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Hi Gavin,Hey Bobby, any chance of a look at the headstock? Also, is there any indication of where it was made, like a stamped neckplate saying "Made in Japan"?
I bought a lovely vintage teardrop guitar off of ebay, but am struggling to find the manufacturer of it... It's likely Kawai or Teisco, but I can't find a similar/same one online in Google searches. Usually the selector switches/plate are what doesn't match. Any ideas?
Cheers,
Bobby
Hi, my name is Kalle Mattsson, for me the internet pretty much is gmail, facebook and Guitarz these days.
Today I came across this add on the Dutch version of ebay:
http://link.marktplaats.nl/425168240
The ad only says that the seller wants to know wether or not this is a valuable guitar, and that he doesn´t trust that is says Höfner on the headstock.
It does have some nice features, and I thought you might like to see it.Wow! That guitar certainly has a very interesting finish. I think the "seller" is right to be suspicious of the Höfner name on the headstock - it's not like any Höfner I've seen before. It looks more like an Egmond, which - given the location - would be quite feasible. Maybe an Egmond fitted with a Höfner neck?
All the best
Kalle
Thanks for the praise, but I don't think I'm going to come up trumps in this case. This is a design that I feel I should know and am sure I have seen somewhere before, but unfortunately I cannot put a name to it. If any of our readers can help, please tell us what you know via the comments.Hi GavinI've been an avid follower of your blog for a few years now and I have always admired your ability to identify random guitars!Attached is a pic I took at a gig in Bristol earlier this week. It was the support band for Morning Parade and the guitar was seriously unusual.Don't know if its that obvious from my (very bad) pic but the guitar had slanted lipstick pickups on humbucker sized plates, an old varitone switch on it and what looked like a small pushbutton switch, in addition to a pickup selector and volume. Tune-o-matic and then through body stringing. Unusual finish too. Not sure if it was modern or vintage... not a lot of help I know! I couldn't read what it said on the headstock, annoyingly!I think the support band was called Jet something but I didn't quite catch it. Probably not a lot of use but you never know, someone may know what it was. It sounded awesome, by the way!Thanks for any help you can give.Jack Floyd
I was looking at listverse.com today where they have the top ten instrumental songs from the 60s. Because I am in the US, I couldn’t watch the youtube video of The Ventures playing "Walk, Don’t Run". I decided I wanted to check it out so I went to YouTube and clicked the first Ventures video clip.Hey Jim, thanks for writing. Of course, The Ventures have over the years been associated closely with the guitars of Fender, Mosrite, Aria, Wilson Brothers and very likely a few others. However, this guitar appears to be none of those.
There is guy wearing a cowboy hat playing lead on a very strange looking little guitar. Any ideas what that is? Kinda cool looking with a massive tremolo bar.
Grace and Peace,
Jim Hevesy
Well, I bought this guitar in late 85, early 86 called the Mitre "Python". I remember a bass next to it called the "Mongoose". Both had active electronics. Mine were extremely funtional, coil splits, taps, etc. but it also had a built in overdrive that sounded pretty good. The only thing I didn't about the guitar was the paintjob. Low quality polish job, you could even slightly see a glue seam if you held it at the right angle to the light. I painted the guitar not long after owning it, and since I had it stripped, I did come relief carving on the upper back and front to make it more comfortable for my forearm. It was basically a slab. And I took out the electronics board, unsoldering everything without writing myself a schematic, so it went back together a passive guitar. I'd love to get a schematic, or someone who knows what he's doing to rewire it original. Other than that, it has Schaller pickups, and machine heads, Kahler tremelo, brass nut. I just finished repainting it for the third time, and here are the pics. notice 008 on neck, and body blank? I'm not sure if that means 8th guitar, or 8th python... I can't find out anything about them. I'd appreciate you keeping in touch and keeping me informed about anything you find out.Over to you, guys. Any more info would be greatly appreciated.
Thank you,
Vedo
Hi, I've been following your blog for a year and bit now, it's brilliant. It led me to wonder about one of my own guitars - I've had it about two years now, and never really wondered about it, but the more I try and find out about it, the less I seem to know. It started off as (according to The Gutar Dater Project website) a Korean made 1996 Epiphone Les Paul Limited Edition, nice sort of bluey green marine burst that is semi transparent so you can see the wood texture (nice gentle quilted look).Thanks for showing us your guitar, Stephen. No, it's not a pickup arrangement I've seen on a Les Paul before. Perhaps some of our readers might know some more about it. I have to agree with the conclusion that you yourself have to come to, that the middle-pickup routing was done at the factory.
The guy who had it before me upgraded a lot of stuff, ie Speigel locking tuners, chrome telecaster style knobs, chrome pick up switch, a couple of punchy new coil tapped humbuckers (JBs I think) and generally upgraded stuff to make it better sounding, rugged, and all with a chrome theme. I was looking for a beefy guitar that hopefully wouldn't develop problems, so I figured if it had been throughly up graded it would do the trick.
Nothing too unusal there, but here's the thing, and I don't know why I've never really wondered about it before - sitting between the humbuckers is a single coil pick up, and it's sunk about half an inch into the body so as to be in keeping with the levels of the humbuckers. It looks like the sort of chrome lipstick pick up you'd get on the neck position of a telecaster. I wondered if someone might have routed out a slot for it and installed it as a guitar project, but when you look on the inside of the hole that the single coil sits in, it's perfectly machine cut and the same bluey green colour is on the inside walls of the hole. If it was a project, surely routing a slot for a pick up would expose the wood of the body of the guitar and there would be none of the blue stain?
The guitar was due a restringing, so while I had the old strings off this evening, I popped the single coil out, and the blue colour of the wood stain definitely goes all the way to the bottom of the slot. I popped out the bridge humbucker too just to compare the slots and any colouration in that one, and they're both bluey green all the way down, including the bottom.
The colouring in the hole suggests to me that the slot for the single coil may have been cut before the guitar was stained the greeny blue colour, which suggests it may have been done at the factory where it was made. The guy I bought the guitar off said it was like that when he got it, and he'd had it while.
Do you know of Epiphone ever releasing a Les Paul with a tele style single coil sitting between the humbuckers? Have you come across anything similar in your blogging? By the way, the single coil sounds very nice, it has a dynamic, articulate chime that the humbuckers can't achieve.
I'm not 100 percent sure that it all does work, but here's what it does what at the moment - the switch is a standard three way - of the two volume knobs, the volume knob nearest the bridge currently acts as master volume, and the tone control near the bridge currently acts as a master tone - the two tone knobs are push / pull coil tap type jobs for the humbuckers and both work - the volume knob furthest from the bridge doesn't do anything (although it looks like it's wired up) - all the pickups work, I had a look and they're all wired in, but I don't know enough about that side of things to be able to follow what they do.Thanks again, Stephen!
The bridge humbucker sounds like a bridge humbucker, the neck humbucker sounds like a neck humbucker, and they can both be tapped for a single coilish sound. the centre position engages all three pickups, but the single coil seems to push to the front, with a nice sort of snappiness and articulation that the humbuckers can't manage, tapped or full.
If I was better with electronics I might be able to deduce more, but one thing I do know is that it sounds great, and I can get a ton of sounds out of it.
HsinMi vintage electric guitar with original case and strap.It's a weird one, for sure. If this was the only example I would have sworn that the horns had been re-worked by hand, but the evidence provided by the photo of a similar guitar in Lord Bizarre's collection shows that it isn't a one-off. So, does anyone out there know anything about these beasties? The name sounds like it might be Japanese, but that's only a stab in the dark.
I know you hear this a lot concerning vintage guitars: Very, very rare electric guitar. Try researching this one.
Not even the Guru of Bizarre Guitars, Lord Bizarre, knows its country of origin: http://rock.webbuilder.hostbasket.com/page133087.htm
I have researched this guitar a fair amount and can only surmise that this was a mail-order only guitar shipped exclusively to Netherlands. The closest resemblance is the TEISCO Spectrum 5 although I would venture to say that this is much more rare. This guitar has 3 pickups and tremolo and comes with original case and original(?) strap.
Guitar is missing neck binding although based on another HsinMi that I have seen the neck binding is black. I have just purchased black binding for the guitar which is included in this auction (replacement of neck binding will be new owner's responsibility). I have done my best to clean and detail the guitar and it is playable with straight neck and light fret wear. The neck is kind of chunky and reminds me of a Silvertone Silhouette or Harmony Bobkat in feel. There is no adjustable truss rod despite the ornamental truss rod cover. Some of the metal parts have rust and some of the screws holding the pickguard and tremolo base unit have proven too difficult for me to remove (2 of the screws holding the pickguard appear to have been filed as there are some light scratch marks by them). As a result, I have been unable to inspect the pickup and control cavities and the tremolo base unit. All 3 pickups work although middle pickup seems to have lower output than the other two. All parts and paint appear original. Pickup selector switches and control knobs work albeit mysteriously (not intuitively as outlined).
Silly price don't know what is the market value , so you have two options - Buy it now and beat the highest record of the most expensive guitars in the world for 2011 making this no name brand the most expensive one or just make an offer and I will consider.So, it's all just a cunning ruse to draw attention to the auction. Whether it'll pay off and he'll get a good price remains to be seen.
The label inside the F hole has an Atlas emblem and model number AC-2, a penciled serial number, and Atlas Musical instrument 319 West John Street, Hicksville, Long Island, NY. I have seen this label on acoustics, but on nothing of this quality.Well, I may be wrong, and am quite happy to be corrected on this, but to me the guitar absolutely screams "JAPANESE". Atlas Musical Instruments would be the store that sold these guitars - it may even have been a brand name applied to such imported guitars.
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