origins of the Coronado model. Great job!

The Airline ’59 Coronado is our tribute to the Supro Coronado model used by Dan Auerbach of The Black Keys. The originals were made of Res-O-Glas, but we have upgraded the design to tone-chambered mahogany bodies. Upgrades to the standard Coronnado model on this ’59 include rubber body binding, zero fret, Tone Pros bridge and Deluxe Airline hardshell case.

The ’59 Coronado include the DLX Airline hardshell case. Only $1079.

SPECIAL OFFER: We will also include a white Airline leather strap ($45) and a white Airline Curly Cord ($39) and FREE SHIPPING for all orders until Dec 15 ONLY. ($99 shipping outside North America)

New Airline Coronado ’59 Demo by Mason Stoops 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

1989 Kramer Gorky Park Electric Guitar

Let’s start with Kramer. Kramer began back in 1975-76 with the cool idea to make guitars with aluminum necks inspired by Travis Beans, in itself a neat story. The main people were New York music store owner Dennis Berardi, and Gary Kramer, who subsequently hooked up with former Gibson marketer Peter LaPlaca of Chicago. Kramer quickly left and Kramer (the company) went on to create some truly great guitars. In the early ‘80s, as Strat-style guitars began to take the world by storm, Kramer began a transition to wooden necks. Guitars like the Strat-style Kramer Pacer became extremely popular. Big endorsements by top players like Eddie Van Halen, Richie Samboro, and Elliott Easton didn’t hurt either!

By the mid-‘80s Kramer’s pointy droopy headstock, while an anathema to snooty vintage guitar fans, was in the hands many top and aspiring guitar slingers. In 1984 Kramer made the fortuitous decision to start selling budget versions of its own guitars, Focus from Japan and Striker from Korea, to further cultivate fands for the brand. By the beginning if 1987 Kramer was making and selling more guitars than another other guitar company! What could go wrong?

1989 Kramer Gorky Park Electric Guitar

Many of the guitar players who favored Kramers were in the hard rock and pop metal bands that had become popular in the mid-‘80s as interest in punk and New Wave began to wane. Centered in L.A., this rock movement mostly featured guys in tight glam Spandex outfits with long, ratted and teased poofy hair. “Hair bands!” Catchy melodies, a hard backbeat, and lots of rifferama.

Enter Mother Russia. About the same time Kramer began importing guitars, 1985, Mikhail Gorbachev took control of the Communist Soviet Union and began a process of liberal reforms. Among those were a toleration of underground music such as rock and a relaxation of travel restrictions.

In 1987 singer Nikolai Noskov, Sasha Minkov on bass, Sasha Lvov on drums, and Jan Ianenkov on guitar formed a rock band called Gorky Park, named after the big public Moscow park in honor of Maxim Gorky. The band was able to travel to the US and soon acquired champions including Frank Zappa and Kramer advocates Jon Bon Jovi and his axeman Sambora. In 1989 the band’s self-titled album debuted and they scored three successive hits and MTV rotation, the first popular Russian hair band.

1989 Kramer Gorky Park Electric Guitar

Probably through the Sambora connection Kramer’s Dennis Berardi became interested in the band and formed a management company to handle them. The Kramer Gorky Park was intended to be a promotional item in support of that effort.

Built for Kramer in Korea and introduced in 1989 or early 1990, the Gorky Park had a cool balalaika shape and graphics and signature of the band. Ballalaika. Russia. Geddit? The guitar really wasn’t all that bad, actually. It has one hot Seymour Duncan humbucker and a licensed Floyd Rose.

Unfortunately, the Gorky Park arrived just in time to see everything crumble. In 1989, the Iron Curtain came down, as Berliners attacked the Berlin Wall and dismantled it. I still have a piece in a box my parents gave me as a present! Gorky Park returned to the exuberance of liberation in Russia. Alas, the enthusiasm for hair bands in the US was also beginning to crumble as alternative rock represented by the Seattle Sound was coming on. Lastly, Kramer guitars itself had become a house of cards and was beginning to crumble. Bad management and other bad things began to undermine it—it probably didn’t help that Berardi was off focusing on Gorky Park. By the end of 1990 Kramer guitars also collapsed.

Whether the Gorky Parks were ever even distributed is unknown. How many exist is also unknown. Many of them were bought up (or turned over) to some large dealers, as I recall, and were liquidated for like $149 apiece. Gorky Park, the band, continued to be popular in the former Soviet Union, but became mostly a footnote to ‘80s rock and guitar history. Today these guitars show up every so often and can actually trade for quite a bit more than the clearance price! In the early 2000s the Kramer name was sold to Gibson by its owner, Henry Vaccaro, a former principal in Kramer, in order to finance the now-defunct Vaccaro Guitars venture. Like the Gorky, modern Kramers are budget imports, but with no connection to the former Soviet Union!

Hair Bands, Soviet Russia & the 1989 Kramer Gorky Park 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

Valco Chicago '52 Electric Guitar (Natural Blonde)

Valco Chicago '55 Electric Guitar (Black)

Valco Chicago '59 Electric Guitar (Cherryburst)

Valco Guitars & Effects Pedals Now Shipping! from MyRareGuitars.com

Vintage 1965 Gemelli 195/4/V Electric Guitar

Back in the old days—no, I mean the really old days—expensive guitars might have ivory or even pearl fingerboards. These were pretty rare, of course, limited to either presentation guitars or royal clients. The first plastic to be invented was celluloid in the mid-1800s. Actually this had to do with billiards, not guitars. Like expensive guitar fingerboards, billiard balls were made of elephant ivory. But it was clear to the ball manufacturers that this situation couldn’t last. They sponsored a competition to find a replacement, and celluloid won. Now, it had a problem of being highly explosive, which presents a problem if you’re going to poking sticks at it! Still, it began a whole new industry.

Fortunately for us, engineers figured out the incendiary problem. Just when celluloid began to be used on guitars is unknown. But by the late 1920s manufacturers had learned how to make it in sheets and strips, and it began to be used as pickguards and binding. They also figured out how to make it look like pearl and sparkle gold. These began to appear on guitars. The former we now call pearloid; the latter was known in the guitar trade as “glitter.”

Vintage 1965 Gemelli 195/4/V Electric Guitar

By the Great Depression of the 1930s, pearloid, along with decals (“decalcomania”), became a popular way to spruce up cheap guitar materials and make people feel like they were getting something more than they could really afford. Pearloid was used for pickguards, trim, headplates, fingerboards. By this time “tortoise” celluloid was also common for use in pickguards (yes, real tortoiseshell used to be used).

After the War came the surge of electric guitars and the surge in population known as the Post-War Baby Boom. These two surges crashed together like breaking waves in the early 1960s, with a resulting tsunami of demand for electric guitars. Far more demand than American guitar manufacturers could supply. Some enterprising businessmen turned their gaze East to the inexpensive manufacturing possibilities in reconstruction Japan. Others looked to reconstruction Europe, where mass-manufacturing of guitars was an already established industry. Compared to American standards, costs were relatively inexpensive there, too. Sweden, the Netherlands, Germany, and Italy were all major suppliers of guitars to musically inclined Boomers.

Vintage 1965 Gemelli 195/4/V Electric Guitar

Curiously enough, most of the established European instrument making centers included a variety of instruments, and especially accordions. Fortunately for the latter, there had been an accordion boom in the US during the mid-1950s. After that went bust, they had excess capacity. When the tide guitar demand began to rise in the early 1960s, the accordionistas were in a position to call on the guitar makers up the street to help them ramp up to meet American needs.

And, of course — ta da— accordion makers were highly skilled at working sheet plastic! So, it should come as no surprise that among the first European electric guitars to get to the US were the sparkle-plastic covered Hagstroms from Sweden in around 1958 or so. The demand had yet to emerge. But when it did, Hagstroms were joined by plastic-covered EKO guitars by Oliviero Pigini in around 1963. Others followed.

All of which is a long way around to this Gemelli guitar. Much of Italian guitar making was centered around Castelfidardo, Italy. In fact, there were a whole bunch of makers in that area who supplied guitars during the ‘60s, most making guitars for other distributors using whatever brand name was required. One of them was Benito & Umberto Cingolani, located Recanati not far from the Pigini plant. Among the brands they built was Gemelli.

A number of features make this guitar special. The pearloid plastic fingerboard is an obvious one. Long gone are the days of the simple sheet pearloid. This is a hard, nice, fast surface that plays like a dream. Another is the nifty black to green sunburst finish! These were especially popular on both Italian and English guitars during the ‘60s, especially Burns guitars, though American makers were not especially enamored of the style (Harmony did one at the end of the ‘60s and early ‘70s). . Finally, there’s the way cool push-button controls, a leftover from the accordion days. These give you All, Treble, Treble and Bass, Middle, Bass, and Off. Pretty neat, huh? The guitar is lightweight and the vibrato has a butter touch. Overall, this is a darned good starter guitar!

Plastic-covered guitars didn’t go over all that well in the US and they were gone by around 1966 at the latest. However, in this case, the plastic only enhances what’s a swell little guitar, not putting glitter on a piece of junk.

A Plastic Fantastic Dream (1965 Gemelli 195/4/V Electric Guitar) from MyRareGuitars.com

This month we’ll look at a few aspects of getting a good live sound. While this article is mostly aimed at those of us with who have don’t have much or any stage experience, there may be something of interest here for almost anyone.

Last week I had the genuine pleasure of attending a League of Rock ‘dark stage’ rehearsal night at Toronto’s famous Chick’n Deli night club. This was an opportunity for the six bands in the current session to rehearse their three songs on a real stage – and in this case, somewhat unexpectedly, in front of a real audience.

League of Rock is the creation of Terry Moshenberg, a dynamic entrepreneur and experienced marketer and promoter – who also happens to be a guitar playing musician.

Each LOR session, of which there are three per year, some 26 to 30 amateur musicians – ‘regular’ folks, some of whom have never before been in a band let alone performed live – are formed into six ‘bands’ and, over a 12 week period, work up three songs. Each session culminates in a recording date in a pro studio and the final gala gig at a major Toronto live music venue.

So, how did I end up at a LOR gig? Well, Mack Amps is pleased to announce that it is now the official guitar amp sponsor of LOR, Toronto!

Along with meeting a bunch of great people and having a blast, witnessing 18 songs being performed by a diverse group of guitar players who, for the most part, used various Mack amps (2 guys brought their own amps!), was a tremendous live guitar sound learning experience.

Here are some thoughts about what I learned.

The Guitar’s Place In The Stage Mix

I think of live guitar ‘sound’ as being comprised of two concepts: how good is the tone and can it be heard by you and the audience?

Consider what is going on when a typical rock band performs live:

• Drums: A drum kit produces a tremendous amount of sound energy with fundamental frequencies that range from the bass part of the audible frequency spectrum to mid range. Harmonics of fundamental tones reach all the way into the high midrange and even high frequency portions of the spectrum. You might be surprised at how much high frequency sound energy is present in a kick drum thwack not to mention toms!
• Cymbals. Of course, cymbals produce lots of high-mid and high frequency sound energy. However, their fundamental tones are centered in the mid range.
• Bass. True to its name, the bass produces fundamental tones in the bass to mid range frequencies.
• Vocalist. The vocalist is producing mid range fundamentals with high-mid and high frequency harmonics.
• Keyboards. If your band includes keyboards, they can be pumping out sound that spans the entire frequency spectrum from sub-bass to highs.

The guitar’s fundamental tones span bass to mid range frequencies and the guitar’s harmonics add energy in the high-mid range.

If you simplify each instrument’s frequency range to be generally characterized by its fundamental tones you can get a fairly realistic picture of what’s happening on stage:

• Lots of bass and low-mid energy from drums and bass.
• Lots of high-mid and high frequency energy from cymbals, vocals and often keys.
• Lots of mid range energy from low frequency instrument harmonics and lower fundamental tones from vocals and keys.

There is a LOT of competition on stage fighting to be heard!

Obviously, guitars are a critical part of a band’s sound and are known for being heard, but how do you obtain that ideal combination of stellar tone that is easily heard by both you and your audience?

EQing guitars in a recording mix is a topic of many books and is well beyond the scope of this article. However, there are a few simple things that any guitarist can do to get good live sound.

Analyze Your Guitar Tone

Your tone may sound great when you are practicing at home or playing along with recordings. However, it may not translate well to the live stage.

A fairly common characteristic of what I heard the other night is guitar sounds that seemed muffled and lost in the low-mid wash of sound booming from the stage.

In these situations the guitar players usually increased the volume at the amp in an effort to hear themselves, further adding to the general pandemonium going on in the lower half of the audio spectrum.

What to do? Here are two very basic, but critical suggestions:

1. Turn your guitar volume to 10. Many, but not all guitars feature a ‘volume control bypass capacitor’. No, that’s not something from a Star Trek episode, it’s an electronic component wired across a guitar volume control that prevents your tone from becoming muffled (reduction in high midrange frequencies) as the volume is turned down. If your guitar does NOT have one, whenever you turn down its volume your tone will generally lose presence and recede into the mix. In this case keep your guitar’s volume at 10 to help you stand out. If your guitar does have a volume bypass cap, it’s still a good idea for you to have all of your guitar volume pots full up when you hit the stage and adjust your sound before the first song’s count-in. This will ensure that you are tweaking your sound with the most signal possible coming from your guitar and gives you the best chance of avoiding a gear adjustment that will actually fight against getting a good stage sound.
2. Turn your guitar tone to 10. Guitar tone controls have one function: they roll of high and high mid range frequencies. Since we are trying to achieve optimum ‘sound’ – the combination of great tone that is easily heard by you and your audience – and since guitar tone ‘lives’ in the upper and high mid range frequencies, it makes sense to hit the stage with tone on 10. As with guitar volume, this gives you the best opportunity to properly adjust your gear and it ensures that you do not inadvertently roll of the highs and cause your sound to recede into the mix. Having said that, there are times when a tone control adjustment is certainly warranted: for example, removing the ‘ice pick’ quality from some Teles or getting Eric Clapton ‘woman’ tone from a humbucker guitar. But, generally tone on 10 will help you cut through the mix.

3 Ways To Get Clean Electric Guitar Tone On-Stage

The term ‘clean headroom’ is often used, but having spoken to many guitarists over the years there is generally some confusion as to what it means.

The practical definition of clean headroom is the volume level at which your guitar signal starts to become distorted. The volume at which your tone just starts to breakup or overdrive is the point of maximum clean headroom. How loud you can get a clean tone depends on many variables such as how hard you pick, pickup output level, amp design and settings, etc.

There are three ways to achieve a clean tone:

1. Guitar volume 10, amp clean. Your basic sound is clean and, if you use overdrive and distortion it will come from pedals.
2. Guitar volume less than 10, amp dirty. In this case you set up your amp for a distorted tone and roll off your guitar volume to get a clean tone. Your distorted tone is only a flip of the guitar volume away. Note that this contradicts my earlier recommendation to leave your guitar volume on 10. “Switching” from clean to overdrive and distortion via your guitar volume control is a great strategy if your guitar volume pot is set up properly (see above) and your amp is sensitive enough to changes in guitar volume. Some amps do a great job of changing their tone with guitar volume changes and some don’t – check our your amp to see how it responds.
3. Guitar volume 10, amp channel switching. If your amp has multiple channels one is usually adjusted for a clean tone and one for an overdriven or distorted tone.

Any of the above methods of achieving a loud clean tone is valid. The one you choose depends on your gear, the music you play and whether switching tones within a song is a necessity.

Note that a clean tone will most likely have a better chance of cutting through the stage mix. Generally, the balance of upper and high mids will be greater than an overdriven or distorted tone and your guitar sound will be less compressed allowing your picking and playing dynamics to be heard.

Distorted Electric Guitar Tone On-Stage

Whoever came up with the phrase “Less is more” must have been referring to distorted electric guitar tone!

You will likely have heard this before, but some of the heaviest electric guitar tones feature relatively little distortion.

For example, Keith Richards, ACDC, Jimi Hendrix, Jimmy Page, Pete Townshend, etc. have recorded some of the heaviest rock guitar sounds ever – and many of these iconic ‘heavy’ tones are really not all that distorted.

I realize that LOTS of great guitar tones feature LOTS of distortion, but to achieve the best stage guitar sound for classic rock and blues music styles, dialing down the distortion is almost always beneficial.

While there are many flavors of distortion – overdrive, fuzz, etc. – I generally think about it related to two needs: rhythm and lead.

If a song requires a distorted rhythm tone, often referred to as ‘crunch’, the ‘less is more’ credo is critical. Richards and the Young brothers are the masters of getting incredibly juicy, resonant and HEAVY crunch tones that are, when you listen closely, amazingly clean relative to their impact.

The distortion required for lead playing is dependent on the song and the player. However, I believe that the ‘right’ amount of distortion for solos is just enough to produce ‘flow’. What’s flow? It’s that musical moment where your tone is distorted and compressed enough and possesses enough sustain that the player can focus on their performance without having to ‘fight’ their way through a solo.

This may sound kind of esoteric, but I am sure you have wrestled with solos where your tone wasn’t quite there – either there wasn’t enough sustain or not enough distorted breakup and compression. Dialing up the distortion to get to that point of ‘flow’ alleviates the problem, but overdoing it will cause your sound to, once again, recede into the stage mix.

I also believe that the amount of distortion needed to obtain flow varies according to the song. Heavy songs with lots of crunch backing the solo requires more distortion; a much less distorted tone is often the perfect fit for obtaining flow with ‘lighter’ songs.

Having said that, I know there are lots of examples of impossibly distorted solos in otherwise clean songs and clean solos in heavy songs – in those cases the contrast is what works. However, I believe that a good rule of thumb is to use just as much distortion as it takes to get you into flow – and no more.

What happens if you use too much distortion on stage?

Your tone won’t fit the song and will negatively impact the quality of your band’s overall sound and its performance. Part of getting a great stage sound is making sure your audience isn’t cringing even if they can hear you LOUD and clear. Since the primary objective of performing live is to provide your audience with an enjoyable experience, this problem should be avoided at all costs!

Worse yet, using too much distortion can overly compress your tone and, depending on how the distorted tone is EQ’d, there can be a dramatic perceived loss in highs and clarity and you end up not blending in with the song and not being heard properly! I suppose that if your tone is negatively affecting the overall performance, not being heard might be a good thing, but I think you get my point.

How do you easily get the right amount of distortion on stage?

So,this is how to best get a distortion sound on stage and still be heard properly:

1. Crunch. My favorite method of getting good crunch is from an amp – preferably one that features power tube distortion. Richards and the Youngs rely on plugging a great guitar into a great amp and turning it up until they get the tone they want. Although there are lots of overdrive and boost pedals that can get crunch tones, for the most part you will find that amp crunch is more dynamic, resonant and pleasing to the ear. Dynamics are important because a good amp will respond to your picking attack by changing the amount of crunch. Organically altering your distorted tone by playing harder and softer during a song is FUN!
2. Lead. This is where pedals can really come into play. Stomping on a box to elevate your tone for solos is a classic method. However, you can get great amp lead tone by setting your amp for lead distortion and rolling your guitar volume down for clean/crunch and up for solos. Or, if you have a multi-channel amp it is easy to set up rhythm and lead tones.

There are many more aspects of live guitar sound that we haven’t covered. If there is enough interest in this topic I’ll continue next month.

Let me know how you get great live guitar tone by emailing me at Don@MackAmps.com or simply post your reply, below!

Don Mackrill
www.MackAmps.com

Getting Great Guitar Sound On Stage from MyRareGuitars.com

1988 Epiphone Spotlight Electric Guitar

Like on the telephone commercials with the wizard, the goofball crew and the “puppy,” I can hear you gasp, “What the…” Epiphone Spotlight? Never heard of that puppy. Nevertheless, this is a real beast.

I too had my doubts when I first laid eyes on this sweetheart hanging in a pawnshop down on South Street in Philly. Like almost everything I bought back in those days (mid-‘90s), nobody knew what the heck it was. The fit and finish (high gloss polyurethane) were too good, and besides it was a neck-through. That means some serious commitment. I snatched it right up for a couple bills, of course. The quilted top alone was worth that! This was a beaut!

1988 Epiphone Spotlight Electric Guitar

But what was it? That’s when I started pawing through the Epiphone paper I’d managed to acquire. There it was, in a promotional pack from Gibson that my friend Michael Lee Allen had thrown in with one of my catalog orders. The Epi…no wait…the Gibson Nouveau series. Curiouser and curiouser!

Epiphone, of course, had been Gibson’s budget brand ever since they bought their fierce rival in 1957. Epiphone had become an imported line in 1971, thus beginning a long and complicated peregrination as an offshore product.

1988 Epiphone Spotlight Electric Guitar

But Gibson would periodically revive the American manufacture of Epiphone guitars, including some of the last guitars made in Kalamazoo before the final move to Nashville. Which is a fascinating tale, but doesn’t explain the Spotlight mystery.

Turns out that sometime after Norlin’s sale of Gibson to its current owners, someone hatched the plot to produce the Nouveau series. In the late ‘80s Japan was still regarded as a prime source of budget guitars (this was about to end). The Gibson Nouveaus were going to consist of parts made in Japan—neck and body—and assembled and finished in Nashville. This would, of course, technically keep them “American made.” This was not uncommon back then; Kramer seems to have specialized in the practice. The project got as far as introductory literature, as my paper stash demonstrates. As this guitar testifies, the rest of the plan was executed as well, but with another of those twists. Somewhere between the manufacture and finishing, these became the Epiphone Spotlight series. Maybe they got cold feet about the sleight of hand.

1988 Epiphone Spotlight Electric Guitar

In any case, the result was ironically a new—and no doubt rare—“American-made” Epiphone! And a fine one it is. The shape of this guitar is suspiciously like that of the brash young guitarmaker from Maryland named Paul Reed Smith, which were just beginning to make some waves at the time. The Spotlights have neck-through-body construction, with mahogany necks and bodies, capped with a gorgeous carved quilted maple top. As befitting the “budget-deluxe” concept, what looks like a two-octave ebony fingerboard is ebonol, like that used on early Kramers. Reflecting the Epiphone-by-Gibson branding used at the time, a pearl diamond engraved with “Gibson” graced the headstock. Pickups were EMG Selects, serviceable if not exceptional, hooked up one volume and one tone, the latter with a push-pull coil tap pot. This version was outfitted with a traditional style vibrato, but I have another one equipped with a locking Steinberger HB vibrato. There were most likely stoptails, as well, but who knows?

This is a really nice guitar. The heavy poly finish is a bit much, but there’s nothing not to like here.

As evidenced by how familiar we all are with the Epiphone Spotlights, they obviously didn’t last long. However many were made seem to be from 1988. A good guess is that probably one shipment of necks and bodies were produced. 50? 100? The two I have are among the three I’ve seen, all in Philadelphia. I don’t know if any of the Gibson Nouveaus were ever made, although the introductory literature shows photos of them, so at least a couple prototypes were probably put together before the switch to Epi. As common as Epiphones may be these days, the Epi Spotlights both uncommon and uncommonly good!

Center Stage in the Spotlight (1988 Epiphone Spotlight Electric Guitar) 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

Vintage 1965 Juliett Delux Electric Guitar

You don’t need years of study to figure out this came from south of the Alps. A German guitar would have an innovative laminated neck and perhaps two more switches than you can figure out what to do with or a finger-operated, spring-loaded vibrato. No one but Italians—or someone pretty close—would make a guitar in avocado green with a green-black-silver mesh pickguard and matching pickup covers! I didn’t need two seconds to grab it off the dealer who showed it to me, no matter where it came from! I mean, avocado green?! You gotta own a guitar in that color, especially if it comes with color-coordinated appointments!

But there’s a long way from figuring out at a glance that this is Italian to figuring out what the heck it is! Like many of the guitars I’ve picked up over the years, this Juliet became an unsolved mystery buried in the back of my guitar room for ages. Actually, quite a few apparently Italian mysteries collected there gathering dust.

Vintage 1965 Juliett Delux Electric Guitar

But I have this thing about learning what’s up about any guitar I own. It’s why I got into the guitar history game in the first place. So these guitars nagged at me. Then one day I discovered www.fetishguitars.com, a web site devoted to Italian guitars. This site is about the best—and almost only—source on the subject at this point in time.

Besides a general lack of information, part of the problem involves the fact that so many Italian—read European—guitarmakers, like the Japanese, made guitars for a lot of different people carrying many different brand names and logos. Just as guitars made by Tombo in Japan ended up in the U.S. as Norma guitars, guitars made by various Italian manufacturers ended up in both Europe and America carrying a wide variety of names, usually not that of the factory.

Vintage 1965 Juliett Delux Electric Guitar

Back to this Juliett Delux. Mucking around the fetishguitars.com site led me to a company named Zerosette from Castelfidardo, Italy. Castelfidardo was—and is—one of the world’s centers of accordion-making. It began there in the late 1800s and even today it’s the home of an international accordion festival and competition. Its heyday was the 1950s when the accordion craze briefly swept the U.S. That soon ended, and, as we all know, guitars eventually took over. It turns out that Castelfidardo is located in a region of Italy with a long tradition of guitarmaking. So it was not that hard to add guitars to the mix. This explains why EKO guitars were so successful in the U.S. the early years of the ‘60s.

One of the more obscure shops located in Castelfidardo was called Zerosette. Virtually nothing is known about the actual operation, though you may have encountered their work in various guitars bearing the Goya, Contessa, and Sano.

Tucked among the gems produced by Zerosette are guitars bearing the Juliett Delux and JG brands. A comparison of the shape of one of the Juliett solids is the spittin’ image of this guitar…and even in light green! A look at the pickups shows a certain similarity of shape to others made by Zerosette. None of the examples shown there are quite as fancy as this guitar, but it’s pretty clear that this came from the Zerosette shop. Jack Marchal of fetishguitars.com believes this to be from 1965, based on the components and style. JGs may or may not have been related to the Juliett brand’s owners (other than being made by Zerosette); I suspect them to be for the same company but slightly later.

So, I now feel like I know where this guitar came from and who made it, as much as you can know with our lack of knowledge. When it was made or for whom? That remains a mystery.

All I know for sure is that an avocado guitar with matching parts, that’s way cool. Thank god for Italian guitars! Like I said. Style!

A Taste of Italy (1965 Juliett Delux Electric Guitar) from MyRareGuitars.com

Vintage 1968 Teisco May Queen Electric Guitar

Thus I was tickled pink when I landed my very own May Queen. And a red one at that! Almost all that are seen are men in black. So, is this worthy of being a Holy Grail? As usual, the answer is a mixed bag.

Let’s take the plus side first.

Coolness factor. Only the worst kind of snob would deny this maximum cool. A hollowbody guitar shaped like an artist’s palette with a catseye soundhole? No way that isn’t cool!

Vintage 1968 Teisco May Queen Electric Guitar

Now, there are some guitars that were once ultimate cool, like when the Flying V and Explorer debuted back in 1957. Radical! But, there have been so many knock-offs in the years since, their coolness factor diminishes accordingly.

Then there are guitars like the 1960 Kay Solo King, sometimes called the “Map of Ohio” guitar. Elsewhere I’ve dubbed this the ugliest guitar in the world. And it is butt-ugly. While it has some design consistency, there’s just no way this guitar will ever be cool. Except to me, of course, sick-o that I am! But that’s another issue!

Vintage 1968 Teisco May Queen Electric Guitar

Rarity. As far as I know, the May Queen was made for domestic consumption—or at least regional consumption—only. I don’t think it was ever exported here. Then again, it does have an English engraving on the pickguard. Still, I’ve never seen a catalog, ad, or other evidence of it’s being sold in the US. These just do not come around very often. We have no idea how many were made, but ‘60s Japanese guitars are fewer than most people suspect. And, as mentioned, a red finish is really special. This rarity has to contribute to Holy Grailness.

The Teisco May Queen appeared at a significant time in Japanese guitarmaking. Teisco, which had formed following World War II as a Hawaiian guitar and amp company, had considerable success with exporting into the 1960s. They were probably the most successful brand during that decade. In January of 1967 they were acquired by Kawai, the piano company turned guitarmaker. Kawai seems to have kept the Teisco and its own lines separate throughout this period.

In any case, in 1968 the Japanese companies were feeling their oats and began to come up with original guitar designs. A whole spate of Japanese-style guitars appeared, reflecting creative thinking, not just copies of other people. This was, perhaps, the first golden age of Japanese guitars. All contributing to coolness.

Now the other side. Teisco just never did do hollowbodies too well. Some of their solidbodies are spectacular. They have great features and, with a little attention to set-up, can far surpass guitars in the same class, including those made in the US and Europe. And sound remarkably good. The pickups on this May Queen are nice, beefy single-coils, but the whole package just comes off as sort of, well, limp. Good if you’re back is bad, but lacking “heft.” It plays fine. These simple rip-offs of Bigsby vibratos are really pretty good. Maybe if the cats eye was really bound, but it’s just paint. There’s a lot of visual slight of hand here. Put it all together and, well, given a lot of choices of what guitar to pick up and play, this keeps sliding down the list. There’s no problem setting it up to play. It’s NOT bad. It’s just that I’d choose my vinyl-covered Teisco with the platform vibrato first… Or, to be honest, my Levinson Blade… Unless you’re really looking for the right image.

So, is this a Holy Grail? This begs the question, “What you mean pardner?” There are so many ways to define desire. Combine rarity and art, and this is way desirable. Consider a player’s criteria, and it become less so. Depending on how many guitars you want to own. Quantity was never an issue for me! At least I was able to check this off my “Off the Wall” check list!

Artist’s Pallette (1968 Teisco May Queen Electric Guitar) from MyRareGuitars.com

1982 Daion Savage Power Mark XX Electric Guitar

The event in question was the practice of copying American guitar designs by Japanese manufacturers. The Japanese hit on the copy strategy pretty early on. The American guitar industry was pretty robust when the guitar boom hit in the early 1960s. But it couldn’t meet the total demand of maturing Baby Boomers and the gap was filled by European guitar makers such as EKO and Framus. By 1966 or ’67 the Japanese had begun to copy European guitars that were popular in the US market, most notably the EKO violin guitar (itself just one of many Euro takes on the Gibson EB-0 bass).

1982 Daion Savage Power Mark XX Electric Guitar

The turning point, in a delicious irony, was precipitated by Gibson. Gibson had dominated the high end of electric solidbody guitars with its ‘50s Les Paul models. Glued-in necks on a mahogany body with a carved maple top. Yum, yum! But Gibson got bored with the design in 1961 and changed the Les Paul over to what would become the SG. Contract problems with Les ended the model name soon thereafter. The SG did ok, but not as well as the Les Paul. The times had something to do with it. Gibson made nice with Les and reintroduced the Gibson Les Paul in 1968. The version it chose to resuscitate was the black-finished Les Paul Custom.

What follows is somewhat apocryphal. Meaning there’s no incontrovertible proof. Shiro Arai, the man behind Aria guitars, was at the 1968 NAMM show where the reissue LP Custom was featured. He took one look at it. Hmm. It’s a copy of the old Les Paul. Copy!!!

1982 Daion Savage Power Mark XX Electric Guitar

The first Japanese “copies” of the Les Paul Black Beauty appeared the following year—bolt-on necks and not precise by any means. But it didn’t take long for the notion to blossom. By 1974 at least the Japanese were building copy guitars that were nearly as good as the originals. Certainly as good looking, and a heckuva lot cheaper. Gibson was—understandably—not happy.

In the summer of 1977 Norlin, Gibson’s parent company, sued Elger Guitars, the American arm of Hoshino, owner of the Ibanez brand name, in Philadelphia Federal Court. The charge was trademark infringement, based on the copying of Gibson’s headstock design. The plan was to seriously damage the Japanese makers. You know, sweep into the Summer NAMM show and scoop up the entire Ibanez display. Take that! Of course, here’s where the unintended consequences come in.

1982 Daion Savage Power Mark XX Electric Guitar

First of all, Gibson hadn’t noticed that Ibanez had already changed its headstocks. In an amusing twist, they actually looked more like Guild heads grafted on Gibson guitars! No confiscations. Furthermore, Elger reached an out-of-court settlement agreeing not to copy Gibson headstocks. More importantly, the lawsuit gave Hoshino a kick in the pants toward coming up with new designs that American guitarists wanted anyway. The copy era had run its course. Americans wanted natural-finished guitars made out of exotic woods. The result was Ibanez Musicians, Aria Pro II Rev Sounds, and various very cool Westones. Not to mention Travis Beans and Kramers.

Which brings us back to this guitar, which appeared right in the middle of that natural craze. Daion was a brand that debuted in 1978, part of a collaboration between MusiConics International, Inc. (MCI) of Waco, Texas, best known as the makers of the legendary Guitorgan, and the luthier Hirotsuga Teradaira, a maker who specialized in cedar-topped guitars outfitted with brass nuts and saddles for increased sustain. The most famous product of this liaison was the asymmetrical acoustic-electric Daion Headhunter.

Daion introduced its first solidbody electrics—the Power series—in 1981 or thereabouts. There were two basses (Power Mark X-B, Mark X-B2) and either two or four guitars (Power Mark X, Mark XX, Mark XXV, Mark XXX). The Mark XX shown here (#820397) was the top of the line. This is just spectacular. First of all, it’s a neck-through-body guitar, the neck core consisting of two thick strips of rosewood with a thin piece of maple in the middle sandwiched between four plies of maple, two per side, themselves separated with a thin slice of rosewood. The wings of the body are another sandwich, this time two pieces of nicely figured ash on either side of another layer of rosewood. The beauty of the sandwich notion is that when you carve out a contour, like on the back of the beauty, you reveal the gorgeous rosewood. It would be unthinkable in these days of dwindling rainforest to use this much rosewood on a solidbody! Another law I always obey is when an electric guitar is made out of a good chuck of rosewood: buy it!

Of course there’s also the de-rigueur brass fittings and a pair of coil taps on the ballsy humbuckers. Did I mention the original green alligator hardshell case? This is sweet.

Daion actually produced several other models, including the cool Savage line, but the Power Marks are superfine examples of Japanese lathery flexing its considerable muscles following Gibson’s ill-timed attempt to put the kibosh on Japanese guitar making. They never could have imagined that their efforts to end copying would be so successful yet lead to guitars like this Daion Power Mark XX. Good name. Good law.

Sandwich Time (1982 Daion Savage Power Mark XX Electric Guitar) from MyRareGuitars.com

Details:

• Release Date: March 2008
• Quantity: 24 available
• Color: Electric Indigo
• Price: $999

Features:

• Rare Electric Indigo LTD Finish
• PEARLOID Top-Hat Knobs
• White Curly Cord Instrument Cable
• DELUXE Hardshell Case
• Unique Serial Number
• Signed Certificate of Authenticity
• FREE SHIPPING
• (Europe and North America ONLY)

Pictures:

Eastwood Airline Map Limited Edition Electric Guitar (Electric Indigo)

Eastwood Airline Map Limited Edition Electric Guitar (Electric Indigo)

Eastwood Airline Map Limited Edition Electric Guitar (Electric Indigo)

Eastwood Airline Map Limited Edition Electric Guitar (Electric Indigo)

Eastwood Airline Map Limited Edition Electric Guitar (Electric Indigo)

Eastwood Airline Map Limited Edition Electric Guitar (Electric Indigo)

Eastwood Airline Map Limited Edition Electric Guitar (Electric Indigo)

Eastwood Airline Map Limited Edition Electric Guitar (Electric Indigo)

Eastwood Airline Map Limited Edition Electric Guitar (Electric Indigo)

Eastwood Airline Map Limited Edition Electric Guitar (Electric Indigo)

Eastwood Airline Map Limited Edition Electric Guitar (Electric Indigo)

Eastwood Airline Map Limited Edition Electric Guitar (Electric Indigo)

Limited Edition Airline Map Guitar in Electric Indigo from MyRareGuitars.com

1980s Astron Gittler II Electric Guitar

Whatever you call this instrument, the Gittler certainly pushes the envelope of what is a guitar! Alan Gittler (born in 1928) was originally a jazz guitarist in New York, heavily influenced by Remo Palmieri. He played music, composed, and even wrote and produced a film called Parachute to Paradise. He worked as a film editor for many years, invented a number of photographic-related devices, and even wrote a novel. At one point he was performing on New York streets with a Velasquez classical guitar run through a battery-powered amplifier. Gittler, by preference, only ever owned one guitar at a time. But he knew that the classical through a battery amp wasn’t right. So he began thinking about designing a guitar.

It was through this process that Gittler began paring down what a guitar was. While he acknowledged that a guitar’s shape and materials did affect the sound, he arrived at the conclusion that the primary mechanism that determines how a guitarist sounds are his flesh, his fingers, contacting the strings. Anyone who’s played guitar for a long time knows that your sound comes more from your “touch” than your equipment. All he needed to remind him he was playing a guitar was the sound of the strings. So he began stripping away as much as possible and arrived at his minimalist concept of the guitar. He took away as much as he could while still having a “guitar.”

The original American Gittlers were constructed of three sizes of milled stainless steel, with a master jack for output to a single amp plus individual jacks for each string. Plug into a string output and you disconnected it from the others for sending to another amp. They had a specially designed tuner concept that was later “borrowed” by Ned Steinberger. Andy Summers of The Police played one. Other musicians told Gittler that his guitar belonged in a museum. The Museum of Modern Art bought one. These two were among the few. Around 60 guitars and three basses were built in New York.

Gittler eventually moved to Israel and changed his name to Avaraham Bar Rashi. In Israel he was contacted by Astron Engineering Enterprises in Kinat Bialik, Israel, about licensing and manufacturing his design. Bar Rashi agreed. Unfortunately, he should have been more actively involved with Astron early on, because they took some shortcuts that ended up producing guitars that were not sufficiently up to specifications for Bar Rashi’s way of thinking. Bar Rashi even went so far as to send letters to dealers who bought them disavowing the instruments.

But not before they made 500 of them. The Astron Gittlers were known as the Gittler II. They were made of a mix of coated metal and stainless steel. Unlike the original Gittlers, the Israeli guitars have output via a single 1/4″ jack and/or a DIN plug. These also have a little metal spar you can screw on the body for holding the guitar in your lap. The Astron Gittler IIs started with serial number 61. The one shown here is #134. Just when these guitars were produced is uncertain, but it was probably mid- to late-’80s.

So, in the end, I guess you have to say this Gittler II is a guitar, or at least a skeleton of one! It’s fairly comfortable to play and once you get used to the weird frets (which feel almost scalloped), it works fine. Nevertheless, as you might guess, it doesn’t get played very often! When I go to pickup a guitar, I’m a bit more conservative, I guess. I guess this guitar does belong in a museum, after all!

Skeletons in the Closet (1980’s Astron Gittler II Electric Guitar) from MyRareGuitars.com

1979 Gretsch TK 300 Model 7624 Electric Guitar

Gretsch was founded in Brooklyn, NY, in 1883 by Friedrich Gretsch of Mannheim, Germany. He died a couple years later and the company was run by Fred Gretsch, Sr., until 1942. Bill and Fred, Jr., took over and when Bill died in ’48, Fred, Jr., was in charge. Most of Gretsch’s most famous guitars date from the 1950s, including the famous White Falcon that was promoted by touch guitarist Jimmy Webster in guitar demos offered at Gretsch dealerships throughout the country. Gretsches during this era were powered by DeArmond pickups and were undoubtedly cool!

Then along came the Swinging Sixties. Baby Boomers fused with the Beatles and suddenly you could sell every electric guitar you could make. Sensing gold in them thar hills, major corporations, some of which had nothing to do with music, stumbled over themselves to get into the guitar business. In 1965 CBS, with TV, radio and record company holdings, bought Fender. Ok. In ’67 Norlin, with a beer-making history, bought Gibson. In between both guitar manufacturers and distributors sold to corporations. Guild went to Avnet, an entertainment company. Kay went first to Seeburg, the jukebox company, and then to Valco. Jack Westheimer’s Teisco went to King Korn trading stamp company!

1979 Gretsch TK 300 Model 7624 Electric Guitar

Anyhow, Gretsch got caught up in the buying frenzy. Baldwin Piano and Organ Company of Cincinnati made a bid for Fender, but lost out to CBS. Then later in ’65 Baldwin bought Burns of London. Two years later, Baldwin added Gretsch to its portfolio. After that, Gretsch guitars began incorporating Burns features, like the “gear-box” neck adjustment and vibratos. To save money, in 1970 production was relocated to Booneville, Arkansas, and finally to DeQueen, AR. HQ moved to Cincinnati in ’72. Later that year the plant burned down, marking pretty much the end of the era acceptable to hardcore Gretsch freaks. Production didn’t really ramp up again until 1974, by now facing stiff Japanese competition. Baldwin was interested in capturing as much market share as it could.

In around 1978 Gretsch came up with a bunch of new models, including the ill-fated Committee (designed by same), as well as the Beast models (bitchin’ guitars), and this Bizarro TK, with the asymmetrical body and hocky-stick head. The hardware and pickups on these were made in Japan. This model may have been Gretsch’s first bolt-neck guitar model. The rising sun was about to set.

This particular TK came from my classic visit to discover the Temple of Doom, aka Bob’s House of Music in Wheat Ridge, Colorado. Bob owned a strip mall and instead of renting out the shops, filled them with guitars. More guitars than you can imagine. If you came in to buy one and tried to negotiate, Bob would drive the price UP, not go down. He didn’t sell much with this strategy. He also collected feral cats and wore cast-off thrift store clothes. I went out there to take pictures of guitars, and came home with this as one of my prizes. No, it was a fair price but no bargain. What would you expect?

Collectors who like Corvettes or Mr. Chets or Falcons disdain these later Gretsches, but if you ignore the history, these are really nice guitars. The necks are slim and fast. They’re light-weight, which is good if you’re older like me (or like to jump off amps). And the Japanese pickups are HOT, HOT, HOT. These are great guitars. In a popular guitar context.

Gretsch died shortly after this adventure, though it would return as an import later. But if you’re interested in good guitarflesh that, like Rodney Dangerfield, don’t get no respect, but is quite respectable, you might want to keep your eyes open for a TK 300!

Like Rodney, It Don’t Get No Respect (1979 Gretsch TK 300 Model 7624 Electric Guitar) from MyRareGuitars.com

Vintage 1967 Hofner 459TZ Electric Guitar

The idea of putting “effects” on the guitar itself is as old as the volume knob, and certainly as old as the tone pot. When guitarists started putting hand vibratos on their guitars probably in the 1930s another powerful onboard effect was unleashed. As far as I know, it was probably the Germans—who else?—who added what we’d more typically call “effects” to guitars. By 1965 Framus had put the infamous “spigot” on its guitars, a spring-loaded volume control that you worked with your pinky for manual tremolo. This was a great idea but it takes a heckuva lot of coordination to get the effect!

Vintage 1967 Hofner 459TZ Electric Guitar

All the things we’ve talked about till now were really mechanical. Or at least I guess “passive.” As far as I know, this 1967 Hofner 459TZ may have been the first of a long line of guitars with active electronic effects built in. Of course, the first thing you notice is the violin shape, which was, thanks to Paul McCartney’s bass, the company’s main claim to fame. That alone would make it pretty cool. But then there are those groovy ‘60s Hofner celluloid fingerboard inlays. You’d like it for those. But wait, there’s more! Those nifty dual-blade humbuckers were among the best on Euro guitars at the time.

But all that pales when you consider the effects! This has basically two active circuits, perfect for your psychedelic rendition of Ina Gadda Da Vida. One, the “T,” was a treble boost. Throw the switch and (most of the time) the treble kicks in for that biting, blow your mind solo! The other, the “Z,” is a built in fuzztone distortion circuit. Want nasty? Throw that switch and (most of the time) you get that nasal idea of distortion that was big in the Summer o’ Love. “Most of the time” is basically because not everything that worked perfectly back in ’67 still does. I can swear to that.

Vintage 1967 Hofner 459TZ Electric Guitar

Reliability over time issues aside, this guitar is perhaps more quaint than really nasty. We’ve all become a bit more jaded than we were back when we weren’t going to trust anyone over 30! If I want nasty these days I prefer to stomp on my Pro Co Rat. You probably have your favorite, too. And it’s probably not on this Hofner!

Vintage 1967 Hofner 459TZ Electric Guitar

How long these were around or how many were made is a mystery, but not too many seem to show up. It wasn’t long after this guitar appeared that folks began experimenting with active onboard electronics that were more sophisticated, but still descended from this. Alembic, B.C. Rich. With overdrive boosters that gave you distortion. Then came the Freshers in the late ‘70s with built in wah and phasers. Then Electra MPCs with plug in modules. Perhaps the most ambitious were the Cort Effectors from the mid-‘80s with phase, delay, vibrato, wah, chorus, distortion…it could have had more but Cort figured players brains would melt with more choices. Do they all work? Well, not that bad. Not that good. The reality is you’d rather have an array of stomp boxes, or maybe if you’re real savvy a multi-effects rack.

Or, I don’t know, maybe just a friggin’ guitar with a couple pickups and a volume and tone control. Then just jam a pencil into your amp speaker! In any case, this Hofner began the other track of putting your effects where your fingers do the walking! At least as best as I can recall…

Fuzzy Memories (1967 Hofner 459TZ Electric Guitar) from MyRareGuitars.com

1983 Electra Lady XV1RD Electric Guitar

We’ve already talked about that great period in the early to mid-1980s when the New Wave of Heavy Metal, combined with the emergence of L.A. as an important music center, Eddie Van Halen, and hair bands. For just a couple years before Superstrats hijacked everyone, weird-shaped pointy guitars were hip. Well, this is an example of a guitar that takes that to the extreme!

Electra guitars were made by Matsumoku in Japan for St. Louis Music (SLM). SLM started in the 1920s and grew to be a large regional music distributor. They were thick with Kay and from the late 1950s or so through to Kay’s collapse in 1968 offered Kay-made Custom Kraft guitars. Some of these, especially the later ones, are really pretty good guitars. We’ll profile one in time.

1983 Electra Lady XV1RD Electric Guitar

Like everyone else, SLM couldn’t resist the allure of Japan. Sometime in the late-’60s, SLM started to bring in guitars with the Electra brand. It was probably pretty tentative at first. But when Valco/Kay went under, options were running out. In around 1970 they introduced a “copy” of the Ampeg Dan Armstrong “See-Through” guitar called The Electra. This coincided with the rise of the copy era, and it wasn’t long before Electra was competing with Ibanez for the “beginner” market and beyond. One advantage they had was that they hired a guitar designer named Tom Presley who started designing guitars and supervising the manufacture of the electronics in St. Louis. From a certain point on, guitars came made by Matsumoku but without pickups, which were installed in the US. Those open-coil zebra pickups on Japanese Electras were American. Paul Yandell, who backed Chet Atkins, endorsed them.

Other stuff happened, but this brings us up to the early 1980s and the craze for pointy guitars. Two things happened in around 1983. One: SLM started playing with new pointy guitar designs. Two: SLM entered into a joint venture with Matsumoku and began a year-long process of taking over Matsumoku’s own brand name Westone.

1983 Electra Lady XV1RD Electric Guitar

There were a bunch of different radical designs introduced by SLM, including this Lady (obvious name!). All had the same hardware and electronics, but different shapes. The shapes speak for themselves. The cool thing was the electronics. These had two humbuckers on either side of a reverse-wound single-coil. This was Presley’s idea from back in 1971. This was controlled by a 3-way with a master volume, two tone controls for the humbuckers, and three pull-up pots. The front pot tapped the humbuckers to single coil. The middle pot activated the middle reverse-wound single-coil, and the rear pot has an out-of-phase function. There are 11 possible pickup combinations, making this one of the most versatile tonal layouts ever invented. These are great, hot, swell-playing guitars! Comfortable too! If you like to sit down, as I do in my old age, this fits very nicely with a classical position. And relatively rare. According to Presley, fewer than 200 of these were ever made. This was not cheap either. Cost was $439.50 in 1984.

From 1983-84 SLM changed its brand from Electra to Electra-Westone to Westone. You see examples of these strange shapes under a variety of names. By 1985 this novel switching system was gone and the Superstrat form was adopted. Too bad. By 1987 or ’88 Singer Sewing Machines had bought Matsumoku and killed guitar production. SLM changed the brand to Alvarez (it’s acoustic brand) and switched production to other plants, including Korea.

It’s kind of funny in a way. Rock and roll has this image and reputation for being on the edge. You know, sex, drugs, throwing TV sets out of your hotel window. Yet if you look at it from a guitar point of view, things look way more conservative. The vast majority of guitar players like the classic old shapes. Not everyone, but most. Except every once in awhile things get turned on their heads. Like when this Electra Lady was made.

Electric Ladyland (1983 Electra Lady XV1RD Electric Guitar) from MyRareGuitars.com

Judging by many of my last few years guitar purchases (on Ebay and elsewhere), I’m the kind of a person who seems to think he’s the kind of a person who likes guitars with a lot of knobs and switches. I’ve bought several multi-pickup guitars. Old ones, new ones, new ones made to look like old ones (not those stupid “relic-ed” ones, though…I’m an idiot, but I’m not stupid). Yet, as I look at the keepers in my collection, I’ve only kept one guitar with more than four knobs, and none with more than two pickups. Odd.

Many of them have been beautiful – for instance, a white 4 pickup Kawai model. Slider switches for each of the 4 pickups, plus one of ON/OFF. Which struck me as strange, at best…why, after all, would you need to turn your guitar “off” unless you were doing that cool Morse-code deet-deet-deet noise at the end of the Clash’s “London Calling.” Wait, I may have answered my own question.

But back to the Kawai. It was a creamy white like Fender’s Olympic White, the pickups were all shiny chrome, and it had a pretty cool whammy bar with a chrome bridge cover. Rosewood fingerboard. A pretty snazzy looking guitar. I saw it and had to have it.

But, like pretty much every three or four pickup guitar I’ve ever owned, it was a pain to play live. Plus, one pickup setting seems to always sound better than the others (to me, usually the neck pickup). But, damned if I don’t fall for the pretty temptress of the multiple pickups every time. I sold it a month later, realizing it wasn’t as good sounding or reliable or easy to play as my main stage guitars.

Pretty much, I play shows with my two main guitars: My 1969 Telecaster and I get a lot of tonal variety from its two pickups (a ’66 DeArmond from a Harmony in the neck and an original bridge pickup), three position switch, and the volume knob. My other main stage guitar is my new(er) Eastwood Airline H 44 DLX. Again, a two-pickup guitar with a single volume and tone knob. Through either my Deluxe Reverb, or my Silvertone 1484, I can get a nice rock clean by rolling off the volume knob, and a great overdrive by turning up. No need for pedals. Simple and awesome tone.

But this piece is about the keeper. The one eBay find that has stayed in the rotation, yet is labored with a series of knobs, some of them even downright confusing knobs!

The multi-knobbed guitar I’ve finally found that’s plenty simple for live playing, and yet full of tonal options for the stage or studio is the 1962 Harmony Silvertone 1423L Jupiter model.

1962 Harmony Silvertone 1423L Jupiter Electric Guitar

For those unfamiliar with Harmony guitars, in their rough heyday from the 1940’s to the late 60’s (they did limp to a close in the mid 70’s, but most of their cool advances and designs in guitars are from the earlier years), they were, for my money, the most underrated American guitar company going. While, yes, they mass-produced guitars more than anyone else (in one year alone, they made more guitars than all other American guitar companies combined in that same year), they were frequently great playing and great sounding instruments.

There are a variety of great and affordable vintage Harmonys, and many of the top of the line models are great professional guitars. There are exceptions to the general rule, but most Harmony collectors like to go after the models with the block inlay necks. There are some knockout dot-neck models though that have recently gone through the roof, price-wise (such as the original H44 Stratotones popularized by Rick Holmstrom, Junior Watson, Tom Waits now going for over two grand a pop). But, as I said, those are the exceptions – most of the collectable Harmony guitars are the block inlay neck models, such as the H62’s (big jazz box), H75-78’s (thinline archtop three pickup models), and the Silvertone 1446L (Chris Isaac models), among others.

Vintage Harmony H44 Stratotone Electric Guitar

And also, to add to that list of great guitars, the Silvertone 1423L Jupiter and its sibling with the Harmony label, the H49 Jupiter. These are remarkably versatile and great sounding guitars. They sport two DeArmond (Rowe Industries) pickups, with a volume and tone for each along with a three position selector. The difference? There’s a fifth knob – the rare ‘blender” switch, engaged when the three-potion toggle is in the middle (both pickups) position.

And what is a “blender” switch? It’s like having a wah-wah knob when the two pickups are engaged. It has at least a couple of uses. One is as a standard wah-wah sound. Play a note while wrapping your pinky around the knob, spin it back and forth and you have a classic wah. OR, set it wherever you like in its tonal sweep and come up with a stunning variety of tones from the two pickups blended. A truly wild feature of the blender is that it seems to tone down the hotness of the pickups, so that you have a slightly cleaner, groove tone on the two pickups, and more of a rock and roll/blues bite and grind on the them when they’re used separately.

And the sound of those pickups when used by themselves! A booming, bluesy grind on the neck pickup, with a ton of aggressive bottom and lush mids along with the bite. The bridge pickup is one of the truly great rock and roll sounds. And these tones are really easy to access when playing live. One of the few multi knob guitars ever made that is user-friendly and easy to dial in when you need a great tone as there’s really not a bad setting to be found on it. These guitars can go from rolled-off mellow jazz to snarling rock with very little effort.

Add to this a very easy playing neck and an astoundingly light guitar (these are semi-hollowbody, yet not neck-heavy), and you have one of the great values in vintage guitars. Another nice feature of this model is that it isn’t prone to the same squealing feedback some of the Rockets and H-series thinlines are at high volumes. Great as those guitars are (and my H72 is maybe my favorite thinline ever), they can be very sensitive to higher volume playing. Not so with the H49/Jupiter.

And on top off all this, both versions, the Silvertone and the Harmony, are great looking guitars. The H49’s are Spruce or Maple-topped in a golden natural wood grain with one of the coolest tortoise shell pickguard schemes, ever (just around the pickups and for the five mini-knobs in gold and the white three-way toggle). The 1423L Jupiters are finished in a sparkle-black top with a white pickguard only around the five mini-black knobs and the three way toggle. Both are lookers, with the H49’s seeming to go for more on the vintage market than the Silvertone. This may be for no other reason than supply, as the Silvertones show up on eBay about two to three times more often than the H49’s.

Either way, if you can find one for a decent price (currently the $500 range for a player and more for a mint show piece, of course), they are a far more versatile and better looking and sounding guitar than a new Strat that would set you back a similar amount of bucks. Plus, they’ll go up in value.

And, of course, they have a blender knob!

1962 Harmony Silvertone 1423L Jupiter Electric Guitar from MyRareGuitars.com

Vintage 1965 Pinoy Jazzmaster Electric Guitar

Say what? You read that right. Pinoy, by the way, is an adjective often used to describe things Philippine. You see, from the Spanish American War in 1898 until 1992 the island nation known as the Philippines (named by 16th-Century Spanish “discoverers” for King Philip) was the home of the largest US military presence in Southeast Asia. 1898 because after Teddy Roosevelt and his Rough Riders beat the Spanish in the Caribbean, the US acquired the Philippines as territory from Spain. This actually didn’t please the Filipinos very much, and after numerous attempts, the Philippines finally gained its independence from the US in 1946. However, the Americans kept a huge Navy base – the world’s largest at Subic Bay next to Olangopo City on the western side of the main island, not far from Manila.

It was from this vast Naval base that much of the Viet Nam War was staged. Many of the soldiers passed through Subic on their way to Viet Nam and many more spent some of their R&R there. As you can well imagine, with such a large presence of young American men on the island, a number of industries sprang up around the base to serve them. Among those endeavors was a thriving cottage industry of forging copies of American guitars which were then sold to probably inebriated Americans, some of whom brought their Pinoy prizes, like this Jazzmaster, home with them. Apparently the main center of this activity was the town of San Fernando, which lies halfway between Olangopo and Manila.

Vintage 1965 Pinoy Jazzmaster Electric Guitar

These Philippine forgeries are quite remarkable. Not so much because they’re great guitars, but more for the ingenuity that went into fabricating them. When we say “cottage industry,” we mean cottage. These were made by families in garage workshops. Without very much in the way of equipment. And without very much in the way of most of the materials used by guitar manufacturers!

Like, for instance, maple. Maple is a northern hardwood. The Philippines are tropical islands in the South China Sea. Basically what they have is mahogany. Basically what these guitars were made of was mahogany. Need maple for a neck? You take some bleach and make some maple-colored mahogany. And basically everything on these guitars was hand-made. Hand-made frets. Hand-made pickups. Hand-made pickup covers. A hand-made copy of a Fender vibrato. Some of these even had hand-made logos. Obviously they had access to some electronic parts such as switches and volume and tone controls, but most everything else was made out in the garage.

Vintage 1965 Pinoy Jazzmaster Electric Guitar

This particular example is unusual for having no logo. The neck is bleached mahogany, with a mahogany body. The fingerboard actually is rosewood. The bridge is wood with a bone saddle. Even the case is a tolex-covered “copy” of a Fender case.

This guitar probably looked pretty good after half a dozen or so Pabst Blue Ribbons, but it’s really more interesting as an artifact from the glory days of Subic Bay. This particular guitar was probably built in the mid-1960s when the Jazzmaster was Fender’s top of the line. It’s quite playable, just not exactly what it seems!

There’s no telling how many of these Philippine forgeries came back to the US with GIs. I’ve seen a couple of them. The bleached mahogany neck is almost always the tell-tale sign that you’ve got a guitar from a San Fernando garage. Whether or not forged guitars continue to be made in Philippine garages today is unknown, though apparently the evidence of the trade can still be found. Apparently this trade thrived at least from the early 1960s until the US finally closed down Subic Bay and turned it over to the Philippine government in 1992. Calling this relic from the Viet Nam War era a “Fender Jazzmaster copy” may not be as clever as the young lady’s dating of World War I, but it still makes a pretty good anecdote!

Of Forgeries and War! (1965 Pinoy Jazzmaster Electric Guitar) from MyRareGuitars.com

1984 Peavey Razer Electric Guitar

I’ve always been a sucker for an unusual shape in a guitar. I love the classic lines of a Les Paul or the balanced vision of a Strat. But give me something really oddball and I go for it! So, when I came across the Peavey Razer, how could I resist?

Guitars are musical instruments. But, let’s face it, they’re also fashion statements. What you tote on stage says something about your persona. And just as fashions change from Spandex to blue jeans, rages for certain types of guitars come and go. Often tastes go in cycles. Once in awhile it comes around to weird shapes.

1984 Peavey Razer Electric Guitar

One such weird cycle occurred in the early 1980s. In fact, the period from around 1983 or so until about 1985-86 may have been the golden age of weirdness. Wierdness was present in the ’60s, but it may have been as much a product exuberant exploration as response to demand. The ’70s were dominated by the conservative designs of Gibson, for the most part. Models like the Iceman or Moonsault were more anomalies than anything else.

Exotic guitars were the stuff of metal. In the late ’70s serious rock fans abandoned classic metal and arena rock for punk. Pop rock fans opted for New Wave. While the latter had some darned good guitar playing at times, it wasn’t really guitar-oriented. Then in the early ’80s metal caught on in Europe and the U.K. What was called the New Wave of British Heavy Metal spawned a host of guitar-oriented bands. Many, like Germany’s Michael Schenker, liked Vees or Explorers with fancy graphic paint jobs. The music was in your face. Guitar solos were de rigueur. Having an unusual guitar was part of your statement, part of being out there. Hence the Peavey Razer.

1984 Peavey Razer Electric Guitar

The Razer was actually part of a trio of guitars introduced by Peavey in 1983-84. Hartley Peavey’s company had been primarily an amp manufacturer until the introduction of the T-60 guitar and T-40 bass in 1978, the world’s first guitars made on numerical carving machines. A number of models more or less in that mode followed. Then in ’83 came the Razer and the Mystic. The Razer was shaped, as you can see, like an electric razer! The Mystic was inspired by the creations of B.C. Rich. Either at the same time or in early ’84 these two were joined by the Mantis, which was basically a modification of the Dean ML hybrid of an Explorer and a Vee.

These are really quite nice guitars! They featured Peavey’s patented bilaminated maple neck, with laminates running in opposite directions to increase stability. By this time Peavey was using its Super Ferrite twin blade Humbuckers. These pickups scream! The controls are one volume and two tones, with a coil tap built into the tone controls. Vibratos were just coming on at the time, and this guitar sports Peavey’s Octave Plus unit.

I’m not sure if these guitars made it to 1985 or not. Nor is it known if many were made, but they don’t show up very often, so probably not many exist.

The Razer may have been the weirdest guitar ever built by Peavey, but it probably doesn’t win the all-time weird award. That would be a matter of taste! But it’s certainly comes from one of the weirdest inspirations, a shaver. Well, there was that Gibson Futura of the same period inspired by a can opener. Or was that Pac Man??!

A Close Shave with Fame (1984 Peavey Razer Electric Guitar) from MyRareGuitars.com

1968 Danelectro Sears Silvertone Electric Guitar

These were cheap, crap box guitars made at a price point to that every kid who saw the Beatles on Ed Sullivan could get one for whatever holiday or birthday was next. They were product, churned out at an alarming rate. They were also, lucky for us, pretty damn cool sounding little guitars.

So, a “rare Silvertone” is a bit of an oxymoron. The best Michael Bay film. A tall jockey. The thinnest sumo wrestler. The most competent politician in Washington. The least annoying morning DJ, and so on.

But by 1968, the post-Beatle guitar boom of 64-66 had waned. The wave had crested and you started to see some of the biggest names in little guitars (Kay, Valco, Danelectro) starting to suffer and, within a year, all die quiet deaths. (Chicago enormo-manufacture Harmony would slump on into the early 70’s before limping to a public auction death knell in 1975).

1968 Danelectro Sears Silvertone Electric Guitar

In their last years, all of these companies would make some changes, hoping desperately to cling to their former market share. In Dano”s case, the biggest change when ownership switched hands to MCA in 1966 was the end of the poplar and Masonite guitars that had so defined the Neptune maker”s sound for over ten years. The last year and a half, Danelectro produced actual WOOD guitars, the top of the line being the classic 3 pickup Vinnie Bell signature model with the wonderfully psychedelic pickguard and the zippy quick neck.

The bottom of the line? The wood one-pickup Silvertone model from the Amp-in-Case line. This was still called the 1448 in the 1968 SEARS catalog, but it is a slightly different sounding little beast from its earlier and more prevalent semi-hollow 1448’s. The AC/DC (sans power transformer) amp in the case is the same (not nearly as cool at the great 1457’s single-ended 6V6-driven amp with tremolo. BUT, this guitar is arguably a better little axe than its predecessors. It’s at least as good and different enough that you should get one if you can.

It’s a killer blues and garage guitar. The skate key tuners hold surprisingly well, so long as you drop some graphite (or the lube of your choice) on the sticky, but great sounding, aluminum nut. The rosewood bridge is just like on the older models… simple, but effective. And, of course, the key to the tone is still there – the brilliant lipstick tube low-output (with plenty of volume…ohms ratings and volume are not the same) Danelectro pickup is worth all of the hype it receives. There’s just nothing quite like them, and if you want that full voiced twang and snap…well, you need an original lipstick Dano. There is truly no substitute.

1968 Danelectro Sears Silvertone Electric Guitar

And in a wooded solidbody, rather than the more common (and great, make no mistake) hollow Masonite-topped models, the pickup really shines. Crank your amp and turn up the guitar volume for some great smooth overdrive. Roll back the volume knob and the guitar cleans up, while retaining its treble response (unlike many great vintage garage guitars like Harmonys, which get muddy and murky very fast with their original volume knobs turned down at all). This is a clear, clean and articulate tone monster that responds well to every amp in the house (at least in this house of too many amps, it does).

The short scale makes for easy playing, smooth bends and surprisingly good intonation up the neck when set up well. Plus, this model, like later Danos, has a very cool, very figured fretboard for a “budget” instrument. And, of course, it comes, like its older Masonite siblings, in a wonderfully cheesy black metaflake finish.

This is one pawn shop surprise you should pick up when and if you see it. Like I said, they’re rare – or they’re “Silvertone Rare” at any rate. They show up on eBay a LOT less often than the standard, more common 1448’s, so if you see one in good playable shape, do yourself a favor and dig this last-of-the-breed from Neptune.

1968 Danelectro Sears Silvertone Electric Guitar from MyRareGuitars.com

1981 O'Hagan Shark Custom Electric Guitar

I didn’t really pay much attention to electric guitars during the 1970s and early ’80s – I had my face glued to 18th and 19th Century guitar music – but I did peruse the pages of Guitar Player. It was there that I first laid my eyes on a curious guitar called the O’Hagan Shark. I didn’t think much about it at the time, but once I’d been bitten by guitar collecting, a shark immediately showed up on my radar – uh, sonar – screen. Back then, no one was looking for O’Hagan Sharks, so I had no trouble scaring one up cheap. This was back in those pre-internet days when you eagerly looked for the next catalog mailer from big dealers.

I got one in black, but I think something was changed out on it, so I swapped it for this all-original Custom. I never liked black guitars anyway. That it looked like its namesake was obvious, but what the heck had I gotten? This set me on one of those classic investigations. I got some brochures and learned that they were made in the Land of 10,000 Lakes. A few calls to local guitar dealers led me to none other than Jerrel (or Jerol, aka Jerry) O’Hagan himself, the designer of the Shark and the other guitars offered by the Jemar Corporation of the Minneapolis suburb of St. Louis Park. Jerry filled in the blanks for me.

1981 O'Hagan Shark Custom Electric Guitar

O’Hagan had been a music teacher specializing in clarinet in the Twin Cities area in the early 1970s, and then became a music sales rep. As a rep he discovered high-quality Yamaki acoustics from Japan and in ’75 went into business importing them as Grande guitars. Unfortunately, he was just in time to see demand for acoustics evaporate. Out of that failed venture came the idea of making good, affordable electrics in the US to compete with Japanese imports. The O’Hagan Shark was born in 1979.

Whether or not the “Shark” name came before or after the design is unknown, but Jerry was inspired by Gibson’s Explorer. Again, whether or not he intended it, his new Shark was more comfortable than an Explorer to play sitting down. The notion of improving on Gibson was being pursued at the same time by Dean Zelinsky (Dean) and Jol Dantzig (Hamer) a few hundred miles down the pike in Chicago.

1981 O'Hagan Shark Custom Electric Guitar

O’Hagan Sharks were a pretty good compromise between high-end guitar and affordable. They were neck-through-body and sported top-notch Schaller hardware and hot Mighty Mite humbuckers. By the time this guitar was made, they’d switched to DiMarzios. Brass appointments to increase sustain. The mini-toggle is a phase switch. Early examples often featured fancy woods, though they got plainer by the time of this guitar. Later Sharks featured Schaller pickups. Bottom line: O’Hagan Sharks are really nice guitars! Comfortable, hot, flexible. Way cool!

A number of other O’Hagan models were introduced, including the double- and single-cut NightWatch, the Twenty Two (Flying V), and Laser (Bizarro Strat). A lot of custom options were offered. Problems inevitably developed and notes were called in, O’Hagan was broke, and the I.R.S. liquidated it all in 1983.

Only about 3000 O’Hagans were ever made, most Twenty Twos. There were only about 100-150 Sharks. All are pretty rare. Sharks (and Lasers) are the coolest. With tons of bite, like you’d expect from a maneater from Minneapolis!

This Guitar Bites (1981 O’Hagan Shark Custom Electric Guitar) from MyRareGuitars.com

1987 Cort Dragon Electric Guitar

Well, it’s always best to go to the source when you have a mystery (if you can), so I called Jack Westheimer to get the true story about my find. Jack’s name, unlike Leo or Orville, is probably not on most guitar fan’s lips, but he brought us Teisco (and other brand) guitars from Japan at a time when most folks in America didn’t think much about products from the Orient. There’s a whole lot more to this story that we don’t have time to get into here, but, long story short, Jack transferred from pioneering guitars in Japan to pioneering guitars in Korea. He took his Japanese Cortez guitars to the Peninsula in 1973, partnering with Yung H. Park, to create Cort guitars. Today they are one of the world’s top guitarmakers, and many Cort guitars are quite simply excellent instruments.

However, as you might expect, this quality achievement did not happen overnight. By Westheimer’s own assessment, it wasn’t until the mid-1980s that they felt quality was at a competitive level. But how to show it? He needed a guitar to make an impact on the U.S. market.

1987 Cort Dragon Electric Guitar

It was one day in around 1986 or ’87 while pondering this problem that Jack took a walk through an outdoor market that thrived outside the factory. There he encountered some of those gift boxes inlaid with fabulous pearl and abalone dragons. Maybe this was just the ticket. After a few inquiries he learned that the inlay work was done by craftsmen on a small island. He decided to take some Cort Strat and Explorer copies and have them inlaid with dragons.

1987 Cort Dragon Electric Guitar

What do they say about the litter on the road to success? Despite his best intentions, the project was doomed. The cost of the inlay was reasonable, but Cort had to finish the bodies, carefully pack them up, ship them to the village where the work was done, then have them shipped back, touch up any dings, then proceed to clear-coat and complete the guitar. By the time you added up all the extra handling, the guitars had to be sold for a pretty penny once they arrived Stateside. Dealers wouldn’t pay the freight for a Korean guitar, no matter how fancy.

1987 Cort Dragon Electric Guitar

Their loss was my gain. This is a swell little guitar with neck-through construction (my favorite) and even if it didn’t play well, which it does, it would be fun to stare at all day!

The Cort Dragons are pretty rare, uh, dragons. About 400 Explorers and 100 Strats (StoStats) were built in 1987. Most were Corts, but some came labeled Lotus. Of those, most were made with laminated bodies like this one; only 50 were made of solid timbers toward the end of the run.

In the long run, it only took time, consistency – and a mature global economy – to secure Cort’s reputation. They didn’t need the Dragons. But this one, at least, ended up in my treasure hoard, and every time I open the case it’s like Chinese New Year to me!

Celebrating the Chinese New Year, Korean Style (1987 Cort Dragon Electric Guitar) from MyRareGuitars.com

1965 Avanti Electric Guitar

It’s amazing how little you know when you’re in the middle of things. Especially when you’re young. Even though I was prime-time ’60s, I didn’t really become aware of Italian guitars until I began writing about them several decades later and, with a personal attachment to Milwaukee, learned of the Lo Duca Brothers and EKO guitars. It was talking with the Lo Ducas that I learned of the accordion connection. Duh.

That’s because those very accordions I’d hated as a kid were the equivalent of what the guitar became a decade later. Very popular. And very Italian. The piano accordion “with keyboards instead of buttons” was invented in Vienna in 1863 and brought to the area of Castelfidardo on the eastern coast of Italy. The instrument was embraced and a lively accordion manufacturing industry grew up in the area. It’s still a major center. While accordions were also made in Germany and Sweden, the vast majority played during the 1950s were from Italy.

1965 Avanti Electric Guitar

As fate would have it, the rage for accordions in the US at least passed by the mid-’50s. Accordion makers struggled to replace the lost business. Lucky for them Baby Boomers like me came along with a taste for playing guitars. Doubly lucky for them, there was a long tradition of guitarmaking in the same part of Italy. When the American electric guitar market exploded in the early 1960s, the Italians were among the first European sources of guitars for meeting the demand. One of the hallmarks of early accordions was the use of plastic covering. Thus it was natural that, when switching to guitars, they should be plastic covered, which brings us back to this Avanti.

Avanti guitars were probably made by the Polverini Brothers of Castelfidardo for European Crafts of Los Angeles beginning in late 1964. For this one, they chose a really cool rootbeer-barrel colored faux-rosewood plastic covering. Most early Italian guitars had either pushbutton or rocker controls adapted from accordions, but this is unusual with a fourway rotary select that let you choose each pickup individually or all at once. All in all a sensible arrangement. Whether the pickups are really humbuckers or single-coil is unknown, but they have that bright ’60s sound, and, anyhow, you really want an Avanti because it looks like rootbeer candy.

1965 Avanti Electric Guitar

Italian guitars continued to be plastic-covered through 1965 or so. By 1966 guitar players were becoming more discriminating and Italian guitars switched to more conventional finishes. Though not for long. Rising wages and slacking demand, plus implacable competition from Japanese guitarmakers, led to the demise of Italian guitars by 1968 at the latest, at least in the American market.

Since discovering these plastic-covered marvels I’ve become more interested in the piano accordions that spawned them. I’ve even contemplated picking one up to play it. But one thing they haven’t done. And that’s change my opinions about watching the Lawrence Welk show, no matter how wonaful it may actually have been.

Unexpected Eye Candy (1965 Avanti Electric Guitar) from MyRareGuitars.com

Back in the day Kay was actually called Stromberg-Voisinet and actually produced the first documented electric guitar, the Stromberg Electro, in 1928. Good idea but it had some problems and promptly disappeared. Kay didn’t exactly rush back into electrics with any alacrity, but after the War, when it became clear that the electric Spanish guitar was going to be viable, Kay took the plunge like everyone else. Some of its guitars from the 1950s, like the Thin Twin, are classics of the era, though a little stodgy.

1965 Kay K350 Titan I Electric Guitar

By the ’60s guitar boom, of course, Kay was pumping out trainloads of guitars. The market for these mainly beginner-level electric guitars was, of course, young Baby Boomers. By around 1960 Kay was making attempts at upgrading its image to a hipper one, with truly ugly guitars like the Solo King or “State of Ohio” guitar that we’ve talked about before. One of Kay’s improvements was the adoption of chrome plastic pickup covers with etched lines often called “Kleenex boxes” by collectors. They look cheesy to me, but cool cheesy, in a tacky sort of way, if you know what I mean.

But it’s really all about that headstock. Someone at Kay thought they needed to hippify the heads on their solidbodies and came up with what many collectors call the “bushwhacker” design. No chance of being sued by Fender on this puppy! What’s particularly amazing about it is that it must have been a bear to produce. The lower edge or throat is beveled away from the face, while the tip on the upper side is also beveled out, but just beyond the tuner buttons. There’s a ton of carving here in the days before numerical carving machines.

1965 Kay K350 Titan I Electric Guitar

The head, as goofy as it is, isn’t the only impressive feature of the Titan. Those angled double parallelogram inlays are real pearl. Routing for those much have been fun. Then dig the body. Again with the bevels. Everywhere! On a two-piece solid mahogany body. With a good, tight, snug fit for the neck.

And, I guess while I’m complaining, who could love that awful plastic Kay logo? I guess someone did.

1965 Kay K350 Titan I Electric Guitar

In any case, this all came together in 1965 to form the Kay Titan I, a remarkably nice little guitar despite it’s looks. Technically, the Kay Titan I lasted only one year, although it was still around as the Kay Titan II beginning in 1966, when the juke box company Seeburg purchased the company. Little other than names changed with the Seeburg possession, so they obviously didn’t have any objection to bushwhacking or plastic parts. But then again, have you ever seen a juke box? Also cool, but hardly models of high art or great aesthetic taste. More like, “Hey, look at me!”

Come to think of it, maybe it’s NOT the goofy headstock or plastic parts that make this guitar odd. Maybe it’s the really nice mahogany that’s the problem. Maybe the Titan I just needed some pink and green lights and a mirror-ball finish to complete the “Hey, look at me”… Oh well, let’s face it, if guitar designers didn’t come up with some klinkers once in awhile we wouldn’t have the fun of coming up with such goovy descriptions as Kleenex box and bushwhacker.

Bushwhacked by the Past (1965 Kay K350 Titan I Electric Guitar) from MyRareGuitars.com

1963 Framus Television 5/118 Electric Guitar

What I’d gotten in that dark, dusty Philadelphia guitar shop was a 1965 Framus Strato Deluxe, essentially a solidbody version of the hollowbody 1963 Framus Television 5/118 shown here.

Now, you have to be careful about ethnic stereotypes, but since I’m half German, perhaps I may be permitted to agree that there is a Teutonic affinity for engineering. I see it in myself. You see it in German cars. And you see it in German guitars from the golden age of the 1960s like these Framus’ better models!

1963 Framus Television 5/118 Electric Guitar

Germany has a long history of instrument making going back at least to Medieval times. Framus, short for Franconian Musical Instruments, dates to 1946 when Fred Wilfer set up shop in the American controlled part of Germany in Bavaria. While they made lots of different instruments, by the mid-1950s guitars were Framus’ main product, mainly for exportation. After the Beatles hit, the American market for electric guitars mushroomed and Framus became an early supplier of the demand. Their primary American distributor was Philadelphia Music.

’60s Japanese guitars copied this neck notion. Framus was also known for its light-touch vibratos, augmented by a flip-up bridge mute for rhythm work.

1963 Framus Television 5/118 Electric Guitar

But the main attraction of Framus guitars was under the hood, in the electronics. Powered with three fat single-coil pickups, each operated by its own sliding on-off switch. Then of course there was a master volume and three tone controls, with separate on-off switches to bypass tone controls on the neck and bridge pickups.

But best of all was the spigot, known officially as the ‘Orgeltone,’ or Organ Tone, a manual tremolo with, of course, its own on-off switch. Can’t have too many of those! Basically the spigot was a volume pot that was reverse wired and spring loaded. The spigot was simply a hefty hook that you wrapped your right pinky around. As you picked the strings, you curled your pinky up and down to modulate the volume downward (reverse). The effect is a lot like an onboard Hammond organ! Orgeltone! It takes a little practice and coordination, but once mastered it’s a pretty cool low-tech engineering effect.

Framus guitars thrived as low-cost alternatives in the US until cheaper Japanese guitars and higher European labor costs phased them out. By that time the Orgeltone was also history. Gone but not forgotten, because whenever I feel like it I can limber up my pinky and let the tremolo kick in for a nifty doppelganger effect. And bring back fond memories of my first encounter with German electric guitars that fateful day in that Philly guitar shop when I was first introduced to the spigot!

A Nice Faucet But Can You Play It? (1963 Framus Television 5/118 Electric Guitar) from MyRareGuitars.com

Vintage 1965 Teisco TRG-2L Electric Guitar

Like in most major TV markets, the stations where I live have a roving reporter who gets to go around and do stories on the strange and unusual. You know, pieces about people obsessed with carving pumpkins at Halloween and guys with like 8,000 Lionel trains their basements. I guess I fell into the latter category. Somehow one of these reporters found me out and called to do a story on the weirder parts of my guitar collection. Some might argue that’s the whole thing, but he meant the old Kays and Harmonies and Teiscos he remembered from his youth. I reluctantly agreed and he said “Ok, bring a couple hundred of them into your living room.” Right. You gonna carry them? Expletive deleted. But I picked about 30 or so and spread them around.

Vintage 1965 Teisco TRG-2L Electric Guitar

Anyhow, on the appointed day the reporter showed up, interviewed me, and started making fun of my guitars. As he worked the room he got to this Teisco with the built-in amp. He threw the switch and hit a chord. Vroo-crackle, crackle. It crapped out. On TV. Ho, ho, ho. More mirth. Oh, great. Doh!

Vintage 1965 Teisco TRG-2L Electric Guitar

Then again, maybe having an amp built in to your guitar is something to laugh at. The idea isn’t new. Back in the 1930s both National and Harmony, at least, built cases with amps for their lap steels. But it was left to modern transistorized electronics, and the Japanese application of them to the earliest consumer products, to put the amp into the guitar itself. The result was this TRG-2L, one of several models introduced in 1965 that had a small amp and 3″ speaker built in, operated by two 9-volt batteries. These came in a kind of Stratish shape and a sort of Tele-ish shape. One or two pickups. These were the first of their kind.

Ok, the TV performance aside, these actually do work and are kind of fun to play. You can walk around the house and strum without the tether of a cord. Wanna go to the beach? No need for a plug to entertain that campfire circle. Louie Louie, Oh yeah, we gotta go now. (Or were there other words?) And, like most Japanese guitars from this period, they’re really quite well made – and play well – once you set them up properly. The body is solid mahogany (maple neck), and, in case you’re not at a pig roast, there’s even a headphone jack if you want to use this as a practice guitar.

Vintage 1965 Teisco TRG-2L Electric Guitar

Of course, practice and Pignose amps came much later. But guitars like this Teisco were revolutionary in their time and are still fun to play. You can even run them through a regular amp if you want to make a different kind of impression.

Although you might not want to do it on TV. If these early Japanese guitars have a flaw, it’s in the use of extremely thin wire and economical use of solder. Easy to get that crackle, crackle when you least want it. I’m told the video of me trying to salvage some respect for my goofy guitars still circulates occasionally on late-night Philly airwaves (and cable whatever they are). At least it wasn’t me who lost it on TV! Blame it on time and the Teisco. And that darned cynical reporter.

Losing It in TV? (1965 Teisco TRG-2L Electric Guitar) from MyRareGuitars.com

1978 Kawai KS-700 Electric Guitar

It was 115 degrees in the shade – of which there is none – in Las Vegas, the city that never sleeps. I was there for a scientific conference and found myself with an open early afternoon before the next session. I’d heard about this hot strip club on the edge of town and thought, “What could it hurt to spend an hour or so enjoying the local sights?” So I hopped a bus and headed out toward the desert. I got off the bus and walked toward the club door full of anticipation. Doors opened in about 2 hours. Right!

1978 Kawai KS-700 Electric Guitar

Then heaven intervened. I turned my gaze across the street and what should I see? Two blocks (two blocks!) of pawn shops! Hmm. Let’s see. Beautiful naked girls. The chance of a guitar find. It took about 2 seconds to place that bet! A sure thing was calling!

A number of interesting possibilities presented themselves before the spirit led me to a dark corner in a cage and this Kawai. I didn’t know what it was, but I knew it was cool and I’d never seen another. Done.

What I’d found was a cool 1978 Kawai KS-700, a rare artifact from that brief period in time in the late 1970s when the realities of global guitar trade were finally hitting home. The “copy era” had revealed both the excellent skills of Japanese guitar makers and the lack of direction of the American establishment. This culminated in the famous 1977 lawsuit of Norlin (Gibson) v. Elger (Ibanez) that put at least a temporary end to copying. Japanese companies rushed into the breach with a number of original designs, many inspired more or less by the popularity of Alembic at the time (think Musician, Rev-Sound, etc.).

1978 Kawai KS-700 Electric Guitar

This Kawai was part of that response, but also but reflects an earlier related development. As early as 1975, the Japanese, feeling confident in their abilities, wanted to establish more of a Japanese design identity. The result was both some of the most interesting “conventional” solidbodies of the ’70s – like the Ibanez Artist, Aria Prototype, and Yamaha SGs – and some of the more curious designs, including the Ibanez (and Greco) Iceman, the Lucky Cat guitar, the legendary Kawai Moonsault and others, all decidedly Japanese.

The Kawai KS-700 shows all the “natural” predilections that surrounded the Alembic aesthetic (the brown sunburst), plus overtones of guitars such as the Artist. Unlike many of its contemporaries, this features passive rather than active electronics (the mini toggle is a coil tap), though the amount of shielding is remarkable. But what makes this really cool is the head treatment, which reflects the Japanese design movement. Use of the retro slotted headstock allowed Kawai to create a design inspired by the Torii gates that mark the entrance to Shinto shrines. No way Gibson could mistake this puppy for trademark infringement! Talk about a statement!

The Kawai KS-700 was only made until 1980. It’s not even certain that it was ever marketed in the US. I’ve never seen another. How it made its way to a pawn shop across from a strip joint in Sin City remains a mystery. But one thing’s sure, if someone’s hand hadn’t closed the doors of that strip joint in the heat of day, this nifty guitar never would have made its way into my hands. And that would have been a sin.

The Wages of Sin (1978 Kawai KS-700 Electric Guitar) from MyRareGuitars.com

To own an original Bigsby electric you’d probably need a quarter mil of the ready. But maybe not! You might be lucky enough to find one of Bigsby’s Magnatone creations for a heckuva lot less.

1956 Bigsby Magnatone Mark III Electric Guitar

Magnatone’s True Vibrato appeared in 1956, the same year a lesser known event occurred in that storied company’s history. That was when they contracted with one of the legends of guitar history, Paul Bigsby, to design a line of electric Spanish guitars for them. Magnatone had been a major player in the Hawaiian lap steel game ever since its founding by the Dickerson Brothers back in the late 1930s in L.A. We all know Bigsby as the inventor of the hand vibrato that still bears his name. But he also gets credit for making the first ‘solidbody’ electric guitar for Merle Travis in 1947 (it was actually semi-hollow). The same guitar that another amp guy named Leo Fender took quite an interest in shortly before coming up with his Broadcaster.

1956 Bigsby Magnatone Mark III Electric Guitar

Bigsby’s first “commercial” design for Magnatone was the Mark III, a neck-through-body semi-hollow guitar, Bigsby’s take on a Ricky Combo. We know some of these were built because one turned up a few years back at an L.A.-area yard sale (how often have you had that fantasy!). But it appears that Magnatone’s production folks made some changes and almost all that are found with solid bodies and a glued-in neck with a “tongue” extension that slips in under the neck pickup. The formica pickguard and Daka-Ware knobs are a little dated now, but back in ’56 they were strictly the cat’s pajamas!

The Magnatone Mark IIIs are pretty cool, but aren’t truly professional guitars, like the spectacular Mark V that followed in 1957. These actually garnered a bunch of professional endorsements. Nevertheless, all these Bigsby Magnatones were among the better guitars of the 1950s.

1956 Bigsby Magnatone Mark III Electric Guitar

How many early Magnatones were actually produced is a mystery, and they didn’t seem to do that well. They were gone by 1958 and replaced in ’59 by a new line designed by former National exec Paul Barth, though no Magnatone guitars ever conquered the guitar world, even when guitar ace Jimmy Bryant endorsed them in the mid-1960s.

So, next time you?re prowling a back rack or a yard sale, keep your eyes peeled for one of these Magnatones. It’s a genuine Bigsby and, when you push the large single-coils through True Vibrato, you get a classic ’50s sound that takes you to paradise! True words of love!

Buddy Meets Bigsby (1956 Bigsby Magnatone Mark III Electric Guitar) from MyRareGuitars.com

1985 Ibanez XV500 Electric Guitar

It was a hot day in August and I was bored at work in Center City Philadelphia. Fortunately for me, no one paid attention to me at the office and that gig came with free parking. Parking with in and out privileges and no valet tips! Slip out a little before noon and you could be up I-95 in a flash, get off at Bridge Street, hang a right onto Torresdale just past the crab house and you were outside the fabled Torresdale Music where my friend Marvin held sway over piles of guitars and amps hanging and stacked everywhere in his little corner shop. It seems like a fantasy dream now.

1985 Ibanez XV500 Electric Guitar

I stepped out of the comfortable air conditioning of my car and entered the dusty tomb, like something out of Dickens. Marvin always had some sort of treasure hidden away in a stack of cases. You scan the tags and pulled out anything that caught your fancy. “What’s that?,” you ask coyly. That fateful day it was this Ibanez that greeted my gaze as I flipped open the case. Was it pink? Was it purple? Yes! One thing for sure, it sure the heck was pointy. I had no idea what it was, but I knew I had to have it. And, since I knew how Marvin coded his costs into his tags (backwards at the bottom), I walked out with my prize for two bucks.

But what did I have? As it turns out I had a relatively rare Ibanez, a relic from the hair band/pointy guitar era of the early 1980s. Fuji came up with this design toward the end of that craze and started production in January of 1985. Besides the nifty points everywhere (which are here miraculously intact), the basswood guitar features a two-tone metallic finish that splits the guitar diagonally between the pink and purple. How could you deny such a beauty? For two hundred.

1985 Ibanez XV500 Electric Guitar

Ok, but does it play? You bet. It’s well balanced and hot, with two V5 blade-pole humbuckers. Plus, Ibanez’ Pro Rock’r version of a locking top-mounted Kahler, my favorite setup. Not to mention other cool features like a slippery graphite nut and the ‘crystal cut’ edges. Oh, yeah.

In the BigCity, there’s a guitar for everyone and someone for every guitar. I guess like an eHarmony match I was one of the few for this baby. By the time this model bit the dust in November of 1985 only 626 had been made in this finish, with another 709 in I think it was a two-tone blue. I don’t know if this is a match forever like the folks think on the eHarmony commercials, but it’s the kind of guitar that’s my kind of guitar story from the BigCity.

Flip Flop Fantasy (1985 Ibanez XV500 Electric Guitar) 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

Now the next question you may ask is, “are there any guitars that will cut through coming from one of these Tweed amps?” I say yes, plug a Strat in that same Pro and see how awesome it sounds, thick yet trebly.

So the point of this column is, the choice of guitars is a primary decision – I don’t think there are many players out there saying “I wanna play a Twin Reverb what guitar should I get?” – and the amplifier choice is key in getting the sound you want. I am sure that there are some guitar strummers out there who would embrace the potential “mismatch” in guitar and amp symmetry, to assist in them finding there own voice. To this I say Cheerio! Always seek your own sound. Sometimes I believe that playing a Tele through a Twin Reverb can be a potentially intimidating experience as so many great guitar players have that combo as part of their signature sound.

So here are a few suggestions that seem to work for me.

Fender Vibrolux Amp (Blackface)

#1: Fender Blackface Vibrolux amp and most Gibson equipped guitars especially a Les Paul, an SG, or any ES series guitar.

This is a great combo for rock, blues, country, pop and even jazz at a low volume. This was originally brought to my attention by my friend and fellow Vermonter John Sprung (knower of all Fender amplifier lore, etc). And as always he was right, this combo sound great!

#2: Fender Brownface tremolo-equipped amp and a Stratocaster. This is a sound from the gods, an incredibly thick, full, hypnotic sound, not too dissimilar to Jimi’s sound using the Uni-Vibe but, I feel a more organic sound than even that striking sound. I do believe that when you start to overdrive this set-up from the front end with a pedal you do lose some of the clarity and basic integrity of this sound. If you don’t have a Brownface Fender and don’t want to change your primary amp you are now using just to get this sound, you might want to check out the Victoria Tremverb, it’s a tweed free standing unit ala the Fender Reverb unit but has the Brownface tremolo circuit also.

1974 Marshall 18-watt combo amp

#3: Marshall 18-watt combo amp and a Les Paul. Not much else to say here really, this sound will absolutely blow you away, it’s the sound we all marveled at on those early Clapton/ Peter Green recordings. I know a lot of you are saying that’s the “Bluesbreaker” sound and yes you are right it is but, I believe you can only get that sound from a hand-wired Bluesbreaker combo.

The new Reissue Marshall 1974x HW is the absolute balls! I own three of these and cannot tell you how happy I am with them. Get one!

Fender Twin Reverb Amp (Blackface)

#4: Fender Blackface Twin Reverb amp and a Fender Telecaster. Clean, toppy and true, baby. Your technique will show through with this set-up like no other. If you are confident and want to be heard this is true test. And please don’t fool yourself into thinking that this is a country exclusive combination, because it is not, ask Mike Bloomfield. Those of you familiar with his guitar lineage will know that before the great Bloomfield went to the “Burst” he played a Tele through a Twin for years. Again I will tell you that this set-up will work for blues, rock, country and yes, even jazz.

If you are looking for this sound in a more manageable context try the “Baby Twin” the BF Pro Reverb instead. It will sound similar but break up a bit easier, and a bit more “club owner friendly.”

Vox AC-30 Guitar Amp

#5: Vox AC-30 amp and the Rickenbacker 12-string and the Gretsch Chet Atkins Models. Yeah I know another no-brainer, but how could I speak on the guitar-amp relationship without discussing the perfect one. As a foolish young man I was heard to say on occasion “imagine if the Beatles had used Fender amps and Gibson guitars instead of those god awful sounding Gretsch’s.” Oh boy was that a moment of genius, heh?

The AC-30 and its Top Boost circuit helped the Gretsch cut through so well on those recordings while still remaining full and complete sounding across the frequency range of the guitar (a reoccurring theme in this column I’d say).

Now onto the Rick 12 and the ¾ scale 325 model that John Lennon favored in the early Beatle days. Both of these guitars were equipped with what has been called the “toaster pickups”, These pickups did not have a lot of output which only enhanced the “jangly” sound we all came to love back then. The AC-30 embraced this aspect and produced a clean but yet again strong sound with not much in the bass end but with plenty of treble and mids. Another seldom ignored aspect of this sound was the fact that the Ricks came with flatwound strings and were smart enough to supply the Lads with replacements.

Just a couple of quickies for you.

• Polytone Mini-Brute and a Gibson ES 175 (Joe Pass sound, but you can’t buy his technique, sorry!)
• Magnatone tremolo amp with a Stratocaster (if it’s good enough for Buddy Holly its good enough for me)
• Any cheapo hand wired amp from the early 60’s (Valco, Supro, Kalamazoo, take your pick) with a Danelectro lipstick pickup outfitted solid body guitar.
• And last but not least, a Tweed Fender Champ and any quality solid body guitar, cranked up to 10 baby!!!!

Feel free to email me some of your faves and I will include thrm in future columns.

Amplifiers: The Real Voice of the Electric Guitar from MyRareGuitars.com

1965 Alamo Fiesta 2586R Electric Guitar

If you’re like me, you totally missed Alamo guitars. I only became aware of them in the 1990s when a dealer friend of mine almost shyly revealed he had a whole collection of them in his basement.

Learning about Alamo guitars put me on the scent of a story and, with a tip from Chris at Krazy Kat Music, I found myself on the phone with one Charles Eilenberg, born in Newark, NJ, then living in San Antone. Eilenberg had studied electronics and after World War II was recruited by Milton Fink of Southern Music, the Texas publisher and distributor, to set up a manufacturing operation. In 1947 Alamo began making phonographs and battery-powered radios. Alamo guitars and amps entered the world in around 1949-50.

1965 Alamo Fiesta 2586R Electric Guitar

Alamo actually may have had higher pretensions to quality in the early days. Some of its early tube amps are pretty good and compare favorably to other smaller ’50s producers like Premier. But in around 1962 Alamo struck a distribution deal with C. Bruno & Son and basically began competing at the low end of the market, a poor man’s Danelectro (check out the bridge) or Harmony or Kay. Even Teisco. Their distribution appears to have been regional and spotty, which explains shy I’d never seen them before. Indeed, Eilenberg described a brisk trade South of the border, including into South America.

Early Alamos were somewhat inspired by Rickenbacker guitars, but by 1965 their designs had clearly gone over the top. In fact, it’s safe to say that, even in a whacky pack like that of the mid-’60s, Alamo guitars were among the boldest in America! Like this 1965 Alamo Fiesta Model 2586R!

1965 Alamo Fiesta 2586R Electric Guitar

While these look like solidbodies, they’re actually hollow, with birch plywood top and back over a hollow core, a construction method Alamo preferred until the final days, when true solids joined the line.

As cool as the Alamo eye candy is to look at, these pretty much play like you’d expect from road kill! Actually, the little single-coils are no worse than much other ’60s fare, but let’s just say they’re an acquired taste!

Pee Wee didn’t find his bike when he reached the Alamo because, as you’ll recall – in an epiphany of disappointment that ranks right up there with Voltaire’s injunction to tend your garden at the end of Candide – there’s no basement in the Alamo! For me, the Alamo basement treasures my friend introduced me to did let me reach Mr. Eilenberg, a lucky fate because before I was able to get his story into print, he’d passed away to meet his fate. If I hadn’t talked to him, we might never had been able to properly remember these Alamos.

Remember the Alamo! (1965 Alamo Fiesta 2586R Electric Guitar from MyRareGuitars.com

Rickenbacker 360/12 Old Style 12-String Electric Guitar

For me, it all started with the two Godfathers of the electric 12 string: George Harrison of the Beatles and Roger McGuinn of The Byrds. Obviously, the first ingredient is a great 12 string. The Granddaddy of them all is the Rickenbacker 12 string.

Ricks have been handmade in the same factory in Santa Ana, California for many years and if you can find a dealer that sells and stocks Rickenbacker, you will pay thousands of dollars and you may end up waiting many months for the model of your dreams. I waited 8 months for my 360/12 Old Style when I bought it in 1990.

If you play in a weekend band or jam with your friends, you may find that the electric 12 string, once you have done all of the mandatory Beatles, Byrds, Animals, Who, Tom Petty, R.E.M., and Smiths tunes, has a rather limited use for the rest of your repertoire. Or, maybe not. If you’re like me, you’d happily play the electric 12 all night!

12-String Guitarist: David Love & His Rickenbacker 12-string

Crank up the input gain, compress the bejeezuz out of your 12 string and jangle away!

Tone Secret Number One: Compression!

George Harrison’s great 12 string tone came from a combination of three things: his matchless technique, the venerable Vox AC 30, and the Altec limiter that was in the Abbey Road studios. The Vox, with its all-tube EL 84 platform and its GZ34 rectifier gives any guitar that creamy, brown, compression sustain and chime but it really sparkles when you play an electric12 through it.

The Altec limiter is an old tube-type studio compressor/limiter that squishes the sound at the mixing console and simply enhanced the sound of those old AC 30’s.

Roger McGuinn of The Byrds has said that his tone came from recording his Rickenbacker directly into the console and running it through not one, but two Pultec Limiters at the same time! Listen to the opening figure of “Mr.Tambourine Man” and you’ll hear those compressors squeezing away!

Now I know many of you don’t have George’s or Roger’s technique (neither do I), or access to old AC 30’s (that can cost upwards of $5,000 for collectible examples) or old pieces of studio gear like Altec or Pultec limiters, but you can achieve the same effect with a good quality stomp box compressor. My personal favourite is the Diamond Compressor made here in Canada but any good compressor will do: Keely, Ross, Analog Man, Barber, MXR DynaComp, and the old standby BOSS CS-2 or 3.

Tone Secret Number Two: Flatwounds!

I discovered this Tone Secret the day I got my Rickenbacker 12. I had played other makes of electric 12’s before but they had never produced “that sound” that my Rick had. What was different about it? The single coil pickups that come standard on a Rick? The way Rickenbacker arranged the strings with the root string on top and the octave string underneath?

Both of these things had an influence on the way it sounded but the most important difference to me was the strings. They were not round wound like 99% of the strings that are on the market these days: they were flat wound!

Back when George and Roger were young men (1964), and before the late Ernie Ball started making round wound light gauge guitar strings in California, almost everybody played flat wound strings – that’s what was widely popular and available at the time. Round wounds were available but it wasn’t until The Shadows made them popular that there was a demand for them in Europe. The best flat wound strings in the world came from Germany (and still do) and were sold under the brand names of Pyramid and Thomastik.

Rickenbacker in California was buying Pyramids from Germany at the time (presumably because of the relationship they enjoyed with West German music retailers who were selling Rickenbacker guitars) so that was the string that was being installed on Rickenbackers from the California factory in early ’63 and ’64. So, the sound you hear on Beatles, Byrds, and The Who recordings – those are flat wound strings! The great Pete Townsend refers to them as “tape wound”. He won’t play his 12 string with anything else but!
Pyramid strings are still available to this day (you can find them on the Internet) and Rickenbacker still sells their Number 95404 Compressed Medium Round Wound.

(ground wound) set for about $20.00 a set. I buy them by the box of 12 from a store in New York. I prefer the Rick strings: just a tad brighter than Pyramids.

Round wound strings on an electric 12 string sound like doo-doo. Too crashy and too clangy. Flat wounds or ground round wounds are the way to go if you want “that sound”. If you can’t find Rickenbacker strings where you live, your local music store probably sells or can order D’Addario Chrome singles in a flat wound with which you can assemble your own 12 string set.

The string gauge shipped on every new Rickenbacker is as follows from low to high:

• .042/.026
• .034/.020W
• .026/.013plain
• .020wound/.010
• .013/.013
• .010/.010.

12-String Guitarist: David Love & His Rickenbacker 12-string

Tone Secret Number Three: Use a light gauge pick!

Try it! It works! A medium is too stiff and , in my opinion, “sends” too much signal to the pickup. I have found that with a light gauge pick, you can strum harder but still have a sound that doesn’t break up from string distortion (over strumming).

That kind of vibe (string distortion) works great for, say, a PRS through a Dual Rectifier but not for the sweet chimey strings on your 12 string. I keep a medium and a thin pick in my back pocket whenever I’m on stage depending on whether it’s a 12 string song or a 6 string song.

The great Colin Cripps of Hamilton, Ontario, revealed this Tone Secret to me many years ago. Colin is the guitar player/composer/producer of bands like Crash Vegas, Junkhouse, The Jim Cuddy Band, and Kathleen Edwards.

Tone Secret Number Four: Get your 12-string set up!

Find yourself a good guitar technician and get him or her to set up your 12 string.

The #1 complaint I hear from new 12 string players is that they put the guitar down because it’s too difficult to play.

The 12 string, by its design, is a different and difficult instrument to play because basically you are stuffing 12 strings into the same real estate as 6 strings. Players with small hands (like me) don’t find a problem especially with Rickenbackers, which have notoriously narrow necks.

A good guitar tech will straighten the neck as well as it can possibly can be – this is really important. He/she may also suggest that the frets be “dressed”, polished and leveled. This will benefit your 12 string and make it very playable. Ask him/her to set the action as low as possible – this is really important!

Another innovation that Rickenbacker has developed is the 12 saddle tuneomatic bridge, which ensures near-perfect intonation. If your 12 string doesn’t have one, don’t despair. Any good guitar tech worth his or her salt will get your 12 string intonated as close as it can possibly be even if you have a 6 saddle bridge – very important if you want those big jangly chords to be as sweetly in tune as they should be.

A well-set electric 12 string should play like a brand new PRS or (insert your favourite guitar brand here). If it doesn’t, find yourself a new guitar tech!

The best affordable 12-String Guitars

As a professional musician – yes, I’ve got the Vintage AC-30 and the Ricky 12 – hard to see it any other way. However, there is a price to pay for perfection, and therefor II recommend to my guitar-playing friends who jam for fun, to buy an electric 12 that’s a little more affordable than a Rick. There aren’t many electric 12 strings on the market these days but a few models by Eastwood fit the bill very nicely, such as the Eastwood Nashville 12 (discontinued) or the Classic 12.

The Eastwood Classic 12, setting a new standard in price vs. affordability

Mike Robinson from Eastwood consulted with me prior to the development of the Nashville 12. We discussed a variety of options and settled on this style as is was possible to achieve the tone (mini-humbukers) and setup (flat neck, low action) that would make it a “professional” grade instrument at an affordable price. Last month I visited Eastwood Guitars and took the prototype for a test drive. Two big thumbs up…… jangle away!

Currently, though, the hugely popular Eastwood Classic 12 is the model setting the standard for affordable, high-quality 12-strings, and is the best bet if you want to discover the joys of playing a 12-string guitar:

Still want more? Visit the Eastwood Guitars website for a look at their full range of 12-string guitars:

Suggested Listening:

• Mr.Tambourine Man by The Byrds
• I Should Have Known Better by The Beatles
• A Hard Day’s Night by The Beatles
• The Waiting by Tom Petty and The Heartbreakers
• Kicks by Paul Revere and The Raiders
• You Were On My Mind by We Five
• Turn!Turn!Turn! by The Byrds
• Can’t Explain by The Who
• The Kids Are Alright by The Who
• It’s My Life by The Animals

Tone Secrets of the Electric 12-String Guitar from MyRareGuitars.com

Vintage 1965 Wandré Modele Karak Electric Guitar

Of course, you know the answer is yes, although it only later that I learned of the maker’s affection for bikes. Wandré guitars were the brainchild of a flamboyant Italian conceptual artist named Wandré Pioli (1926-2004). Pioli had been an anti-fascist partisan fighter during World War II, and afterward he studied engineering. In the mid-1950s he became interested in guitars. In 1959 he built a revolutionary round factory in his native town of Cavriago and started production. Virtually all Wandré guitars had aluminum necks, most outside the body like this, though there were some with internal necks and some with bolt-ons. Many were hollowbodies, but some were solid. There were a ton of cool Wandré models, including the famous Bikini with a built-in amp and the BB, a tribute to French sexpot Brigit Bardot. However, almost no two Wandré guitars are the same. He liked to use other odd materials, including vinyl piping and fabric soundhole covers. The backs of his necks are given shape with molded polystyrene plastic. This guitar appears to be built of a composite material similar to masonite and is coated rather than painted.

Vintage 1965 Wandré Modele Karak Electric Guitar

Most of Wandré’s electronics were provided by his friend and collaborator Athos Davoli. Sometimes the Davoli name on the pickups is the only identifier of a Wandré guitar, causing some to mistake the maker, but once you’ve seen a Wandré you won’t miss it. Pioli favored “blobby” shapes, both for his guitars and inlays, and usually somewhere there’s a “W.”

Vintage 1965 Wandré Modele Karak Electric Guitar

Ok, these make groovy art, but are they good guitars? Actually, Wandrés like this Karak can be remarkably good. The pickups are nice, loud, clear single-coils, and the necks allow for a swell set-up. If there’s a down side, the guitars can feel a little delicate. Maybe it’s the thin plastic on the neck. Or the fact that the vinyl starts to shrink over time and is easily loosened. Probably not the guitar you’d pick to play while jumping off your amp stack.

Vintage 1965 Wandré Modele Karak Electric Guitar

Oh yes, did I say motorcycle? At some point Pioli found an old motorcycle and spent much of his life restoring and redecorating his prize, tooling around Italy on it. Whether this love of motorcycles actually informed his guitar designs, or simply reflect his tastes, is unknown. In 1969 Pioli tired of guitars, sold the factory and turned to designing leather clothing. Later in his life he was fond of creating art out of found objects, but it’s for his whacky ’60s guitars that he’ll be most fondly remembered.

Motorcycle Mama (1965 Wandré Modele Karak Electric Guitar) from MyRareGuitars.com

1967 Musicraft Messenger Electric Guitar

I don’t remember exactly when I’d heard about Messenger guitars. But many years later, having a nice collection of guitars with aluminum necks seemed like just what I needed! I needed a Messenger.

Sometimes these things are fore-ordained. No sooner had I decided to snare a Messenger than I scanned the ads in Vintage Guitar Magazine and turned up a minty Messenger for $750. I couldn’t believe my good fortune and got on the horn immediately. He was a nice chap, but he’d already had an offer of $1800. I didn’t want a Messenger that badly. (Little did I know what a good investment that would have been!) Crestfallen, I was about to hang up when he said, “But I’ve got this green pro refin I’d sell you for $350.” New paint or an extra $1500? You do the math!

1967 Musicraft Messenger Electric Guitar

Messengers were revolutionary. While early Electro Hawaiian laps were aluminum “frying pans” and the Italian designer Wandré Pioli had made far-out aluminum necks in the late 1950s, Messengers were the first really modern aluminum-necked guitars. Created by Musicraft, Inc., Bert T. Casey, president, and Arnold B. Curtis, head of marketing, they play like a dream – just ask Mark Farner of Grand Funk Railroad, who used them (modified). The aluminum “chassis” eliminated the need for a heel, improving access, and it was actually tuned to A-440, supposedly to improve resonance. The M logo looked, well, like a big ’60s hairdo. The stereo concept was simple and great (two mono jacks for each pickup, but throw the switch and both pickups go through just one).

1967 Musicraft Messenger Electric Guitar

But, like so many cool guitars, the weak point in the Messenger’s armor was under the hood. Now, I love chintzy ’60s single-coils, even the microphonic units, but if you’re going to create a hi-tech axe, why would you put those DeArmonds on? Why not some Filter Trons? Or Gibson or Guild humbuckers, like John Veleno a few years later? Despite its alloy chassis, Messengers were hardly fit for the emerging heavy metal craze! In the end, it didn’t matter.

By 1968 Messengers had abandoned San Fran for the rarer clime of Astoria, Oregon, for “expansion” purposes. Shortly thereafter the Messenger had departed, if not shot with a smoking gun, certainly dead. And certainly rare. If you could find one, you’d gladly pay the $1800 I once passed on.

Don’t Shoot the Messenger (1967 Musicraft Messenger Electric Guitar) from MyRareGuitars.com

1967 Galanti Grand Prix 3003 Electric Guitar

Accordions were actually pretty popular in the US from the 1920’s on, probably due to their popularity in Vaudeville acts. They were heavily associated with Italians, which is no surprise since the center of accordion-making then and to this day is focused on the area of Castelfidardo on the northeast central Italian coast. The entertainment industry was one avenue open to many Italian immigrants, and by the early 20th Century there were a lot of Italian acts working the Vaudeville circuits, often playing to ethnic stereotypes. Accordions began showing up in Sears catalogs in the 1920s and accordion orchestras for kids began appearing. A number of mostly Italian virtuoso accordionists became popular in the 1930s, although the rise of Polish polka music (with accordions) also had influence in certain areas of the U.S.

But the real rage for accordions came in the mid-1950s with the early Post-War Baby Boom. Suddenly accordions proliferated. Companies built up large chains of music studios and imported and distributed Italian accordions bearing their name. One such was a company out of Chicago run by Frank Galanti.

1967 Galanti Grand Prix 3003 Electric Guitar

Galanti was a well-known Chi-town accordionist, but he was probably also a relative of the firm that made the accordions he imported. Galanti accordions were invented by Antonio Galanti in a small village called Mondaino near Romagna in 1890. Production began in 1917 and, indeed, the company is still in operation.

Unfortunately for all these squeezeboxers, by the mid-1950s the accordion craze had run out of air. Accordions were no longer hip. Then, after some floundering, the salvation arrived in the hands of the Kingston Trio. Significantly, in around 1959 the publication Accordion World changed its name to Accordion and Guitar World! Virtually all the accordion manufacturers added guitars to their lines. The fabled Guitar Boom had begun!

1967 Galanti Grand Prix 3003 Electric Guitar

Few of the early acoustic guitars built by the accordionistas were particularly notable, but especially after the Beatles, they produced some of the classic electrics. This c. 1967 Galanti Grand Prix 3003 (#2843) is a real sweatheart. It’s made out of mahogany and sports a lot of typically European appointments, including nice Van Ghent tuners and three nice clean single-coil pickups. As on many guitars made by the accordion guys, the electronics are inspired by the push-buttons on squeeboxes, so here you get buttons for (in order): O (off, my fave), 2 (middle), 1+3, 3, 1, and M (all three pickups). As on a lot of Italian guitars, there’s not a great deal of tonal subtlety between positions.

Actually, Galanti guitars, mostly finished in subdued sunbursts, were pretty restrained for an accordionista guitar, which typically favored plastic coverings, sparkle, or at least bold color schemes like black-green sunburst. IMHO Galantis were among the best made at the time. They got pretty wide distribution during their day, but drop from sight by 1968. Accordions did rebound a bit in popularity, though never as much as in their heyday. But at least we have them to thanks for cool artifacts like Galanti guitars!

Mama’s Got a Squeezebox (1967 Galanti Grand Prix 3003 Electric Guitar) from MyRareGuitars.com

Vintage 1960's Domino Californian Rebel Electric Guitar

Lipsky, by the way, was the company that offered the Orpheum brand of guitars at least from the 1950s on, if not earlier. Many Orpheum’s were made by United Guitars of Jersey City, NJ, the successor to the Oscar Schmidt Company. United also built most of the Premier guitars sold by the Peter Sorkin Music Co. There is some evidence that Lipsky’s Orpheum name was used on some Italian Wandré guitars, as well.

In 1967 Lipsky introduced a line proto-copies carrying the Domino brand name. Most were inspired by European models such as the EKO Violin guitar. Among the offerings were two models sporting a California cache, the #502 Californian, an asymmetrical copy of a Vox Phantom, and the #CE82 Californian Rebel (wouldn’t California Rebel have made more sense?) shown here. As far as I’m aware, the Californian Rebel was like no other guitar available at the time. I suppose you’d call this a semi-solid, since most of it is solid, but built in halves with a sound cavity routed out under the one sound hole. The top has a nice German carve relief, which makes the painted-on “binding” kind of amusing! The slotted head adds a kind of retro vibe. Note the cool dots along the top side of the bound fingerboard. What looks like a rosewood pickguard is wood grained plastic. Like a lot of mid-’60s guitars, the vibrato has a flip-up mute, basically a spring-loaded bar with a piece of foam rubber that deadens the strings. Kind of neat, but it’s hard to imagine how anyone would use it.

Vintage 1960's Domino Californian Rebel Electric Guitar

With these big chunky pickups you get a 50-50 chance on having good sound, or maybe much better than that. Most are pretty high output for a single-coil. I once bought a bag of these and found pickups ranging from 5K to a whopping 13K resistance (a hot Humbucker runs around 8.5K)! To make these even cooler, the two sliding switches are attached to different value capacitors to give you more tonal variety.

Vintage 1960's Domino Californian Rebel Electric Guitar

Who actually built this guitar is unknown, but these pickups appear to be associated with Kawai guitars, and that’s probably a good guess.

Alas, the 1960s were closer to the heavy, meandering solos of the Doors than the strum-a-lum twang of the Beach Boys when this guitar appeared. Besides, the guitar boom of earlier in the decade was grinding rapidly to a halt. 1966 was the peak year of guitar imports, with a dramatic decline in ’67. In 1968 Valco/Kay and a bunch of Japanese makers went out of business. Maurice Lipsky drops from sight around this time, and the industry went through a period of transition which yielded the Copy Era of the 1970s. Still, the Domino Californian Rebel is a very boss guitar, perfect for picking Pipeline on the beach at sunset.

California Dreamin’ (1960’s Domino Californian Rebel CE82 Electric Guitar) from MyRareGuitars.com

Back in the day, before the Internet brought cool guitars to your desktop, we used to have the pleasure of snooping out guitars in little out-of-the-way shops. Mac and Joe used to run one such parlor out on Woodland Avenue in Southwest Philly, a low-rent district for sure. After work I’d descend to the Green Line and catch either the 11 or 36 trolley, which dumped me full of anticipation in front of their store. What would I find today – a Hagstrom? A Framus?

1983 Electra Endorser X934CS Electric Guitar

One night we were hanging out near closing, when a fellow pulled his car up, ducked in and asked if we wanted to buy a Les Paul. To a guitar dealer, there are no finer words. To me (yawn), it was time to leave. Then he added, “Plus I’ve got this here Japanese Electra.” My ears perked up.

1983 Electra Endorser X934CS Electric Guitar

While Mac and Joe ogled the frankly boring mid-’70s LP, I was ogling one of the most gorgeous guitars I’d ever seen. Later I found out it was a 1983 Electra Endorser X934CS. A set-in neck with no heel. Mahogany with a carved maple cap that had flame so deep you got high staring at it. Finished in cherry sunburst, my favorite. Plus lots of that early ’80s brass for sustain. Sustain? These humbuckers, which turned out to be original and American, scream forever, enough to blister the paint off the other guitar. Besides having push-pull pots with coil taps and phase reversal. I’m a sucker for those every time. The fit and finish were impeccable.

This was my first encounter with an Electra, and I was hooked. Looking back in the pages of old Guitar Player magazines led me to St. Louis Music. A phone call led me to Tom Presley, the man who directed most of the Electra line through the 1970s and actually designed the Endorser. The Endorser actually was a straight, fancy version of part of the earlier Electra MPC line, which had the cool plug-in sound modules.

1983 Electra Endorser X934CS Electric Guitar

This guitar, indeed all of the Electras and later Westones were designed in the U.S. and built by the legendary Matsumoku factory in Matsumoku City, Japan, one of the great guitar makers. Matsumoku produced some of the higher-end Aria guitars (and some Epiphones) of the ’70s, and sold its own very fine Westones before St. Louis Music took over the brand name in ’84. Matsumoku also made sewing machines – go figure – and in 1987 or ’88 was bought by Singer, who shut down the guitar operation. The Yen was so expensive by then that it was pretty hard to export to the U.S. anyway.

1983 Electra Endorser X934CS Electric Guitar

Mac and Joe bought both guitars and continued to “ooh and aah” over the Gibson. I timidly asked how much for the Electra, and they waved their hands as if brushing a fly and said “Three bucks.” I left them to their ecstasy (mental) and, a big grin on my face, quietly slipped out with my treasure to catch the trolley back toward town. This Electra Endorser is still one of my favorite guitars to this day.

Hey, man. Wanna Buy a Les Paul? (1983 Electra Endorser X934CS Electric Guitar) from MyRareGuitars.com

1968 Sekova Grecian Electric Guitar

MusicCity at the time I found it, by the way, was known to a select few as the first Temple of Doom. Sitting on the edge of a down-at-the-heels downtown, it had once been a large regional musical distributor. It had four stories, the upper floors of which were loaded with dusty, unsold new-old-stock musical gear, some going back three or four decades. New, in-the-box ’60s Kapa guitars and ’70s Maestro pedal effects were among the treasures I pulled off the rough plank wood shelves.

1968 Sekova Grecian Electric Guitar

Not much is known about Sekova guitars. They were imported from Japan by U.S. Musical Merchandise of New York City, one of many music distributors that once thrived in that fair city. Who actually made Sekovas in Japan also remains a mystery, but it’s similar to a Greco 921. Greco. Grecian. Geddit? Many, if not all, Grecos were built by the great Fuji Gen Gakki factory, the company that made most classic Ibanez guitars, so perhaps that’s where this originated. The aesthetics of this exotic beast probably place it from around 1968 or possibly slightly earlier. Both the fish-fin headstock, a Kay knockoff, and the gold finish would be plenty enough to do damage to your neck muscles (a lot of these have turned green with time), but the real clincher is the pickup system. Now, a lot of guitar designers have played around with pickup placement. Some tilt the neck pickup backward on the bass side. Others tilt it forward. Some have even used individual poles and coils for each pickup, but no one has come up with such a novel layout as the Sekova Grecian! I can’t say there wasn’t a lot of scientific measurement of frequency response to determine the placement of these units, but I suspect it was more like one of those “Wouldn’t it look cool if” kinds of decisions!

1968 Sekova Grecian Electric Guitar

In fact, the electronics were designed to give a kind of stereo effect, with the three bass pickups controlled by the Mic 1 switch and the treble by Mic 2, with a Mix switch (all), put out through a stereo jack.

1968 Sekova Grecian Electric Guitar

Whether or not there was method to this madness, it didn’t work. As cool as it looks, this Grecian formula sucks big time. The stereo idea wasn’t terrible, but you always had to have two amps to take advantage of it. Plus, the coils are just not big enough to crank out much sound and, like so many Japanese guitars from this era, the wiring is extremely thin and the pots are crummy, so you’re lucky if the thing plays. That being said, the Sekova Grecian is still a boss guitar. Once you strap it on, it’s sure to turn heads, so you can share the whiplash!

Gold of the Gods (1968 Sekova Grecian Electric Guitar) from MyRareGuitars.com

1975 Morris Custom Electric Guitar (Copy Era)

Marvin found this guitar at a flea market and he refused to part with it cheap. But I had Marvin’s number. On one guitar, he knew his cost and he knew what he wanted firm. But if you bought three guitars and presented a lump sum, his math skills went to hell, and you could walk out with a real deal. Instead of $300 he saw $600 and forgot that it was for three guitars! That’s how I transferred ownership on this beauty.

1975 Morris Custom Electric Guitar (Copy Era)

And what a beauty. Morris is the brand name used by a large Japanese manufacturer called Moridira. Little is known about their history, but by the mid-’70s they were a minor part of the Copy Era, though their forté seems to have been in acoustics. Many guitar fans think of the Copy Era as a time when Japanese companies made cheap knock-offs of American guitars and sold them to kids who couldn’t afford the real thing. Some truth, but many of the Japanese makers built excellent guitars and already by 1974 they were innovating. None more so than Ibanez, whose guitars by then were made by Fuji Gen Gakki. Maple fingerboards on Les Pauls, tree-of-life fingerboard inlays, varitone switches, all Japanese innovations. Perhaps the most famous was the Ibanez Custom Agent, which took a swell set-neck Les Paul, gave it fancy inlays and a cool pickguard and topped it with a head shaped like a Gibson F-5 mandolin.

This 1975 Morris Custom attempted to do the Custom Agent one better by using an F-5 body shape as well! Featuring a killer flametop and a mahogany body, the Custom is semi-hollow. The neck is mahogany and set in, with a bound ebony fingerboard and big, real pearl inlays. The humbuckers aren’t Gibson quality, but they’re fine. This guitar plays like a dream, and it’s less than half the weight of a solidbody, which my back likes a lot.

1975 Morris Custom Electric Guitar (Copy Era)

Alas, like so many things, Torresdale music is no more. Marvin had diabetes, but refused to give up a steady diet of cheesesteak sandwiches from Chink’s up the street. Chink’s – periodically the object of controversy because of its politically incorrect name – is a little malted milk parlor whose booths make you feel like you just stepped back into 1940 and that serves up renowned steaks. Bruce Willis always orders them when he’s shooting a movie in town. Marvin’s health deteriorated and the shop was sold, its many wonders dispersed into suburban music stores. The store is now a hairdresser. But at least I have the memories, and the Morris Custom now calls to me from the back of my rack!

The Eastwood 1975 Morris The Cosey tribute model

Eastwood 1975 Morris The Cosey

Those not lucky enough to own the rare Morris original, can at least comfort themselves with the Eastwood 1975 Morris The Cosey tribute, which is an excellent guitar in its own right and won’t disappoint. Watch this demo:

FIND OUT MORE

Mando Mania (1975 Morris Custom Electric Guitar) from MyRareGuitars.com

Eastwood Ultra GP Electric Guitar

Eastwood Ultra GP Electric Guitar

Eastwood Ultra GP Electric Guitar

Eastwood Ultra GP Electric Guitar

Eastwood Ultra GP Electric Guitar

Eastwood Ultra GP Electric Guitar

Eastwood Ultra GP Electric Guitar

Ovation Ultra GP Tribute Guitar Is Here! from MyRareGuitars.com

Vintage 1950's Kay Solo King K4102 Electric Guitar

Believe it or not, Kay was probably the first company to produce an electric guitar. The Kay Musical Instrument Company began in Chicago in 1890 as the Groehsl Company, changing its name to the Stromberg-Voisinet Company in 1921. (It changed to Kay-Kraft in the early ’30s, then just Kay.) While there are unsubstantiated reports that Gibson’s Lloyd Loar experimented with electricity in the early 1920s, it’s hard to imagine what he could have done. Electronic recording and amplification were not invented until 1924-25. Lyon & Healy reportedly had an electronic bass in 1923, but unfortunately it electrocuted players. Bummer. In October of 1928 S-V introduced the Stromberg Electro, a flattop with an electro-magnetic transducer that was played through an amp with no controls. A few Chicago radio players embraced the new technology, but the technology wasn’t there yet and only a couple hundred Electros were made. Modern-style electrics didn’t appear until 1931. Except for lap steels, and perhaps the early bakelite Rickenbacker Spanish guitars, Depression-era electrics were mainly archtops.

Vintage 1950's Kay Solo King K4102 Electric Guitar

After the War, Fender’s Telecaster didn’t seem to get much attention from mass manufacturers, but the Gibson Les Paul did, and by 1953 Kay, Harmony, and Valco were producing solidbodies. Kay’s, interestingly enough, were unibody construction, which basically means neck-through-body.

It was this concept that still shaped the Solo King, but what were they thinking?! It’s really hard to get your mind around this thing. It also appears to have unibody construction: one piece of wood. With the meat-cleaver head and BuckeyeState profile, it’s like no other guitar before or since. The effect is further enhanced by a – shall wee say – chocolate brown finish. The pickguard is made of a speckled formica. These single-coil pickups, while primitive, are actually not that bad, with a clean, crisp ’50s sound. A single-pickup version was also produced. The archtop-style bridge makes intonation a challenge and the fret job is a bit sloppy, but otherwise this doesn’t play that badly……. If, that is, you have the moxy to appear in public holding one! Can you see in the hands of Duane Eddy or the Ventures?

Vintage 1950's Kay Solo King K4102 Electric Guitar

Needless to say, the Kay Solo King didn’t catch on. The following year someone took a band-saw to the design and rounded off the lower bout to be more like a Les Paul. These were sold through Montgomery Ward. Another even weirder version had the upper shoulder and cutaway lopped off, and was sold as a Spiegel Old Kraftsman.

All these guitars were gone after 1961 and are particularly rare. I’ve seen guitars shaped like New Jersey, Texas, even the United States, but none really come up to the bad taste of the State of Ohio. Like I said, ugliest guitar in the world.

The Buckeye State of the Art (1950’s Kay Solo King K4102 Electric Guitar) from MyRareGuitars.com

Vintage 1967 Kent Model 742 Electric Guitar

I met my Waterloo at a place called The Trading Post at the Pennsauken Mart, one of those East Coast predecessors to the modern mall, made of cinderblock and full of exotic stalls. But instead of Penney’s and Victoria’s Secret, you would find a butcher, gun shop, Polish imports, dollar stores, short-order counters, and the Trading Post, a kind of quasi pawn shop where you sold stuff, but couldn’t retrieve it unless you bought it back. Almost by instinct I threaded my way past the Fender Strats to the back where I saw this Kent guitar. It had a gorgeous burled maple front and back and really cool black and white celluloid on the sides, giving it the cachet of an ancient Baroque guitar. It even had a real Bigsby. But best of all, it had 4 – count ’em, four – pickups! It had to be better than one with just three! And, at $89, it was priced right.

Vintage 1967 Kent Model 742 Electric Guitar

But where the heck did this guitar come from? I learned later it was a Kent Model 742, made in Japan in 1967. Kent was the brand name used by Buegeleisen & Jacobson (B&J), once a major music distributor in New York City. B&J was one of the early companies to begin importing musical goods from Japan in 1960, starting with microphones and aftermarket pickups, and adding guitars in 1962. By the time this Model 742 was built the guitars had graduated from relatively primitive mahogany planks to sophisticated laminates and trim. Earlier Kents were made by Guyatone, but it’s unknown who created this glam job.

Vintage 1967 Kent Model 742 Electric Guitar

The Model 742 is a beaut. But do the four pickups make it better? Well, alas, poor Nigel, more is not necessarily better, except maybe in the looks department. Indeed, these admittedly handsome pickup units just may have been the worst ever produced! Plus the guitar is wired so that playing all of them decreases further the already crappy output, making the onboard mute switch kind of superfluous! And, maybe they could have used some help on the truss rod design. Ok, so the Kent won’t power my Ventures tribute band. But if its fancy burl, Baroque rally stripes, and especially four pickups hadn’t grabbed me from the back of the rack that day in Pennsauken, New Jersey, I’d never have discovered my love for bizarre guitars and begun my long journey into the dark recesses of guitar history. That makes this Kent an 11 on my list!

Is more better? (1967 Kent Model 742 Electric Guitar) 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