1970s Kay LP-type guitar with on-board FX

guitarz.blogspot.com:

Here we have what is listed on eBay as a "Rare Kay Les Paul with onboard effects. Collectors item". OK, so I realise that as a seller on eBay you have to apply a certain amount of spin when listing your item, but really, these guitars are neither rare nor what would ordinarily be considered a collectors item. Seriously, these come up for sale all the time, and the fees slapped on them are somewhat optimistic. The singer/guitarist in a band I was in several years ago had one of these. It was alright, I suppose, but no great shakes. (It couldn't have been that great because he always wanted to borrow one of my Fenders.) The on-board effects were gimmicky and largely unusable.

What nearly everyone seems to forget, however, is that the guitar isn't an Les Paul copy per se, but is modelled after the Roland GS500 controller for Roland's very first guitar synthesizer, the GR500, which was introduced in 1978. This was back in the day when any new and exciting guitar spawned Japanese-made imitations - in this instance the guitar that was being "copied" was also Japanese. Obviously, it would have been prohibitive to make it a guitar synth, hence the on-board effects as a suitably high-tech alternative.

G L Wilson

Guitarz - The Original Guitar Blog - now in its 10th year!

From New Zealand, a pair of Jansen Invaders - how collectable exactly are these?

guitarz.blogspot.com:

At first glance, this auction looks mightily suspect. Two 1972 Jansen Invader guitars - which would appear to be not very accurate Stratocaster knock-offs and rather knocked about at that - for HOW MUCH? $12,200.00? That's over $6,000 each! Is this another case of a highly optimistic eBay seller?

What do we know about these guitars? Well, they were obviously deemed of enough importance for an example to be included in the Museum of New Zealand. The museum website tells us that:

In the 1960s, many kiwi pop guitarists owned one of these – a Jansen electric guitar. Jansens were the first solid-body electric guitars to be mass-produced in this country, and they became firm favourites with our musicians.
[...]
Their Invader model, made in 1964 and based on the famous Fender Stratocaster, was a huge success. It was named after local hit band Ray Columbus and the Invaders. For several years in New Zealand, this was the guitar to have. It outsold not only the Stratocaster but all other imported brands.

Although Jansen guitars were often modelled on overseas examples, the company introduced many of their own innovations, especially in the design of the pick-up.
[...]
Already noted for their innovative pick-up design, Jansen staff put a lot of effort into studying ‘waveforms’. Perhaps the best Jansen pick-ups were designed by Paul Crowther, their organ designer, who later became drummer in the famous kiwi band Split Enz.

In the late 1970s competition from overseas, especially Japan, was heating up, and Jansen went out of production.
[...]
Today Jansens continue to be highly sought after both locally and internationally – as collectors’ items.

So, they might be collectors' items, but do they warrant the price tag we see here? Personally, I rather like the concept behind the design. It's obviously modelled after a Fender Stratocaster but has a couple of features seemingly lifted from the Jazzmaster including the bridge and tremolo, and the individual pickup selector switches (surely more logical than Fender's 5-way switch). As someone who likes Strats but has never liked nor gotten on with the traditional Fender Strat tremolo, the Invader does appeal. But at these prices, I'm not going to be trying out one any time soon.

A quick Google search does reveal that the vintage guitar prices seen here are not without precedent. It also reveals that there was a 12-string version too!

G L Wilson

Guitarz - The Original Guitar Blog - now in its 10th year!

Project parts, museum piece or pile of poo?

guitarz.blogspot.com:


This really is, from the sublime to the ubiquitous. After Bertram's post about Franck Cheval's works of Lutherial art, here is the the most commonplace of guitars - a Telecaster copy. Not only is it a Tele copy but it's not even a very good one. I'm posting this Lero Telecaster copy, not because I think it's cool (although I do) nor because it's rare or unusual (it's not), but really because it raises a few questions about buying (especially cheapo) old guitars.

What do you do with a guitar that's seen better days, was never that great shakes in the first place and has been carefully hand painted in Hammerite by a previous owner. You call it "Exceedingly rare" and put it on eBay with a laughable starting price. As something is only worth what someone is prepared to pay for it, this is definitely one of those items that will define its own value.

I actually do quite like the look of it and as a twenty quid bootsale jobbie, it would be great for chucking around the stage in a fug-out-psyco-jam or maybe for a two chord garage-punky-reggae-party-bop, whichever is your wont. It's already pretty singed around the edges so you wouldn't fret too much if it acquired an extra ding or two. It even has the curvy bridge plate like some of the older Fender Teles, which is nice.

It has a basswood body, which is (as I understand) cheap and cheerful AND very resonant. That means, of course, there are two divided basswood camps. One lot think it's cheap and therefore it's junk (I read in forum that someone had bought a guitar but didn't like the basswood [or as he called it - firewood] body so intended to chuck it and buy a Warmoth body). The other lot like its resonance and think that's what makes it a good material for guitars. I don't know enough to get into the debate.

I did some Googling over this and found one or two people who liked them but mostly were talking about changing various parts.

Me, I'm going to buy a Squier Affinity Tele - after Christmas when everyone is desperate to offload their stock/unwanted Chrissie pressies - and a tin of Hammerite and swap out whatever pickups come with it for some Hagstrom Futurama pickups that I've had in a box for the last 15 years. I think then I too will have an exceedingly rare guitar. This is not entirely untrue so don't think me a cynical old Hector.

Over the years, questions, comments and observations have popped up concerning various - often cult - copies, and even Fender's own copies of their own guitars i.e. MIJ, MIM, HCIJ/C/K (handcrafted in Japan/China/Korea), Made in Indonesia, and Made in the USA. Plus, there's a slew of quality copies that way out-spec fender. Then there's these... 60s, 70s, 80s copies that employ the cheapest materials, components and production standards to make something that's superficially (from a distance, with the lights down) like the real thing.

Their primary value seems to be nostalgia, which is scary - in a Harley Davidson way or a harking back to simpler times (which is... er... nostalgia).

We read so often about vintage guitars, effects, valve amps vs other technologies (spit) computers (bah!), about tone monsters and holy grails, about rewinding old (sorry vintage) bobbins with Leo Fender's virgin Grannie's pubic hair and dipping them in Appalachian earwax. What do people think? Are we kidding ourselves? Without even referencing this particular example, are we preserving a past that only existed in our (rock star) dreams? Were those crude, cheap, knock off guitars really better than what's available today? Have we become obsessed with the past at the expense of now? Do we know it's Christmas?

David in Barcelona

Guitarz - The Original Guitar Blog - now in its 9th year!

The $10,000,000 guitar?

guitarz.blogspot.com:

With a Buy It Now price of $10,000,000 could this unassuming Japanese vaguely Les Paul-styled no-name electric be the most expensive guitar ever on eBay?

I don't believe for one moment that the seller thinks this guitar is worth anything remotely approaching this outlandish figure. He says:

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.

G L Wilson

Guitarz - The Original Guitar Blog - now in its 9th year!

Airline archtop acoustic guitar

guitarz.blogspot.com:

Further evidence that you can't always believe what you read on eBay. The seller of this gloriously Art Deco-looking Airline archtop obviously hasn't done his/her homework when listing this guitar on eBay, claiming it is from the 1940s. Although now revived by Eastwood Guitars, originally Airline was a brandname of the Valco Manufacturing Company for guitars sold through Montgomery Ward mail order between 1958-1968.

By the way, although this guitar looks fine in the above images, photos on the eBay listing showing the rear of the guitar tell a sadder story. The neck/body join needs some serious repair work.

G L Wilson

Guitarz - The Original Guitar Blog - now in its 9th year!

Vintage Parlour Guitar with Hopf pickup

guitarz.blogspot.com:




I'm the first to admit I don't know much about parlour guitars (except that they are smaller. I know that much) and I'm not entirely convinced this seller does either but here's what he says...
"Rare, pre war parlour guitar with extreme RARE HOPF SPEZIAL pickup system made in Germany in the 1920s/1930s. The guitar is made of solid woods: (spruce top , maple body, maple neck) with rare HOPF SPEZIAL pickup
The instrument comes from my collection ! The guitar was not repaired or modified. Everything is in original condition."

And it is, as any self respecting haus frau would say, dirty, dirty, dirty!

Too right it's in original condition (assuming the original owner lived outdoors for the last 70 years and assuming the manufacturer included in the original spec, a twisted metal bar, a chunk of grey plastic cable, an old on/off switch and volume knob from grandad's valve radio and an old metal box all screwed to the front of the instrument).

At 750 Bucks (478 Sovs to us Limeys), this seller is definitely in the "optimistic" end of the market. A couple of months back I eBayed one of these pickups with a Hofner logo plus a chromed scratchplate with two more pickups in the same design with the Ideal logo for about £100 including delivery. Discounting £100 (to be generous) for the extremely rare pickup that leaves us with about £378 for an unknown (though admittedly oddly attractive) make of acoustic guitar in dubious condition with a big crack and various holes drilled in the front. Get on over to eBay and hit that BIN button before I do!

David in Barcelona

Guitarz - The Original Guitar Blog - now in its 9th year!

Dano U1 in a sorry state

guitarz.blogspot.com:

I think we have a rather optimistic eBayer here. With a starting price of $3,500 and a Buy It Now of $4,500, even if it wasn't covered in all that crap this old Danelectro U1 wouldn't be worth anything near that kind of money. Furthermore, whilst the body is said to be from the 1950s, the neck isn't original and supposedly dates from 1967.

In the hyperbole of the listing the seller claims that "this guitar is for rock stars only" and that "If you really are a rock star and money is no object Buy-It-Now, for a guitar you'll never want to smash."

Yeah, as if that is the primary function of a guitar.

Someone has desperately been trying to create the illusion of a guitar with that certain "mojo" here, but it falls flat as being remarkably contrived. The sea-shell for a tone knob is one particularly banal touch. It's such a pity that someone had to spoil a vintage piece like this. If you want to be "arty" there are plenty of cheapo Chinese guitars to go wild on.

Thanks to Shubert Silva for bringing this guitar to my attention.

G L Wilson

Guitarz - The Original Guitar Blog - now in its 9th year!

An optimistic Portuguese eBay seller

guitarz.blogspot.com:

If there was ever an optimistic eBay seller, then it's this guy, a newbie to eBay with zero feedback and who seems to think that a Buy It Now price of $1,000 is not unreasonable for this cheapy Strat copy with a seriously carved-up body.

G L Wilson

Guitarz - The Original Guitar Blog - now in its 9th year!

Hondo All-Star H-702

guitarz.blogspot.com:
Once again we have an eBay seller claiming a guitar is much older than it is. So, he thinks this Japanese Hondo All-Star H-702 is from the 1970s (or even the 60s judging by the listing title)?

Well seeing as it is very obviously a copy of the Fender Bullet MkII series from the early 1980s, I don't see how this is possible. Unless those crafty Japanese had access to a time machine.

"Let's nip into the future and steal a design from Fender's budget-guitar series."

I mean, if I had a time machine I think I'd do something better with it than that.

So, it's an eBay seller not doing his homework. Even the logo is copied from the Fender Bullet! Jeez! Some people!

G L Wilson

Guitarz - The Original Guitar Blog - now in its 9th year!

Badly-strung Tele

guitarz.blogspot.com:

It looks like someone was in a hurry!

But, really, how difficult is it to string up a Fender Telecaster especially one like this example with the slotted machine heads? I mean, that is going to be so confusing.

It's bad enough when people put the string around the wrong side of the tuner so you have to turn the head in the opposite direction from usual when tuning but to transpose two different strings is almost laughable. If I was that eBay seller I would have been ashamed to even show this photo. Having seen this, I don't think I could trust his claim that this is (even in part) a 1968 example of a paisley Tele rather than a later Japanese reissue.

G L Wilson

Guitarz - The Original Guitar Blog - now in its 9th year!

Home-made violin bass

guitarz.blogspot.com:

This home-made violin bass is currently being offered for sale on Craigs List. The seller obviously wants to claim that it is an instrument of great vintage and optimistically labels it as being from the 40s or 50s.

Well, seeing as it uses Danelectro parts - witness the dolphin-nosed Danelectro headstock and the lipstick tube pickup - and Danelectro didn't actually come into being until 1954, he can certainly forget about the 1940s. That is just impossible.

A Danelectro expert might be able to date the dolphin-nose headstock design for us, but I actually suspect that this bass was thrown together in the mid 1960s. I say this because of the violin-shaped body. Although originally designed by Gibson, the violin bass was popularised by Paul McCartney of The Beatles - in his case it was a Hofner. The design of the violin bass became iconic and spawned a plethora of copies. The Beatles, of course, were virtually unheard of in America before 1964.

Of course the maker of this home-made bass may not have been inspired by The Beatles and may have arrived at the violin design by an entirely different course, but the odds are stacked against this eventuality.

It doesn't take too much detective work to more accurately date guitars like this. Which is better than making a wild stab in the dark and coming out with "1940s" just because it looks old.

The lesson to be learnt here is not to take the seller's word as gospel. They very often do not know what they are talking about.

Thanks to Emmett who emailed me about this bass.

G L Wilson

Guitarz - The Original Guitar Blog - now in its 9th year!

Ex-Nuno Washburn Mouradian prototype

guitarz.blogspot.com:

Yes, I appreciate that this Washburn Mouradian guitar is a rare "one-of-a-kind" prototype model.

I appreciate also that it belonged to Nuno Bettencourt and is the actual guitar that he played it with Extreme at the Freddie Mercury tribute concert in 1992.

Nevertheless... a $35,000 Buy It Now price on eBay?

You're having a laugh?

Thanks to Jono for bringing this guitar to our attention. As he says, "You gotta wonder where they pull out those prices from and more importantly, who the hell buys this stuff?"

I've got nothing against Mr Bettencourt, who is a fine guitarist, but I wouldn't have thought he was the kind of guy whose personal instruments commanded those kind of big bucks. That asking price is not quite in Hendrix/Beatles/Elvis territory, but it's close.

G L Wilson

Guitarz - The Original Guitar Blog - now in its 9th year!

Craigslist: Haunted Paranormal Ghost Guitar - $5000 (Upper West Side)

guitarz.blogspot.com:

This guitar advertised on Craig's List has been brought to my attention by Guitarz reader Ken. I reproduce the text of the listing here unedited in full and without comment:

This singular guitar came into my possession quite by accident, and has spooked me enough that I want to get rid of it. I'm quite confident, however, that this ghoulish guitar would be fine for someone more in tune with the tenebrous forces of the malevolent netherworld. I, however, have little knowledge of such things, and prefer not to meddle with the morbid mysteries of the macabre.

Here's what I know, and what I've been told...

A kid that lived on my street when I was growing up was rumored to be into devil worship, seances, Aleister Crowley, Black Magic, and other dark endeavors of the Spirit World. (Strangely, despite the youth's somewhat dweebish appearance, he was quite popular: Guys in the neighborhood wanted to be him; girls thought they could change him...)

His mother (a propagating practitioner of the Pagan Arts) informed me that the neophyte necromancer was born in June of '66, and died tragically on Halloween, October 31, 1979, when he was just thirteen years old. (His death has never been solved, but the calamitous kid was found lying on his bed with THIS GUITAR draped across him, apparently electrocuted, even though this is an acoustic guitar! Additionally, when the damnable corpse of this soulless stooge of Satan was eventually discovered, a 45 record of Blue Oyster Cult's "Don't Fear the Reaper" was playing repeatedly on the Mephistophelean moppet's GE Wildcat record changer!! A Swanson TV Dinner--turkey, with all the fixin's--remained uneaten, while the air was thick with the acrid smell of sulfur emanating from some perverse potion the young hellion had been mixing with his Li'l Gilbert Chemistry Set. The licentious lad's Farrah Fawcett Swimsuit Poster mockingly stared down upon the dead boy, as if to say, "See you in hell, Buster!" Somewhere, a dog barked.)

Years later, I ran into the defunct boy's mother, and when I told her that I was a professional guitarist, she offered me her devilish, daisy-pushin' son's git-fiddle.

Since I've owned this guitar I've heard the strings discordantly ring out, despite no one being near the guitar. Further, on three occasions I put the guitar in my bedroom closet, only to find the guitar on my bed when I returned home (and I live alone!). The final straw occurred when I saw the guitar levitate out of the trash can I had somberly placed it in.

So for those of you brave enough to tamper with the Spirit World, I offer you this unique guitar (which appears to date from the late 1950’s to early ’60’s. Satan has apparently stricken the brand name decal from the headstock of the guitar, but it might be a Harmony. My expertise lies more with vintage and custom shop Gibson and Fender instruments, particularly the Les Paul, Telecaster, and Stratocaster models). I've enclosed several frightening representations of this guitar that have appeared in my dreams, as well as a photo of the deceased original owner.

And to the buyer of this ghastly guitar, congratulations, though please use EXTREME CAUTION when conjuring the phantasmic spirits that seem to be channeled through this eerie instrument!

G L Wilson

Highly optimistic French eBayer

guitarz.blogspot.com:

Someone has applied a very poor imitation Fender logo to this cheap and nasty vaguely-Telecaster-styled guitar from the 1970s. These appeared under various brandnames; it's probably one of Teisco's poorer efforts.

So, how much do you think the seller is asking for this dreadful example?

Would you believe €9,990.00? That's approximately £8,939.96 or US$14,754.10 which is quite frankly outrageous for this horrible plank!

I'm unsure as to whether the seller is incredibly stupid and really thinks that this is a long lost Fender prototype or whether he/she is aware that it's a pile of crap and is hoping someone out there is stupid enough to pay that kind of silly money for something that is actually hardly worth 50 quid (and that's being generous).

My French isn't very good - perhaps someone can translate the listing and what crazy claims the seller is making about this sorry guitar.

G L Wilson

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