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The Teisco May Queen was a late 1960s design possibly borrowed from the Vox Mando Guitar of the same period, or maybe even the Eko Auriga (which had a much cooler reverse headstock design). After all these years, it is very difficult to say with any authority which came first. Anyway, there have recently been a couple of the Teisco May Queen reissues offered for sale on eBay (see here and here). These re-issues were intended for the Japanese market only and few are seen outside of Japan. The quality and playability is said to be much higher than that of the originals, although curiously whilst these two examples (see photos above and below) are supposedly both from 1999, they each have different pickups, vibrato, control knobs and even different Teisco logos on the headstock.
By way of furher comparison, here is an original Apollo-branded May Queen which was allegedly the deluxe version compared with those branded with the Teisco name.
This 1960s-era Eko bass is absolutely gorgeous, if a little over-the-top in the bling department. But then, glitter and pearloid and pushbuttons is what you expect from a beat boom-period Italian guitar or bass, surely?
Here's yet another product of the 1960s Beat Boom during which the public simply couldn't get enough guitars and European instrument manufacturers switched from producing accordions and leapt onto the guitar bandwagon.
Latvis from Finland writes: Hi,
just found your site and like to tell that I own rather rare??? (at least here in Finland) Vox Spitfire MK VI I bougth it in 70s and it was in bad condition and somebody has put not-original gibson style bridge to it (and I later change this to roller bridge)
I like to know
- is this italian or english
- what year model?
- is it possible to find original style bridge?
many thanks
btw. My Vox sounds good old vintage... listen to my one-man-band home demo
http://thebandofnoreturn.com/music/moe-velvetin_hyva_rumpali.mp3
- Latvis
rockdata.org
Where to start? This is a bit of a tricky one. According to the official Vox Showroom website, the Spitfire was a solid-body looking like it had been modelled on the Strat. It also insists on referring to the above-pictured guitar as the Starfire Mk VI. However, a close-up photo of the headstock shows the name is indeed Spitfire.
Despite this confusion with the name, we are told that: "Early British models were produced under the Starfire MkVI Acoustic moniker while later Italian made models were produced as simply The MkVI Acoustic."
I think we have to assume that where they say "Starfire" they actually mean "Spitfire", and seeing that Latvis' guitar has the "Spitfire" name on the headstock it should be British-built and not one of the later Eko-made Italian versions. Production by Eko began in 1965, but as guitars were still being produced at the Dartford factory in the UK at the same time, I cannot say categorically that Latvis' guitar was from before 1965.
It does however seem very odd that they used the Spitfire name for two very different guitars. But I've seen these kind of naming inconsistencies with Vox guitars before, so I shouldn't really be surprised.
As to the subject of finding an original bridge, unfortunately I think this requires trawling through guitar forums, messageboards, and the listings on eBay. I understand the desire to have the guitar as near to 100% original as possible, but if the current replacement bridge does its job - and it doesn't look too out of place - I'd say live with it.
As ever, if anyone else out there has any more info, please let us know via the comments! Thanks!
G L Wilson
NB: Please make sure you are reading this Guitarz post at guitarz.blogspot.com and not on a Scraper blog that copies posts without permission (and steals bandwidth) so as to profit from advertising. Please support original bloggers!
guitarz.blogspot.com:
Isn't it?
It's a Vox Starstream V269 (check the photos on the eBay page - he's got the wrong model name in the text of the listing) and was made in 1967 by Eko in Italy. The guitar features two Ferro Sonic pick-ups, tremelo, built in E-tuner, distortion booster, treble and bass boost, Wah-Wah, and repeat, plus a padded cushion on the back.
guitarz.blogspot.com:
guitarz.blogspot.com:
This Vox Harlem is a model I've not seen before. The seller refers to it as being a "vintage Italian guitar", so that makes it one of the Eko-built Voxes. The seller also claims that the treble-side scalloping of the fingerboard is original from the factory, and has not been carried out retroactively. This is way before Yngwie Malmsteen and before even Ritchie Blackmore had scalloped fingerboards on their Strats. Could this Vox Harlem be the first electric guitar with this feature? Does anyone out there know of an earlier example?
This bass is one that I assembled from parts in 1990 (if I remember correctly). Most of the parts were bought from Brandoni guitars who bought up a lot of old Eko and Vox stock from Italy.
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