Guitar Info

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As a postscript to yesterday's blog post, here is another Jolana Disco Bass belonging to Guitarz reader Philipp Kostov. The bass's previous owner has re-shaped the body and stripped it back to a natural finish - surprisingly it looks like it's made from some pretty nice timber. These old "Behind the Iron Curtain" guitars are getting increasingly collectable as more people discover their existence (and, often, their affordability) but this customisation is likely to incur the wrath of the collectors. Personally - and I know I've written a lot about how people should leave vintage guitars alone and take out their urge to modify on cheap modern-day Chinese-made guitars - I quite like the new shape and finish on this particular Disco Bass. I guess the point is that if you really HAVE to customise something, just make sure you do a first class job.

See here for more of Philipp's guitar collection (including more Jolana guitars and basses).

G L Wilson

© 2012, Guitarz - The Original Guitar Blog - now in its 10th year!

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Seriously, if I had the means right now, I would buy this Jolana Disco Bass. The eBay listing has some particularly clear close-up photos and although it's quite apparent that this is a used instrument and shows signs of wear here and there, it is in exceedingly good condition.

Although quite obviously from the same stable, the Jolana Disco Bass has quite a different design to the Jolana Disco 6-string guitar; whilst the guitar looks to be a Burnsian interpretation of the SG, the bass has been styled after the Gibson RD Artist. They share the same giant-sized humbuckers although the bass has a pair of these against the guitar's single unit. Tuners and bridge are of the same design and even the pickguard follows the same design rules.

The controls are simple with no pickup selector, no tone controls, but just a volume for each pickup - which couldn't be further away from the instrument that the body shape is copying. I believe that the "1970s transistor-radio" style knobs on this example are not original, and that it would have originally have had the same chunky clear plastic knobs as used on the Disco guitar.

This particular Disco Bass is finished in a vibrant red; I really like how the colour is echoed by the dot inlays on the fingerboard.

Possibly, with a Buy It Now price of $400, this is a little over-priced, but having said that it is a particularly nice example.

G L Wilson

© 2012, Guitarz - The Original Guitar Blog - now in its 10th year!

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There's a lovely Jolana Proxima being offered for sale on eBay UK with bidding currently at £65 at the time of writing. I'd dearly like to join in the bidding myself, but do not have the funds (nor the space) available right at the moment. The Proxima, made in Czechosolvakia in the 1980s, is a close relative to the Jolana Galaxis guitar which had pickups and controls front-mounted on a pickguard, Strat-style.

The guitar appears to be in excellent condition, although strangely the Proxima logo is missing from the headstock. Pickups are a pair of huge humbuckers, identical to the single unit on my Jolana Disco. The chunky machine head buttons are another item these guitars have in common. The tremolo/vibrato is of the Jazzmaster persuasion, which I guess is in keeping with the Proxima's offset body design.

Thanks to Alex for bringing this guitar to my attention.

G L Wilson

© 2011, Guitarz - The Original Guitar Blog - now in its 10th year!

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You know that here on Guitarz we are particular fans of guitars from behind the Iron Curtain, and here is another one, a Jolana Neoton electric hollowbody jazz-type guitar in greenburst finish. I have no way of telling how way it plays - or should I say how playable it might be after a proper set-up - but if I had the readies available I would buy this for looks alone because as an object it is a thing of beauty.

I must admit the neck adjustment fills me with dread. When I was a kid, my family used to have an old Russian acoustic with a neck set like this and it was ghastly.

Currrently listed on eBay with a starting price of £169 and with free shipping within the European Union.

G L Wilson

© 2011, Guitarz - The Original Guitar Blog - now in its 10th year!

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Regular readers of Guitarz will know that we have a particular affection for Soviet-era East European and Russian guitars. When I saw this Jolana Disco guitar from 1980s Czechoslovakia listed on eBay UK recently with a Buy It Now price of just £60, I knew I had to buy it; indeed I think I would have been failing in my duty as a Guitarz author if I hadn't.

The Jolana Disco is a very basic model guitar, that much is obvious just from looking at it. It's a no-nonsense, simple electric guitar. Single pickup, volume and tone controls, no trem or any other fancy gubbins. The design, whilst quite clearly derived from the Gibson SG, is squat, pointy and - dare I say - it's a little bit of an ugly duckling. In fact it reminds me of certain Burns guitars, and I mean that as a compliment.

Because it was made in Soviet-era Eastern Europe we do not have here a guitar be-decked with all the same hardware - pickups, tuners, bridge, etc - as found on countless other brands. The Jolana features home-grown hardware which makes it all the more idiosyncratic. The tuners, for example, are huge and, in my estimation, quite attractive. They are hardly the best tuners in the world, but they seem to do the job. The bridge is highly engineered and shaped from pieces of sheet steel, and is fully adjustable; it looks a little unusual when we are so used to seeing the same old bridges everywhere, but it is fully functional and does the job.

The finish is black and THICK. I suspect that it may hide a body of cheap timber - I don't think it's plywood because you normally see the telltale ridges of ply where the finish has sunken in around the sides of the guitar.

The Jolana Disco has just a single pickup, and what a pickup it is! It's a HUGE humbucker and is positioned slap bang in the centre of the guitar's body. To my ears it sounds great and can provide everything from a crystal clear bell-like tone to downright raunchy overdrive. The positioning might throw a few people, and although I'm not usually a fan of tone controls on guitars, in this instance the tone control is essential in making sure you have the required amount of treble.

The volume and tone controls have over-sized chunky clear plastic knobs which I find quite ugly, and which do look rather cheap. The pickguard (or scratchplate) is quite minimalistic and is essentially an over-large pickup surround combined with a control plate.

I've read reviews of this guitar where the owner has commented with words to the effect that it is virtually unplayable. Well, either they had a particularly bad example, or else - as I suspect - they weren't trying hard enough to get on with the guitar and to allow it to shine.

I admit I found it awkward to play at first. The biggest hurdle to overcome is the high radius of the fingerboard. Boy, that fingerboard ain't half got a curve to it! If you prefer your fingerboards flat or virtually flat, you'd be in for a shock with this Jolana. Still it doesn't take too much perseverance to become accustomed to the fingerboard radius, and I feel the results are well worth it because this guitar is quite playable once you get over that initial shock.

The other thing that might freak you out is the position of the pickup, which as I have mentioned already is slap bang in the centre of the body. I hear so many people say, "Oh, I only ever use the bridge pickup," and that is something that never ceases to amaze me. I think this goes back to guitars that have those stupid "Rhythm/Treble" legends on their pickup selector switches (Yeah, Gibson and their imitators!). Put simply, the mental process goes like this: Lead guitar is cool, rhythm is boring. Who wants to be a rhythm guitarist? So this totally erroneous notion that the neck pickup is the rhythm pickup and the bridge pickup is the lead pickup, i.e. the COOL pickup, has been perpetuated. Well, it's complete bullshit. Most guitarists rate Jimi Hendrix, so I say to them check out video footage of Hendrix (the Hendrix at Woodstock DVD is a good one), check out the close ups and tell me what pickup he uses for most of his solos. Yup, you've guessed it, it's the neck pickup. And then tell me that that's NOT lead guitar playing.

So, for a single pickup guitar, I'd argue, the obvious position for a pickup is in the centre. It's neither too trebley nor too bassy. Sure, it's a compromise to some people, but as I've said you can bring the tone control into play. And really, I think that's all you need.

So yeah, I LIKE this little ugly duckling of a guitar. I admit the action could be improved upon, it has a slight tendency to neck heaviness (small body, large headstock) and it does have a few little rattles here and there, but to me these add to the character of the instrument. All in all, it's a highly playable no-nonsense guitar, and I would happily play it in a band situation.

G L Wilson

P.S. The photos in this blog post are my own work, so please do not copy or re-use without asking permission first!

© 2011, Guitarz - The Original Guitar Blog - now in its 10th year!

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This Soviet-era Czechoslovakian semi-hollowbody Jolana Rubin short-scale bass really does look quite glorious. I've no idea what it sounds like or how it plays, but I want it.

I am reminded of the Orfeus Hebros bass from Bulgaria that we looked at in November 2009; it's similar, but if anything this Jolana is nicer. Note the single f-hole, the clear pickguard and trapezium-shaped metal control panel, not to mention the glossy blue burst finish.

This instrument is currently listed on eBay and with a day still to go before the auction finishes, bidding is at $350 (at the time of writing). These old Soviet-era Eastern European and Russian instruments are becoming ever more increasingly popular, and - as you may have noticed - we here at Guitarz have been fans for quite some time already.

G L Wilson

© 2011, Guitarz - The Original Guitar Blog - now in its 10th year!

Always a fervent (virtual) adept of Jolana guitars (I'm the creator of the Czechoslovakian guitar label you will see under this post, though it was mostly for the pleasure of writing "Czechoslovakian", it's not something you can do often nowadays), I'm happy to show this Jolana Kolor model from the early 1970s.

Though it's not as cool as the Tornado that is kind of perfect, a mere look at its gear makes clear that Jolana was without any doubt the best of cold war east-European electric instrument makers. The trapezoid pickup rings and control plate combine elegance and constructivist simplicity, and the bridge and stoptail are more sophisticated that many found on US or Japanese equivalent models of the time. And of course it has the classy Jolana headstock.

Bertram

© 2011, Guitarz - The Original Guitar Blog - now in its 10th year!

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Here's another Czechoslovakian-made Jolana, the Jolana Iris bass, a short-scale bass styled roughly after the Fender Telecaster Thinline (of which there never was a bass version). However, this is not a true thinline as the photos reveal; at the angles shown you can see that the "chamber" beneath the f-hole is barely larger than the shape of the hole itself. It's all about aesthetics and the hole gives a good place to locate the Jolana logo.

This example looks to have been well used and isn't in as good condition as the Jolana Iris guitar we looked at before. Still, it'll appeal to those who like "relics".

G L Wilson

© 2011, Guitarz - The Original Guitar Blog - now in its 10th year!

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According to the seller of this guitar, it is known as the Screwdriver because of its shape. Made in Czechoslovakia in the 1970s, this Jolana Star IX with its "screwdriver" shape doesn't very much resemble the Jolana Star X that we looked at here on Guitarz back in August 2009. The Jolana Basso IX that we looked at in December 2009, however, does share the same shape. It's nice to see what the control plate on this design should look like (the Basso IX we featured had a home-made replacement), but I doubt the knobs are original. Alas, the original pickups are missing their covers, and the trem arm would appear to be similarly absent.

This guitar is currently being auctioned on eBay with a starting price of $200.

For more about Jolana guitars, see Cheesy Guitars!

G L Wilson

© 2011, Guitarz - The Original Guitar Blog - now in its 10th year!

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It's immediately obvious which well known guitar was the inspiration for this late 1980s Jolana RK120 from Czechoslovakia, but it doesn't follow the template too closely and, in my mind, is all the better for it. It's surely preferable to a guitar that tries to fool you into thinking it's a Strat but then doesn't get the design quite right. For example I'm thinking of the Encore Strat copies where the lower horn is just the wrong shape - little inconsistencies like that bug me. The body shape here has a definite offset waist; it's a little like a Jazz Bass inspired version of a Strat.

This Jolana with the low production number of 0063, being an 80s guitar, has the obligatory locking trem (by Schaller in this case) and locking nut. The all-red finish on body and neck reminds me of my own DiMarzio cellophane Strat, but in this instance we have an ebony fingerboard.

G L Wilson

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

Bertram

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

The late 1970s Czechoslovakia made Jolana Superstar is supposed to have been inspired by the Peavey T60 but to me it looks more like a Yamaha SG - that would mean that after all, while Japanese companies were busy copying American guitars, their own models were copied too!

One can't help noticing the ultra-wide humbuckers, the massive bridge and the oddly placed switches; it's a pity that this one is such in bad condition because I saw some in a better state that are quite appealing guitars...

Bertram


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I don't know what it sounds like (the listing claims that it is in playable condition) but the Les Paul styling of this vintage Czech-built Jolana Diamant bass really appeals to me. Gibson themselves have made the occasional attempt over the years of producing a Les Paul bass but they always looked very awkward to my eyes, whereas this retro-looking instrument seems to have got it right, visually at least. It has, I believe, a certain mojo emanating from it. (Undoubtedly the Gibson basses sound better and are of better build quality).

G L Wilson

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