Where were you when Bob Dylan switched from acoustic to electric guitar?  I know that may seem like a wholly rhetorical question to many of you reading this, since a lot of you probably weren’t around yet.  But when Bob Dylan picked up a Stratocaster, he helped change the course of popular music—and definitely the history of guitars.  Introduced in 1963, this Guild S-200 Thunderbird would have existed anyway, but Dylan’s plugging in certainly helped propel it into the limelight.

Guild s200

In the summer of 1965, Folk Music was still the most popular music in America, well, among a lot of young folks, at least.  Oh, there were the Ventures and The Beach Boys, both semi-Surf bands, and there was that little quartet from England with a hit in “I Want to Hold Your Hand.”  But Hootenanny was a hit TV show and the Folkies who played on it were religiously acoustic.  Bob and his compatriots played “vintage” Martin and Gibson guitars.  The concept of “vintage” wasn’t invented back then, but that’s where it started.  

In the Spring of 1965 Dylan released his album Bringing It All Back Home, half acoustic, as expected, but the other half backed by a rock band.  Less than a week before his appearance at the Newport Folk Festival in July Dylan released the rock classic “Like a Rolling Stone.”  At Newport Dylan played backed by Mike Bloomfield and other electric musicians.

The reaction to Dylan’s “going electric” was swift and hostile.  I was teaching and performing folk music back then and subscribed to Folkie rags like Broadside and Sing Out!.  They were full of op-eds loaded with righteous indignation.  Electric guitars just weren’t…well, correct!

It took about 5 minutes for the electric guitar to become “correct.”  A once-venerable jug band became The Lovin’ Spoonful, with Zal Yanovsky playing lead on a Guild Thunderbird.  A relatively minor, up-and-coming folksinger named Jesse Colin Young became the leader of The Youngbloods who had a major hit with “Get Together.”  He hired a lead guitarist named Lowell Levenger, who went by the moniker Banana, and was one of the few bold enough to play the distinctive Guild Thunderbird. 

Watch: The Lovin’ Spoonful ‘Do You Believe In Magic’?

Guild really went out on a limb with the S-200.  Professional musicians mainly played Gibson or Fender guitars, occasionally a Gretsch.  Guild had made its reputation with its fine acoustic guitars in the ‘50s.  Someone must have been smoking something when they designed the Thunderbird!  Or was a big fan of Gumby.  What made Guild’s move even more bold was that this was the time when Japanese were making their move on the American guitar market and those guitars were, by U.S. standards, often a little bizarre.  Especially from the perspective of the time, still heavily influenced by World War II.  Guild risked the chance of being identified with what were considered to be “beginner” guitars.

But the Guild Thunderbird was anything but a “beginner” guitar!  Despite the somewhat goofy appearance, the 1966 S-200 seen here was actually a guitar engineering marvel.  The S-200 Thunderbird was actually unveiled in 1963 along with two down-scale companions, the S-100 Polara and the S-50 Jet-Star, all similar with fairly equal cutaways.  

By 1966, the Thunderbird had evolved to have more offset cutaways and remarkable electronics.  The “Frequency Tested” humbucking pickups were not especially powerful by today’s standards, but few pickups were back then.  Like other more advanced guitars of the time, the Thunderbird had both lead and rhythm circuits.  In lead mode you got a volume and tone control with a lower value capacitor that gave you more treble, plus access to a phase switch for the funky tones.  In rhythm mode the tone control had a higher value for more bass, of course, bypassing the phase switch.  The two smaller knobs are then master volumes for each pickup, to “preset” the balance.  The sliding switches chose lead or rhythm mode and activated the phasing.  Of course, you get breaks when you play a gig, so the Thunderbird came with a built-in stand on the back, a chrome bar you could snap out to lean the guitar on.  Oh, and a couple of rubber feet on the bottom wings to keep the wood off the floor!…

As unusual as the Guild Thunderbird looks, it’s a pretty remarkable guitar, with a set-in neck, and those are pretty nifty sounds available, especially for that time.

Dan Auerbach and a vintage Guild S200

Folk music and electricity seemed to be Blowin’ In The Wind.  The Lovin’ Spoonful and The Youngbloods weren’t the only bands plugging in.  There was this little group called The Byrds.  Critics had to invent a new term: Folk Rock.  By 1967 even the venerable Folk trio Peter, Paul and Mary were singing “I Dig Rock and Roll Music,” which was supposed to be satire but was almost universally accepted by their fans as gospel.

The Guild Thunderbird was actually offered from 1963-1968, but I don’t think it was very popular and I doubt if a whole lot were sold.  Still, it’s a unique American guitar design that reminds us of what a big deal it was when Folk musicians finally plugged in!

By Michael Wright

The Different Strummer

The Times They Were A Changin’: 1966 Guild S-200 Thunderbird from MyRareGuitars.com

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

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

Ibanez RS540S Pro-Line Saber

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

By Michael Wright

The Different Strummer

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

History seems to go in cycles, it appears.  Not perfect circles, but close enough.  When it comes to guitars we seem to go through periods when guitar designers go nuts and start pushing the envelope with whacky shapes.  Now, I’m one of that subset of guitar fans that’s always a sucker for really oddball guitars.  I mean, Les Pauls are wonderful, but show me something straight out of the Jetsons like the Gretsch Astrojet and I’m hooked!

The Gretsch Astrojet is an artifact from the early 1960s.  The music industry didn’t know it yet, but it was beginning to lose its grip at the time.  Music has always been led by popular tastes, but the “product” was always fairly tightly controlled by managers, promoters, record companies, radio.  When “folk music” hit big in the late 1950s it introduced a wild card: musicians from outside the “business.”  Outsider art.  Then came rock ‘n’ roll. Rock was fickle, unpredictable.  Just what did those Baby Boomers want?

1964 Gretsch 6126 Astro-Jet

For electric guitar-makers this was an important question.  Gibson had tried something new back in the late ‘50s with the holy trinity of the Explorer, Flying V, and mythical Moderne, all of which totally bombed (except with Lonny Mack).  Folk music was still riding high, but folkies played acoustic guitars.  But then there were these surfers and the Ventures.  And those Chicago dudes playing electric guitars.  What was happening?  Maybe, thought some brainiacs, we need a guitar that’s “far out” for the Boomers.  (OK, “far out” came a bit later.  I was there.) 

Maybe the kids would want a Gumby guitar!  Guild introduced its S-200 Thunderbird.  WITH a built-in stand so you could set it up on stage during your breaks between sets.  Yeah, like that flimsy piece of metal would keep your guitar safe!…  Except for Banana of the Youngbloods (from whom I bought a cool old banjo a few years back), almost no one would touch the Gumby-shaped Thunderbird.  (I have one.)

Gretsch considered the same conundrum.  Why don’t we ask Jimmie Webster?  You youngsters may not know who Jimmie Webster was, but he was a great champion of “tapping” technique decades before Eddie Van Halen.  Actually, Jimmie, born in Ohio, learned tapping from Harry DeArmond, the famous pickup manufacturer from Toledo who produced Gretsch’s pickups.  Exactly what that transfer of knowledge was we don’t know, but Jimmie tapped.  His “Webster’s Unabridged” album is one of the great guitar records.  

Anyhow, after the War Webster became a consultant for Gretsch and was hired to travel around the country demonstrating Gretsch electric guitars using his tapping technique.  There’s a whole class of “tapping guitars” that derived from those workshops, including those of Dave Bunker, who’s produced Bunker guitars since the late 1960s (and the Ibanez USA guitars in the early ‘90s).  

Gretsch asked Webster to come up with a guitar design that would appeal to the kids, and the result was the Astrojet, developed in 1964.  What can you say?  This was like Bizarro to Superman.  I don’t know.  I don’t find many guitars “ugly,” but this pretty much qualifies.  

1964 Gretsch 6126 Astro-Jet… rare and exotic

The name undoubtedly came from the fascination with the Space Race at the time.  The Telstar satellite had been launched in 1962.  The Jetsons cartoon series debuted the next year.  How about we call the new guitar the Astrojet?  

Actually, Gretsch put a lot of effort into the Astrojet. These had solid mahogany bodies with a set-in neck using Gretsch’s unique dowelled joints (that make them impossible to work on).  The fingerboard is ebony.  The pickups are high-end DeArmond Super Filter ‘Tron humbuckers.  (High-output DiMarzio Super Distortions lay more than a decade in the future.)  As you might expect from a guitar designed by a pro guitarist, the Astrojet has pretty interesting controls.  The knobs are a master volume and two tone controls.  The switches include a threeway select, a threeway tone selector, and (my favorite waste of space) a “standby” switch.  The tone toggle let you choose different capacitors giving you a mid-bass range, a treble sound for lead, and a heavy bass tone.

I guess if you had a “combo” of neatly coifed young men in matching Nehru jackets all playing matching Gretsch Astrojets and probably called the Supersonic Four Lads, this guitar might be a pretty cool part of the “look.”  However, by 1965, the year this guitar hit the Gretsch catalog, the Beatles had let their hair begin to grow and they had shed the matching suits for more Bohemian leather jackets and turtlenecks (“Rubber Soul”), a harbinger of what was fast approaching.  Hippies.  

Actually, it’s kind of ironic that the somewhat eclectic tastes of anti-establishment young folks didn’t embrace the rather radical design of the Astrojet.  But I guess it was just too strained, too over the top.  I’m not sure how long the Astrojet was offered but it was not in the 1968 catalog.  I think that Astrojets are pretty rare.  You just don’t see them come up for sale that often.

The Gretsch Astrojet wasn’t the last odd guitar to appear, of course.  There have always been guitar designers whose vision transcends popular tastes.  Just think of the early 1980s when both Heavy Metal and New Wave players stumbled over each other to play exotic-shaped guitars.  But Jimmy Webster’s visionary creation, however near-sighted, puts the Gretsch Astrojet in a class by itself.

By Michael Wright

The Different Strummer

1964 Gretsch 6126 Astro-Jet from MyRareGuitars.com

Back in the mid-1970s guitar players got a bad scare from Disco.  Hard rock had ruled the roost in the early ‘70s, but what had been a fairly monolithic music industry began to show signs of fracturing.  In terms of guitar playing, two anti-guitar factions emerged.  For those who wanted to be a rock star but didn’t want to bother honing chops there was punk.  Learn a few chords and bash away.  At least they were still playing guitars!  On the other side was the disco crowd.  Don a sequined costume and dance the night away to music based on the lush orchestration and insistent groove of keyboard synthesizers.  

The guitar press began to get worried and doom-sayers predicted the demise of the guitar.  We know that didn’t happen, of course, but it was a frightening period for guitar fanatics.  One approach to answering the problem was the synthesizer industry (if you can call it that) itself: put synth controller electronics into guitars.  The Roland GR-500 of 1978 was the first such attempt, a nice Ibanez-Musician-style guitar made by Fujigen Gakki with Roland synth controls that plugged into a large console that converted the analog signal into MIDI signals that then activated tone generators on the console and any external synthesizer machines connected to it.

As you might be guessing from my explanation of MIDI above, I’m part of that generation that started out writing on typewriters and had to trade them in for a computer keyboard.  I tried, but I never really got guitar MIDI technology. I played around a little with the Roland gear, which was OK because the converters had tone generating filters built in, so you could get weird squeaky tones, but I never knew what to use them for.  As for coordinating between multiple synthesizer machines, that was way beyond my pay grade.  

The Casio MG-500 MIDI guitar

Nevertheless, I thought I might be seduced by the dark side and picked up interesting guitar MIDI gear whenever it came my way, including this Casio MG-500 MIDI Guitar.  If you’re close to my age you knew Casio as the major purveyor of digital watches and calculators.  If you’re young you might not know that there were ever anything other than digital watches and you probably don’t know what a calculator is because all that is done for you on your phone.

Anyhow, Casio got into the synthesizer business with a whole range of keyboard synths that ranged from novelty small consumer-electronics keyboards with a few pre-programmed sounds (“piano,” “saxophone,” etc.) to fully professional units.  During the 1980s, toward the end of the synth guitar debacle, Casio introduced a number of very interesting guitars.  One was a sort of toy version with a touch-sensitive fingerboard and plastic strings, programmed sounds, and even a built-in amp and speaker, though you could output the sound to a real amp.  The other was this guitar, which was a serious attempt at making a MIDI guitar controller.

1988 Casio MG-500 MIDI Guitar

Like the Roland (and Ibanez) attempts at making a guitar synth, the Casio electronics were mounted on a guitar made by Fujigen.  While the first Roland guitar synths were put on a “normal” guitar, the concept quickly evolved that a guitar synth should feature an “exotic” shape.  To be fair, guitars moving into the 1980s favored unconventional guitar shapes.  “New Wave” guitarists like Andy Summers of the Police championed the minimalist Steinberger, while Heavy Metal bands liked Flying Vees, Explorers and even more “non-Spanish” shapes.  So if you were going to be controlling whooshes and chinkles, you needed a guitar that didn’t look like a conventional guitar.

The 1988 Casio MG-500 was very similar to guitars made for Roland and Ibanez.  It was basically like a Strat with all the extraneous wood shaved off.  It had a humbucker and two single-coil pickups like most contemporary “Superstrats.”  It had a “traditional” vibrato.  One of the early problems of guitar synths was that guitarists liked to use the wang bar but MIDI signals had to be precise.  By the time of the MG-500 this technical limitation had been solved.  The MG-500 was the first guitar synth to put the MIDI converter right on the guitar.  You could choose to play just regular guitar, just MIDI, or blend the two, or add in an octave line.  It had a regular 1/4-inch jack and a 5-pin MIDI jack.

The Casio MG-500 was a mind-boggling feat of electronic engineering.  That a guitar could have this sort of functionality is astounding.  

Well, it turns out I wasn’t so unusual in being befuddled by MIDI technology.  A fiveway switch and a few mini-toggles turn out to be about our limit.  There was almost no market for MIDI guitars.  The Casio MG-500 was one of the last MIDI guitars to be produced. Roland continued to make aftermarket MIDI convertors you could mount on your guitar, and, for a time, Fender produced some special-order Strats so equipped.  But Disco was long-gone by this time, and the Seattle Sound and Pearl Jam were just around the corner.  While they eschewed heavy metal solos, they did play guitars and there was no reason to be scared.

As I write these words, guitars are under threat again.  “Pop music” is dominated by producer-assembled “beats” and singers sound good through the application of digital auto-tuners.  Maybe it’s a good thing that I’m ready with my MIDI guitars…  No, I don’t think so.

By Michael Wright

The Different Strummer

1988 Casio MG-500 MIDI Guitar from MyRareGuitars.com

Most guitars first speak to me as visual works of art.  The color, the shape, or some sort of unique design.  Or it might be an interesting, obscure brand.  Rarely has the sound of the guitar been the calling card, but that was the case with this 1984 Aria Pro II RS Series Rev-Sound RS-Esprit.  (Don’tcha love those long names!)

Actually, when you look at the RS-Esprit, it has remarkable elegant lines.  It’s got a down-sized body that’s obviously Strat-style, but svelt, balanced, modern.  No doubt the color caused this flower to shrink somewhat.  When you look closely, the metallic greenish turquoise color (officially “Phantom Blue”) is pretty nifty, but across a room, it looks kind of “blah.”  The black pickups disappear into the shadows.  Still, there was something about this guitar that drew me to it.

Now, when the attraction of a guitar is primarily visual, I usually don’t care what the sound is going to be like.  After all, when you factor in an amp and effects, you can make any guitar sound like whatever you want as long as the electronics work.  But for some reason this guitar wanted me to plug it in.  I’m not sure what the “Rev” in Rev Sound is supposed to mean, but if it’s “reverse,” that sure makes sense!  This guitar lives in that out-of-phase world of between the pickups on a Fender Stratocaster.  This guitar is all about shades of twang!  I don’t know about you, but for me those in-between positions are why I’d play a Stratocaster.  I know I’m not alone on that one.  This guitar sounds out-of-phase in single-coil mode, and is still slightly funky in humbucker mode.

1984 Aria Pro II RS Series Rev Sound RS-E CU-tile

The existence of the Aria Pro II Rev-Sounds derives from the conclusion of the “Copy Era” of the 1970s.  By around 1968-69 Japanese guitar-makers had hit on a strategy of making less-expensive copies of popular American guitar models as a way of increasing market share in the U.S.  It worked like a charm.  By the mid-1970s American manufacturers—especially Gibson—were annoyed, to understate the issue.  In 1977, Norlin (the parent of Gibson) filed suit against Elger Guitars (the American subsidiary of Hoshino/Ibanez) in Philadelphia Federal Court claiming “trademark infringement” over headstock shape copying.  Nevermind that Ibanez had changed its heads in 1976.  Japanese makers agreed to cease and desist and in 1978 a new breed of Japanese electric guitars began to appear.  In many ways the cure was worse than the disease, because the new Japanese guitars were original designs built even better, and they continued to grab even more market share than before.  Think Ibanez Studio and Musician guitars.

Aria, which had originally initiated the “Copy Era,” lagged slightly behind, but in 1979 introduced a slew of new electric guitar series, including the unique Rev-Sounds, the 850 and 750.  The idea behind the Rev-Sounds was to use 3 single coil pickups, but with only the front and back hot, the center being a “dummy” coil that could be switched into active status to go from “single-coil” to “humbucker.”  The initial Rev-Sounds were sort of frumpy takes on Ibanez’s Musicians, a little more pointy.  The RS-850 was active while the RS-750 was a passive version.

The RS-Esprit was a much trimmed down version of the active RS-850 that debuted in 1984.  This has an alder body with a bolt-on neck featuring a “smooth joint” heel, a sort of clumsy compromise between a regular heel and the “heelless” designs of guitars like B.C. Rich.  The controls are a 3-say switch with two mini-toggles that activate the center dummy pickup in humbucker mode for front and back.  The knobs are master volume and two tones.  There’s also a little red light to indicate that your battery is still working.  The Act 3 locking vibrato system was similar to some Kahler systems that didn’t make you clip off the ball-end to load the strings.

I’ve always thought these were made by Matsumoku—in which Aria had a financial interest and which made numerous Aria guitars—however, I’m not so sure any more.  It certainly has a Matsumoku feel.  However, as a Trading Company, Aria had other factories from which to source its guitars.  This very well could have been made by another factory.

In any case, this is a really fun guitar to play, with a fully professional feel.  It’s not the most versatile guitar, but then with an amp and effects…  I don’t know if the RS-Esprit is particularly rare, but these were made for little over a year at a time when Japanese guitars were still imported in relatively small lots.  You rarely see these come up for sale, and I’m inclined to think they are.  These were made just before Japanese guitars came out from the shadow of post-World-War-II disdain.

Between new guitars and vintage guitars, guitar players have a gazillion choices these days.  But there are unique, fascinating guitars out there like the Aria Pro II RS-Esprit worth seeking out.  I’ve always been glad I heard this guitar’s siren call.

By Michael Wright

The Different Strummer

1984 Aria Pro II RS Series Rev Sound RS-Esprit from MyRareGuitars.com

EKO guitars were almost archetypically “’60s” guitars.  Cool colors, cool shapes.  And not expensive.  They were the stuff of garage-band dreams, at least before Japanese guitars dominated the budget guitar market.  But, if you’ve ever had much experience with EKOs, you know they were not especially durable, probably because, in the rush to meet the endless demand for guitars back then, the woods weren’t always all that well seasoned.  Thus I was really surprised when I walked into Cintioli’s Music in Northeast Philadelphia and found a batch of relatively upscale EKOs…from the 1980s!  What’s up with that?!

EKO guitars were made by Oliviero Pigini & Company of Recanati, Italy, just north of Castelfidardo.  Castelfidardo was and is pretty much the center of the accordion manufacturing trade, which arrived there—according to legend—in the 1880s.  Accordions as in “piano accordions,” with a full keyboard, not the older, little button types.  Piano accordions came to the U.S. during the early 20^th Century, mainly played by Italians.  Fast-forward to the early 1950s when there was a major fad for accordion playing, perhaps due to the popularity of the Lawrence Welk Show on television beginning in 1951.  Accordion manufacturers in Italy (and elsewhere) ramped up production and accordion distributors and music studios proliferated throughout the U.S., including the LoDuca Brothers in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, which became the exclusive American distributor of Pigini-made accordions.

1982 EKO CX-7 Artist-T CU

At its peak, the LoDucas operated a whole chain of music studios and had large orchestras of youngsters all playing squeezeboxes.  Alas, the fad was short-lived, as fads often are, and by the mid-1950s the bottom had dropped out of the accordion market.  What to do?  It was hard times for both manufacturers and importers.

After a number of false starts, the situation was solved by the Folk Revival of the late 1950s, when the next fad—this time for acoustic guitars—began.   Many of the Italian (and other) accordion makers began to add guitar production (or began sourcing guitars from guitar specialty houses).  This included Oliviero Pigini, who began making acoustic guitars carrying the EKO brand name.

The LoDuca Brothers, who had a relationship with Sears, Roebuck and Co. just down the road in Chicago began selling EKO acoustics to the big catalog retailer.  EKO guitars were on their way.  Electrics debuted around 1963, those nifty plastic-covered jobs.  Accordion makers, after all, were pretty skilled at wrapping plastic over their products.

EKO guitars had a pretty good run in the U.S. during the 1960s until the Japanese challenge began to triumph by around 1968 or so.  To be honest, demand for guitars in general began to fall off by that time, and rising European wages began to make their guitars more expensive, increasingly favoring Japanese products.  Plus, Pigini, who loved fast sports cars, got himself killed in an accident about this time.  EKO guitars were pretty much out of the scene by the 1970s.

I wasn’t really aware of EKO guitars during the 1960s until I met my wife, who had been conned into buying an acoustic EKO.  It was totally unplayable with a thick polyurethane finish and about ¾” action.  I did what I could to help, but there was no way, given my admittedly uneducated luthier skills at the time.  EKO guitars didn’t exactly get off on the right foot with me.

Fast-forward again and I became a guitar historian, met some of the LoDuca clan, and acquired a number of cool EKO electrics.  They were better than my wife’s acoustic, but had their share of problems.  Sixties relics.

Then I walked into Bennie Cintioli’s shop in the 1990s.  Cintioli’s was a major local music store back when such things were locally owned, not part of a national Guitar Center chain.  Cintioli’s had been there forever and I pulled many a treasure out of its unsold basement hoards.  

I don’t recall how I first encountered the EKO, but I think they had discovered it in the basement and put it out on the counter as a curiosity.  I took one look and it was a no-brainer.  But what was it?

Turns out that EKO had gotten into the “copy” scene during the 1970s, but most of their guitars were sold in Europe and elsewhere, but not the U.S.  By the end of the 1970s they had become mainly a small “custom shop,” taking small orders from small-scale importers.  Including Benny.

I don’t think the guitars Benny Cintioli imported were designed by him.  More like he picked a few models to sell at his shop.  These included this EKO CX-7 Artist/T that was made in 1982.  I love the dark-stained pine body and set-in neck.  The brass nut, 2-octave fingerboard, and DiMarzio humbuckers were typical for the time.  This was made just as locking vibratos were coming on the market, but didn’t have one yet.  This is extremely light-weight and a really hot guitar, not at all what you’d expect from and EKO.

Shortly after this guitar was imported by Cintioli’s the craze for weird-shaped metal guitars and then SuperStrats began.  These cool EKOs were obsolete, and Benny had an unsold supply in the basement.  Right after this guitar appeared, EKO went bankrupt and that was the end of the story.  To the end, EKO was the stuff of garage band dreams!

By Michael Wright

The Different Strummer

Mama’s Got (No) Squeezebox: 1982 EKO CX-7 Artist/T from MyRareGuitars.com

Vintage 1987 Dean Z Autograph Electric Guitar

Now that Japanese guitars are too expensive to import into the U.S.—and now that most folks understand how good Japanese guitars could be (with a good set-up)—it’s not uncommon for eBay auctions to feature “MIJ” as a positive selling point. And, now that large-scale guitar-making—except for the highest quality custom shop work—has pretty much left Korea, for a combination of economic and political reasons, attitudes are being adjusted once again. Turns out the Koreans had also gotten pretty good a making guitars. I’m sure it’s only a matter of time that “MIK” will become another compelling sales factor when you’re shopping for guitars.

Dean guitars were the brainchild of suburban Chicago native Dean Zelinsky who started building the now legendary upscale, hybrid “Gibson copies” in the late 1970s, like the folks at nearby and contemporary Hamer partly in response to the perceived inattention to quality at Gibson at the time, and partly because Zelinsky liked Explorers and Vees and was annoyed that Gibson didn’t make any fancy flamed-top versions. The former reason might be a debatable point, but there’s no question that those early Deans were darned good guitars.

Vintage 1987 Dean Z Autograph Electric Guitar

Indeed, players thought Deans were so good they were highly successful and the company quickly expanded its offerings. Unable to keep up with demand, Dean inevitably—like virtually everyone else, in time—turned to Japan for help. In 1983, with Guitar Player Magazine doing cover stories on the return of the Strat, Dean came up with it’s own take on a Fender with its first “Super-Strat,” the Bel Aire, one of the first guitars (there are competing candidates) to sport the now-ubiquitous h/s/s pickup configuration. The Bel Aire had a neck and hardware imported from ESP in Japan, though final assembly continued to be Stateside. By 1985 Dean Hollywoods were made in Japan by ESP.

By the end of 1985 Dean had also inked a deal to bring in Dean Autographs, like the one seen here, made in Korea. I’m actually not sure who made these guitars. Even though Korea had (and has) a number of guitar factories, most OEM work was done by either Samick or Cort and the odds are that the Autographs came from one or the other.

Vintage 1987 Dean Z Autograph Electric Guitar

So, get over any contemporary reservations about Korean guitars and look at this with a modern eye, and you have to admit it’s pretty snappy! I’ve never been a fan of black guitars but make the black super-high-gloss, add a white lacquered fingerboard, and slap a mirror on the front and you have my attention. In addition to having the usual Super-Strat features, this also has a neck-tilt adjustment feature to let you fine-tune your action without taking everything apart. A lot of people obsess over pickups, which I’ve never really understood. Almost no one plays an electric guitar through a solid-state amp set to give clean, neutral sound, which is the principal way you’d get to hear mainly pure pickup. Color your sound with a tube amp, pump up the bass, or, horrors, shoot the signal through a distortion pedal with a touch of reverb, like most of us do, and as long as you’re getting some output it doesn’t really matter what pickups you have. You’re going to color the sound electronically. I’m sure that’ll rile some folks. Whether you agree with this last point or not, the Dean Autograph holds up as a swell, classy shred machine.

Vintage 1987 Dean Z Autograph Electric Guitar

This guitar has a serial number of 8700430. Since the Autographs were made from 1985-87, I presume the “87” is date encoding. I have no idea if these are relatively rare or common. They don’t come up for sale that often, but that many not mean much. I suspect it’s a lot like 1960s Japanese guitars. They weren’t that rare (although less plentiful than most of us think), but no one ever imagined they’d be collectible in the future, so few people held onto them. By the time Zelinsky got into Korean-made guitars, he’d grown tired of the guitar biz and he shuttered the original Dean doors in 1990, off to make furniture.

Dean guitars are back in business, of course, and apparently doing well, including some made in the U.S.A. again. The more I see, the less I know I can predict about how things will eventually turn out. If my wife wouldn’t kill me, I’d start squirreling away some of those Chinese guitars…

Mirror Image Guitars (Vintage 1987 Dean Z Autograph Electric Guitar) from MyRareGuitars.com

Vintage 1965 Baldwin Burns Jazz Split-Sound Electric Guitar

I finally found my Wild Dog on, of all things, the inventory list of George Gruhn, the eminent Nashville vintage guitar dealer. Now, that may not seem odd to you, but this was a long time ago. Back then finding guitars was done by eagerly getting the first printing of the Trading Times, a weekly newsprint want-ad rag that was published all over the country in localized versions. If you’re one of those young-uns who walks around with your nose in a smart-phone, “want-ads” were notices you paid to put in the paper if you had something to sell. EBay didn’t exist. Only Al Gore used the Internet. George’s list wasn’t in the Trading Times, but in Vintage Guitar Magazine, which was the Trading Times for old guitar junkies.

Anyhow, I got this 1965 Baldwin-Burns Jazz Split-Sound from George Gruhn for what I thought was a high price at the time, but it was a relative bargain at Gruhn’s because this was the time when everyone was still looking for vintage Strats and Les Pauls (before they cost 5 to 6 figures), not Baldwin-Burns guitars. So, this wasn’t on the radar at the time. Except for someone like me. There’s a reason I’m billed as “The Different Strummer.”

Vintage 1965 Baldwin Burns Jazz Split-Sound Electric Guitar

Baldwin-Burns guitars are part of the madness that was the 1960s guitar industry. Baby Boomers like me liked guitars and corporations with money started buying up guitar manufacturers. CBS and Fender, Norlin and Gibson, etc., etc. Among the early suitors for Fender was the Baldwin Piano and Organ company of Cincinnati. When Fender went on the block in 1965 due to Leo’s health problems, Baldwin tried to buy the company. CBS outbid them and that was that. At the same time, Burns of London, owned by Jim Burns, was having financial difficulties. Burns was more guitar “genius” than business wizard. The plan was to import Burns-designed and produced guitars carrying the Baldwin name. The first units began to arrive in late 1965 and this was a very early arrival of the Jazz Split-Sound model.

Vintage 1965 Baldwin Burns Jazz Split-Sound Electric Guitar

Actually, this is pretty interesting in a number of dimensions. First of all, it’s a “Strat” configuration, although pretty liberally interpreted, with “notes” of the Burns Bison. Back in the mid-‘60s Fender’s top guitars were the Jazzmaster and Jaguar, which were most copied by both European and Japanese manufacturers. It’s early because of the head, which became a scroll design in mid-1966. Like I said, Jim Burns was a pretty good guitar designer and this has one of his Series 2 adjustable vibratos. The pickups are a pretty interesting take on a humbucker, really kind of a hybrid, with offset coils and poles. This is, no doubt, the origin of the “Split-Sound” nomination. These are pretty cool, because the “Split-Sound” meant that the neck coils captured the bass strings and the bridge coils got the trebles. I’m not really sure you can hear the subtleties, but it’s dang cool none-the-less.

Vintage 1965 Baldwin Burns Jazz Split-Sound Electric Guitar

The “Wild Dog” setting is, well, underwhelming. It’s basically an out-of-phase sound like you get in the in-between positions on a Strat, but the pickups aren’t really as hot as a Strat’s, so, while it’s cool—and pretty innovative—in a ’60s guitar, it’s really no big whoop. But good marketing!

This is, for the times, a professional grade instrument, on a par with Fender or Gibson, with an entirely unique feel, of course. Burns doesn’t get the respect he deserves in the American market, and the Baldwin—and later Ampeg—monikers didn’t help with credibility, given the consumer illusion that a brand name had to equate with the manufacturer. Which it almost never has.

Vintage 1965 Baldwin Burns Jazz Split-Sound Electric Guitar

Despite all the technical features that make this guitar desirable, there really isn’t any “Wild Dog” there. Maybe compared to a Kay or a Harmony electric. And to get Wild Dog out of a Strat, you needed toothpicks. Nada on Gibsons.

That the “Wild Dog” setting was kind of disappointing doesn’t diminish the coolness of this guitar, but it certainly wasn’t what I expected. More like “Big Whoop.” But pretty good marketing!

The Lure of the Wild Dog (Vintage 1965 Baldwin Burns Jazz Split-Sound Electric Guitar) from MyRareGuitars.com

Vintage 1968 Bunker Astral Sunstar Electric Guitar

Actually, the name of this guitar does provide something of a clue to its vintage: a Bunker Astral Series Sunstar. Far out, man. Shades of Star Trek. The Astral Series was the brainchild of Dave Bunker, a luthier whose name you may not know, but whose work you just may have encountered. Dave was born out in Washington State in 1935 and by the 1950s was playing guitar. Back then the legendary Jimmy Webster was touring the country promoting Gretsch guitars. Webster was one of the modern pioneers of two-handed tapping and the technique was a revelation to Bunker, who adopted it as his own.

Bunker became a teacher and began working on designing a double-necked tapping guitar, which he called the Duo-Lectar. This was the beginning of a long line of inventions intended to improve the performance of guitars. Dave actually build around 50 Duo-Lectars in the early 1960s. In 1964 Dave became part of a pop trio with two lovely sister singers and toured with them, playing Las Vegas and cruise ships.

Vintage 1968 Bunker Astral Sunstar Electric Guitar

Apparently Bunker had time to keep refining his guitar ideas and in around 1966 or so (he doesn’t remember exactly) he introduces the Astral Series guitars. Described as “The Guitar of Tomorrow,” for once the hype was right on. Basically this is a central core so beloved by tappers with two detachable wings or pods to give it guitar dimensions. The original idea was that you could get different looking pods and change the look of your guitar.

Vintage 1968 Bunker Astral Sunstar Electric Guitar

Alright, we’re are already in Klingon territory for 1966…or even today. But a core body with detachable pods is, in the end, largely a matter of carpentry. BUT, Dave had already developed his “tension-less neck.” Dave had found that he got dead spots where the truss rod was anchored, around the 10th fret. This led to his routing a channel in the neck where he placed a metal reinforcement rod that attached to plates at the body and the neck at the nut. This carried all tension and allowed the neck to fully resonate. This design also meant tuners had to be put tuners down at the bottom instead of the head. His Magnum pickups had individual poles hand wound with high impedance wire around a vertical Alnico V magnet. Each string had its own vertically and horizontally adjustable bridge/saddle, plus an additional microtuner that Bunker neglected to patent. If this looks like what showed up later on Floyd Roses, well, ask Dave what he thinks about that.

Vintage 1968 Bunker Astral Sunstar Electric Guitar

What all this means is that this guitar was way ahead of its times, probably sporting more technical innovations than any other guitar I can think of in 1966.

I’ve guessed at 1968 as the date of this guitar. Its serial number is #4001, but that doesn’t mean it’s the 4,001st guitar he made. If there’s any rhyme or reason to his numbering, I don’t know it. His main production was done from 1966-1970, though you could still get one as late as 1974, when he began offering DiMarzio options. Plus, it’s entirely possible those later ones were unsold stock. This came in an original hardshell case with a foam padding that had turned to an annoying power. When asked about it, Dave just said, “Yeah, we had some problems with that early on.”

Vintage 1968 Bunker Astral Sunstar Electric Guitar

Dave continued performing and making guitars, coming up with more innovations. If that tension-less neck idea rings a bell, that’s probably because it came back to life in 1990 when Bunker became the “B” in PBC guitars, P being John Pearce and C being Paul Chernay. They set up a manufacturing facility in Coopersburg, Pennsylvania, and began producing a line of mostly pretty high-end guitars. They were pretty well received, although somewhat eccentric in shapes, although I don’t think they sold all that well. Bunker met Jim Donahue, who was doing design work at Hoshino USA down in Bensalem, PA, and Ibanez contracted with PBC to make its USA Custom USRG Series in 1994. Ibanez liked the guitars and wanted to expand the relationship, but Bunker’s partner declined. Ibanez USRGs ceased production in 1996 and PBC promptly went out of business. I remember when leftover PBC stock flooded the Philly market, but I thought the prices too high and didn’t pick one up. Another of those “shoulda” moments, since they run about twice the sale price these days, if you can find one.

Vintage 1968 Bunker Astral Sunstar Electric Guitar

Dave Bunker still makes and sells guitars. He has an ad in the current Vintage Guitar Magazine.

Dave thought that including PBC and Ibanez production, he’d made around 8,000 guitars. However, if that were true you’d see a heck of a lot more on the market and you hardly ever see them. Maybe their owners just love ‘em too much. This is the only Sunstar I’ve ever seen. Even more amazing since it was produced in the Sixties! Beam me up, Scotty…

To The Stars – And Beyond! (Vintage 1968 Bunker Astral Sunstar Electric Guitar) from MyRareGuitars.com

2000 Parrot Tirryche Electric Guitar

I bought this guitar on eBay in 2000. How could I not? I think the seller was in Houston, and was Asian with not too great English language skills. I asked them what it was and learned it was a Parrot Tirryche made in China. OK. Upon further inquiry I learned that it was also being sold as a Scorpion QueensRyche. Well, a connection with the Scorpions and QueensRyche established an obvious Heavy Metal relationship that made more sense than tropical birds. Indeed, I was told it was made by “Scorpion” in TianJing, China. This is most likely Tianjin, a city immediately to the east of Beijing, essentially a “suburb.”

Now, assuming this is true information, which I have no reason to doubt, it really doesn’t tell us much of anything. Actually, I’ve done some research on the modern Chinese guitar industry and the area east of Beijing is, in fact, one of the regions where guitar-making thrives. (Another is on the mainland across from Hong Kong.) So, assuming this guitar was made in Tianjin, it was made near a modern center of Chinese lutherie. And, in 2000 it was a pretty early example of Chinese product. As we all know, Chinese industrial progress has been extraordinarily swift, and today some decent guitars are being made there.

2000 Parrot Tirryche Electric Guitar

I know that most modern guitars are basically rough-hewn on CNC carving machines. They began to be used in around 1976 pretty much simultaneously by Peavey for its remarkable T-60/T-40 guitars and basses and by FujiGen Gakki in Nagoya, Japan, for Ibanez, Greco and other guitars. And I know CNC machines can do amazing things. But I have no idea what the story is on this Tirryche or whatever it is. I suspect that, coming from back in Ought Zero, it actually may have been carved by hand, not a fancy CNC machine. First of all, the Chinese guitar industry was in its infancy at that time. People were only just beginning to look there for sources. Korea was still the go-to place. With no large-scale production, it’s highly unlikely that “Scorpion” had a CNC machine, or the expertise to program it to make something this complex. Some little old wood-carver supplying someone who assembled the parts and sold them to a trading company is a more likely scenario. If I’m right, this actually becomes a pretty interesting guitar, which it already is intrinsically, if you, like me, like really weird guitars!

2000 Parrot Tirryche Electric Guitar

Indeed, it’s pretty hard to decipher what kind of imagination created this guitar. The Heavy Metallers were partial to odd-shaped guitars, but this? Kiss and the Axe guitar I get. This is like a caricature of a Heavy Metal guitar. Or maybe it’s a guitar modelled after a Chinese orthographical character that represents mental illness. Or the sign of the Year of the Boar. Or some dead Emperor.

You can actually play this guitar, though I’m not sure why you would. I mean, the embarrassment factor alone would argue against breaking this out on stage. Then again, no one else would have one… This is well enough made that you can set it up adequately. Think Korean-made Hondo and you have the guitar space it occupies.

2000 Parrot Tirryche Electric Guitar

Needless to say, neither Parrot Tirryches nor Scorpion QueensRyches hit a home-run. This is the only one I’ve ever seen. Even on eBay at the time (or since, not that I’ve been looking)! This likely was a trial balloon, limited-run guitar designed to test a market that didn’t and doesn’t exist. It can’t hold a candle to a Peavey T-60. Or to most modern Chinese-made guitars. But, if I’m right in my assumptions and conclusions, this is a rare example of product from the early Chinese guitar-making industry, possibly largely hand-made, and, if you’re jealous, go ahead and find another one!

Let me know if you’ve seen anything similar. Like I said, this Parrot Tirryche is one of the rare incidences when I have to cry “Mayday!” I need a storm window.

Mayday! Mayday! Mayday! (2000 Parrot Tirryche Electric Guitar) from MyRareGuitars.com

Vintage 1972 Veleno Standard Electric Guitar

I kind of missed contemporary pop music during the 1970s, with my eyes glued to classical guitar books and my stereo playing old 78 rpm records I found in thrift shops. So, I also missed Veleno guitars, although I did read Guitar Player magazine and thus had a kind of literary idea of what was going on. I probably first learned about Velenos in those pages and, later, when I started building a collection, a Veleno went on my wish list.

I finally located a pair for sale listed in the “want ads” of Vintage Guitar Magazine. I was on the phone two minutes later. A minty gold one was already gone, but this chrome beauty was still available, so I paid what was back then a lot of money to get it.

Vintage 1972 Veleno Standard Electric Guitar

The fellow who sold it to me knew where John Veleno was living and I was able to track him down in Florida. That resulted in some interviews that yielded an article in Vintage Guitar Magazine, the chapter in my book Guitar Stories Vol. 2 and subsequent entry in Electric Guitars, The Illustrated Encyclopedia.

John was an amiable fellow who gave me a bunch of great anecdotes. These days I might be a little more critical of some of the facts, but it’s pretty hard to get corroborating data on a small guitar-maker from Florida!

Vintage 1972 Veleno Standard Electric Guitar

John Veleno (b. 1934) was a machinist who grew up in Massachusetts. He started taking guitar lessons in around 1958 and by 1961 he’d become a teacher. If you’ve ever taught guitar, you know it ain’t exactly the most dependable living. Married with children, he became a machinist and relocated to St. Petersburg, Florida, in 1963 and got a job in a machine shop that made aluminum parts for use by NASA at then Cape Canaveral. Veleno augmented his day-job income by giving guitar lessons at home after work. You see where this is going!

Actually, the Veleno guitar originated from some advertising for his teaching sideline. To attract attention to his lessons, John fashioned a guitar-shaped aluminum mailbox for his house. Intrigued by the design, friends urged him to build a real guitar out of aluminum. John bit and Veleno guitars were born.

Using the technology with which he was familiar, Veleno guitars were carved out of aluminum, which was either chromed or anodized—I’m not sure I understand the difference. Most were chrome, but a few were gold, and fewer yet were done in red or blue. Or at least those were offered.

Vintage 1972 Veleno Standard Electric Guitar

If you read my accounts, you’ll find an estimate of around 185 Veleno Originals being made, plus another 10 or so other odd models. That was based on Veleno’s recollection. You’ll find other numbers on the Internet, but they’re all in the same ball-park. Apparently there were some forgeries made, but it’s not clear when that happened; it seems like there was an issue with eBay in the early 2000s. At this writing Veleno was still offering to make you an upgraded version for around $8,000, but, by his own accounting, he’s only made around 10, if that, so Veleno guitars are still relatively rare.

Truth about Velenos is sometimes elusive. Plus John’s accounts were not always crystal clear. He has a massive, rambling “autobiography” you can find with a little searching on the Web. He talks about me in it, accusing me of claiming that he made 3 guitars with bird-shaped heads, wondering where I got that wrong information. Well, guess what? That’s what he told me. He forgot to mention that they were just necks and after Jorge Santana bought a guitar with one, he cut those other heads off. He also claims I got “fired” from my job around 2002, implying some connection that questions my credibility. Actually, I have been fired a couple of times during my advertising career! But, for the record I was laid off at that time and started a very successful agency shortly thereafter which I ran for more than a decade. In any case, it’s all very amusing!

Vintage 1972 Veleno Standard Electric Guitar

This guitar is #90 and features the original Guild humbuckers. The fellow who sold it claimed it had formerly belonged to Frank Hannon of the band Tesla, but there’s no way to verify that. Hannon is on the list of Veleno owners. This guitar was part of the Dangerous Curves exhibition at the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston and it’s in Acoustic Guitars and a host of other books because the photos were subsequently licensed to other publishers (not by me).

Veleno Originals are actually pretty good guitars. They’re light-weight and easy to play. And, if you have one, you’re part of a fairly exclusive club. Like I said, cult objects!

Great Shiny Birds (Vintage 1972 Veleno Standard 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

1950’s Airline Town & Country Standard Electric Guitar (Sunburst)

Although they appear to be humbuckers, these unique guitars had single coil pickups with a unique tone that became popular with the blues players (not just for their tone, but more likely for their affordability vs.. a new Fender Strat). That is what modern players are seeking out these old guitars, like Jack White, for the growl-y single coil tone. This sample had three pickups, each with its own volume and tone controls, and a unique 3-way switch (as opposed to the 5-way of a strat). This has its good and bad point. Good: you can have solid pre-sets for each pickup both in tone and volume that are completely unique. Bad: you miss the “in-between” tones that make the Strat so popular. A master volume rounded it out.

Another unique feature of this model was the rather crude “tone chambering” of the body. In the modern Eastwood version, it is made with the benefit of a modern CNC machine to completely route out the inside of the body, then laminate the back on to the guitar. On the 60’s version, they simply drilled huge holes in it to remove wood and remove the weight, then slapped an over-sized plastic back on it to cover up the holes. Crude but effective.

Back Catalog Memories: 1950’s Airline Town & Country Guitar from MyRareGuitars.com

1960’s Contessa Guitar (Green)

Castelfidardo is a town in the province of Ancona, in the Marche region of central-eastern Italy. During the early 1960’s this area was a hot bed for small but talented guitar builders, but also had links back to USA. From this area in Italy builders like Zerosette were branded with names like JG, Goya, Contessa, Atlas and Sano. Sano? Weren’t they an AMP builder in USA? That’s the connection! In the 1940’s a music school called Major Music – founded by Joe Zonfrilla, Sr – was teaching us all how to play accordion. In the mid 50’s, accordion player Nicholas Sano wanted a pickup for his accordion and Joe came to the rescue with a patented pickup design which led to the design of the Sano amplifiers. Shortly after that the Sano company began to import guitars from Italy (Zerosette) under the brand name of Contessa.

Here are two fine examples, a 6-string guitar and a bass. Both simple designs with two pickups, 3-way switch volume and tone. The remarkable “hidden gem” of these guitars were the necks. They are as close to early Fender profile and radius as I have found. In fact, many of the guitars from this area of Italy have the most underrated necks. The weakness was always in the electronics – typically rather thin and weak tone, and they are quite rare in North America, so the brands never really caught any traction in the collector world.

Back Catalog Memories: 1960’s Contessa Guitar & Bass from MyRareGuitars.com

Mosrite Electric Guitar, The Ventures Model (Blueburst Finish)

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

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

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

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

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

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