Those Guitarz readers who were savvy enough to buy a copy of our limited edition Guitarz 2012 Calendar may already have flipped through the pages to October 2012 and seen a particularly stunning photo of a Gus fretless bass. However, I don't think that we have ever looked at Gus guitars on the blog itself before.
This particular example is a Gus G1 Baritone guitar with the serial number G1/B 001. Built by Simon Farmer in the UK, each Gus guitar or bass is essentially a custom order, although some instruments will have more specific custom features than others. The construction is of cedar with a skin of carbon fibre. All hardware is fabricated in-house a the Gus workshop so these guitars are not going to carry all the same generic hardware that we see everywhere else. The body is basically a teardrop shape and - most notably - is mounted inside a chrome-plated aluminium tube (actually welded in 5 sections). This tube helps give the instrument a more recognisable guitar-like shape and provides the familiar body horns.
The G1 Baritone has a 30" scale length and is designed to be tuned down to B (a fourth below 'normal' guitar pitch). This example has been finished in "Plum Crazy" purple to green flip flop paint from House of Colors.
Steve Klein mainly builds high-end acoustic guitars these days, but he is probably best known for his ergonomically designed headless guitars. We at Guitarz have previously featured a rare left-handed example of the Klein BF-96. These guitars are no longer in production, but have inspired numerous luthier-built instruments and ergonomic self-build projects.
I had heard that Klein produced a bass, but had never seen an example before I was browsing Vintage and Rare this weekend. You'll notice that the body is slightly more elongated than the guitar model, and it also has an upper body horn, which no doubt helps achieve the correct balance of the bass on a strap.
The specifications are as follows:
34" Scale
Fretless Moses Graphite Neck
Alder Body
Active EMG J-Pickups
Passive Electronics
Steinberger D-Tuner Bridge
Uses standard strings
Refinished Body (Nitro)
Volume - Volume - Tone
(I hope that it's equipped with proper round-wound strings and none of this "flatwounds on a fretless" nonsense. With a graphite neck there's absolutely no excuse for those tone killing strings.)
Monday's mention of Austrian guitar makers made me think you should mention another one - Andreas Guitars - metal fretboard, larch wood (burnt) bodies (it's like a 3D wood effect)... built around 2000. They also have a weird rubber finish (not very durable).
I have 4 of them!
Later ones had wood fretboard + Heussel pickups (NAMM show). Later company was purchased by Infeld, who seem to have given up soon after on manufacture.
In a weird piece of synchronicity, after posting about the Mickey Mouse guitar yesterday and linking to a previous Guitarz post about the Mickey Mouse club Mousegetar, I found the above-pictured Selco Skiffle Junior plastic toy guitar (or maybe its a ukulele) on eBay UK - the design of which has been borrowed from the Mousegetar. I'm thinking that the Skiffle Junior was originally intended as a plastic Mousegetar - look closely at the design - you can still see the outline of Mickey Mouse's face. Note also that the tuning pegs resemeble Mickey Mouse ears.
The Skiffle Junior dates from 1956. Perhaps they were just going along with the current trends. To begin with Disney was popular, then the Skiffle craze came in and so they altered the design. A few years later they would issue the more famous Selco Beatles plastic guitar.
Currently listed on eBay UK with a starting price of £45.
Heritage Guitars was founded in 1985 by former employees of the Gibson guitar factory following Gibson's re-location to Nashville. Unsurprisingly, most their guitars are distinctly Gibson-flavoured, although this Heritage Little One would seem to be an exception as it's not obviously a Gibson-derived design. Body and neck are made of multiple laminates of dyed wood to give a very striking red, white and blue design.
The seller tells us that:
The idea behind the Little One series is to have a practical-sized guitar for someone who travels and performs. It is not neck heavy like some SGs. The Red, White and Blue version is a highly customized Little One. They will not make any more. The hardware is top notch!
The wood is the amazing part of this story. It is similar to maple in density but more water resistant. It is used in high end firearm stocks, archery bows, and for some military applications. Thin slices were soaked in vats of dye until the color filled the wood. The slices were then glued together. The laminate block was then cut at an angle to give the striped appearance. The neck itself consists of over 30 laminates. Note in the control cavity that the dye is completely through the wood.
There is no finish on the wood. It is impervious to water. Heritage recommends applying furniture polish to it twice a year. The neck is stronger than maple and should never crack.The tone is bright and is full spectrum with great lows and highs. The sound is amazingly good and is NOT a compromise.
I am reminded of the Gibson "Zoot Suit" SG which employed similar dyed laminates in its construction.
Currently listed on eBay with a starting price of $1,295 and a Buy It Now of $1,895, and currently with no bids and just over a day and a half to go before the auction finishes (at the time of writing).
Whilst the plastic guitar in this Big Beat Combo set is/was supposedly a functioning playable instrument, there can be little doubt that it was marketed as a toy for the younger player unlike the plastic guitars of Maccaferri which were intended as serious instruments. The lettering on the original box (included here in this sale) states that the guitar is of 'Professional size - 30" long', so I'm guessing the scale length is going to be somewhere around the 20" mark, perhaps a little over if we're lucky. The ebay seller (who insists on referring to this as the 'Big BOAT Combo' which makes no sense whatsoever) thinks this might be from the 1960s, which is probably a fair guess. I'd say 1960s or maybe early 1970s.
The set comes with a small plastic battery-powered transistor amplifier with a 4" speaker plus a contact mic style pickup which is attached to the body of the guitar by suction pads.
Currently listed on eBay with a starting price of $14.99 and no bids at the time of writing.
This Staccato MG bass from 1986 is one of approx 200 guitars/basses built in the UK by Pat Townshend. I recall these guitars well from when they were first introduced, and remember seeing them at a music show in London, I'm guessing, in 1986. As I remember Chris Jagger (Mick's brother) was also involved in the company, and no doubt it was through his connections that these guitars were used by Mick Jagger and Bill Wyman in the Rolling Stones. Other endorsees included Gene Simmons of Kiss, and Motorhead's Lemmy (and if memory serves me correct, I saw Lemmy's bass exhibited at the above-mentioned music show).
The neck and centre body section is cast in one piece from magnesium alloy. Perhaps some more knowledgable readers can confirm this, but I seem to recall reading something to the effect that all the magnesium used in these guitars was filtered from sea water (magnesium being an element dissolved in sea water) and as such provides a material that made these guitars very environmentally friendly. Depending on the process employed to extract magnesium from water, that is.
The outer part of the body is made from fibreglass and seems to have been sculpted to provide for an ergonomic and body-fitting shape. Note that the strings are anchored at the headstock whilst the tuners are situated at the other end of the instrument behind the bridge. Pickups are double-bladed sealed units which are concealed within the magnesium centre body block with only the blades themselves protruding through to the front.
The fingerboard is made from an industrial plastic material and is fitted with 22 very low flat frets, which almost brings to mind the strange fretboard of the Lane Poor bass.
Unless my memory is playing more tricks on me, I believe Staccato offered basses and guitars with exchangable bodies / necks where the centre neck section could be swapped out for another guitar or bass (or converserly the body could be changed for say one in a different colour).
This eBay auction for this bass is finishing in 11 hours as I write; the starting price is $1,999 and Buy It Now price is $2,499.
Wow! I mean we've seen metal guitars before, but not any made from solid brass. That's right, solid, not plated. I couldn't say whether or not the guitar body is chambered, but weighing in at a whopping 70 lbs it's possible that this one-off brass Ibanez Artist IS solid all the way through! Imagine what that must feel like... and you thought a Les Paul was heavy! Despite the weight, apparently it IS fully playable and has recently been professionally set up. Looking at the condition of the body with scrapes and dings it looks like it may have been used over the last 4 decades too.
But "WHY?" you may well be asking. Apparently it was created as a centre piece for the unveiling of the Ibanez Artist line at NAMM sometime in the mid 1970s. (Has anyone got a more specific date for me here?)
Other than unusual choice of body material, specs are: 25" scale, 1 11/16" nut width, ebony fingerboard, Flying Fingers humbuckers, active 3-band equalizer.
This one of a kind guitar is currently listed on eBay with a Buy It Now price of $24,999.95.
Thanks to Jason Moody for bringing this guitar to my attention.
Way before this modern age of MP3s and digital downloads, before CDs even, we listened to music on records or "vinyl" as it is called now. I remember back in the late 1970s following the advent of punk rock and new wave, the music was much spikier and the records themselves were often pressed in various shades of coloured vinyl rather than the usual black. I recall in the music press there was a big noise when it was announced that the new Generation X single, "Valley of the Dolls", was to be issued in multicoloured vinyl. Of course when the record came out, the colour was a sludgy swirl of brown. As any kid that has played with Plasticine modelling clay could have told us, if you mix a whole bunch of colours together you end up with brown with little swirls of colour in it.
Which is a very roundabout way of saying that I think that may the same thing must have happened with this plastic Maccaferri TV Pal guitar. It was probably intended to be multi-coloured but ended up a brown swirly mess.
Mario Maccaferri was, of course, best known for the Selmer gypsy jazz guitar he designed. He also had a career in the production of plastic consumer goods. Believing that plastic had a previously untapped potential he produced the world's first plastic stringed instrument, the Islander plastic ukulele in 1948. By 1953 he had branched out into the production of plastic guitars. These were not intended solely as novelty items; they were supposed to be serious highly functional instruments. The TV Pal model was one of the round-hole designs which also included the Islander and Romancer guitars, but possibly the Maccaferri plastic gypsy jazz guitar with cutaway and f-holes is better known.
This Macaferri TV Pal is currently listed on eBay with a Buy It Now price of $195.
The eBay seller calls this a Farnell UltraLite (and manages to spell it three different ways throughout the listing) but from what I can make out on the Farnell website, it's actually a Farnell Electra-lite (unless they changed the name), designed by Al Farnell, although it looks to me as if he's taken a Strat template as a starting point and made various edits to it. However, the appearance of the guitar isn't the clever part - it's what's inside that makes it innovative. To quote from the badly written Farnell website:
The New Farnell Electra-lite Series Guitar features a unique patent-applied for guitar that consists of a molded body made of High Impact Polystyrene which enables unbelievable sustain, attack, major tone enhancement and extremely strong!!
The Wooden insert and the other design features of the Farnell patented process provides for low-end bass tones. The durable Polystyrene/composite casing provides for incredible high-end to overall tone and strength.
However, the proof would be in the playing, I guess. But it's an interesting concept.
Currently being offered for sale on eBay with a Buy It Now price of £499.
I quite liked the look of this, Japanese made, 1960s semi-acoustic Bruno Conqueror bass (recently sold on eBay for £219) and as I'm in the market for something like this, it caught my eye. It's in great condition, looks complete and has some nice details, like the slanted end of the neck. When I looked closely at the pictures, something else caught my eye. Firstly, this is what the seller had to say:
This is one super-cool looking and great sounding vintage 1960s Bass. Made in Japan around 50yrs ago! This has got great tone and is in exceptionally good condition for it's age, modern basses just can't capture this vintage tone.
What he didn't mention was what the material the neck is made of...
If you look closely at the picture of the back of the headstock, you'll see the very regular pattern of the grain. I've seen something like this in the flooring of a fashion store which I recall was made of laminated bamboo. Sure enough, Google informs me that bamboo has been used, successfully, for guitar materials in the past. It's fast growing and renewable, very hard but very light, strong and relatively easy to work. It also has a decent tone.
This is, of course, just conjecture on my part but, it's clearly some kind of laminated wood and considering this instrument hails from the far east, it can't be all that surprising to see local materials being used.
Now, once I started Googling I couldn't stop (like popping Pringles) at just a bit of history so I stopped off at the TDPRI Forum (well worth joining - a lot of not strictly Tele stuff going on there amongst the regular Tele stuff. Anyway, I came across a post about a bamboo telecaster which describes the building of the instrument plus a video demo and few sidelines about other bamboo based beauties, including a Yamaha acoustic and Fender's limited edition Bamboo Tele.
That guitar was built by Brad Ferguson, a maker of all sorts of cool musical things. His blog shows the guitar making process and some nice videos. Well worth checking out.
Anyone hankering to build their own will be glad to know the raw materials are quite widely available these days so I'm sure a little Googling should find a supplier. Anyone who'd hoped to build a guitar from the now discontinued Ikea butchers block will surely find this video quite interesting too.
At the first sight, this Switch Stein IV has a 1980s look that probably repels the average vintage cultist who thinks that electric guitar history stopped the day Fender subcontracted its guitar making to Greco (all these angles! - though in one extra decade that will be probably sooooo cool).
But if you look closer, you will figure that this guitar has something special - first of all it is a recent model (2000s but I cannot tell more - because as often with Trev Wilkinson products, short lived guitar company Switch has a visibility deficiency - their website is no more, no fan page, very little reviews...). You will notice right away its ergonomically contoured top that is supposed to provide a more comfortable access to the strings and knobs, and the Parker Fly-esque upper horn (they enjoyed radical designs, GL has already posted about a Burns Flytesque model a couple of years ago).
But the very special thing about this guitar, is that it's one-piece, molded out of a composite material called Vibracell, supposed to have the best resonance and sustain one can expect from a guitar - that you can get from wood only if you are lucky or put a lot of money... For me that makes sense - I love wood for the feel and the look, but I'm far from being convinced that it's the ultimate material for an electric guitar! Vibracell allows one-piece construction, easy chambering, design freedom and low price... Unfortunately early XXIst century is not the right time to be innovative in guitar making, so no surprise these guitars didn't take in spite of the unanimous positive reviews I could read...
I wonder if this material will ever find its proper use - maybe for other instruments aimed at less conservative crowds...
Foster's Brothers Guitars builds fine, quality instruments. Designer/Builder Keith has been building Lego-bodied guitars for 14 years now. In that time he has completed 13 Lego builds. His build process and the quality of the instrument has significantly increased over that time.
Keith's designs - whether in Lego, or whatever medium he tackles, ALWAYS push the limits. They are some of the most radical designs out there.
They are certainly distinctive-looking instruments and well worthy of a Guitarz blog post. I can't imagine that the body is completely Lego - it'd need some kind of solid core or foundation, I would have thought. Anyway, great, fun designs! Love it!
G L Wilson
Guitarz - The Original Guitar Blog - now in its 10th year!
Kevin Burkett of the Electrical Guitar Company creates boutique-quality aluminium guitars and basses. This particular example is a one-off, inspired by the now legendary Dan Armstrong plexiglass guitar, and which marries a lucite body to an aluminium Travis Bean-style neck. Unlike the Dan Armstrong which had such a deep-set neck that there was only room to accommodate a single pickup, the EGC has two P90s. Indeed, from what I can make out in the photographs, the neck/body interface looks to be one of its most interesting features. It appears that the neck and the plate at the rear of the body are formed from a single billet of aluminium, allowing the end of the neck to be flush with the top-end of the body with no need for neck pocket or deepset tenon.
This 3-stringed biscuit tin guitar is yet another variation on the cigar box guitar theme, and illustrates nicely the spirit of inventiveness.
This seller has been listing such homemade instruments on eBay for several months now and has assembled a number of rustic-looking resonator guitars. It's a pity his eBay listings are let down by a lack of attention to detail in the areas of spelling, grammar, punctuation, use of capital letters (i.e. total disregard for), and even basic sentence construction.
G L Wilson
Guitarz - The Original Guitar Blog - now in its 10th year!
Wow! A rare Renaissance plexiglass guitar listed on eBay with a starting price of $249. Is that too good to be true?
Errrrmmm... yes, it seems it is.
The problem with plexiglass-bodied guitars is that they tend to be somewhat on the heavy side, and it seems that the owner of this USA-built 1978 Renaissance guitar decided to do something about the weight and has carved away material from the back of the body and absolutely peppered it with holes.
Argh! What a crying shame!
For those who are interested, here's the info copied from the listing on eBay:
This is a rare Renaissance guitar made in Pennsylvania in 1978, The founder of the company was John Marshall who trained locally under Eric Schulte, along with Augie LoPrinzi of New Jersey. The company lasted from 1977 to 1980. They are very well made guitars. This one has had some "customizing" done. Due to weight, someone cut out the back and drilled holes into the body. Very cool looking, but rather unfortunate to alter a rare vintage instrument. The weight of the guitar is now a little less than 8.5 lbs. Dimarzio pickups. Active electronics, CTS pots are dated 1377833 which dates the guitar to 1978. Brass hardware. Flame maple two piece neck which is straight. Ebony fingerboard with 24 jumbo frets. Some minor fretwear. Action is excellent. The guitar plays and sounds great. They only made 250 - 300 guitars. Mostly basses. Less than a 100 guitars were produced. This is definitely a rocker and would make a great stage guitar.
Long-term Guitarz readers might remember that we previously featured a Renaissance guitar in smoked plexiglass - this shows what it should look like without the holes.
G L Wilson
Guitarz - The Original Guitar Blog - now in its 9th year!
I can't tell you much about this guitar, but you can see for yourselves photos from the construction process here.
Thanks to Frogleg Che who posted this on the Guitarz Facebook page. Please feel free to post pictures of your own interesting or unusual guitars on our Facebook page - they may even make it onto the main blog.
G L Wilson
Guitarz - The Original Guitar Blog - now in its 9th year!
We've had a few vintage Mel-O-Bars recently but this one is 1980s, unused with just a couple of small scratches on the neck and a liberal coating of shop dust. That's like fairy dust but more expensive. The sellers say it's been on display in their shop since the 1980s. The body is foam padded "for comfort" and, it's covered in Naugahyde!!!!!!! Sorry, more exclamation marks and bold type, I just can't help it.
It was Tom Waits who introduced me to the subtle, sticky and seductive texture, the clammy and clinging faux leatherette-ishness and the sweet, heady vinylious aroma of Naugahyde and I've been a sucker for it ever since.
I checked out Naugahyde on Google and they are still in business! www.naugahyde.com
"There is only one Naugahyde and it's proudly made in the USA." Well, for that I'm glad! They do have a somewhat skewed take on eco friendly though, which is kind of fuzzed over with their story that Naugahyde comes from the sloughed skin of naugas - "No naugas were harmed in the production of this material". But as Naugahyde is actually made of PVC, the welfare of cute little fictional critters is the least of our worries. Slight digression... Guitar making is, in the mainstream at least, an industrial process and, even apart from the timbers that are used to build guitars, there are glues, paints, varnishes, plastics and heavy metals (yeah! I'm talking to you Ozzy) used in their manufacture so... Where art thou, eco-guitar?
It also has another interesting though somehow less, well, tactile feature (if you get my drift) which I've never seen before. Along the edge of the neck is a guide bar to help position the slide. I guess you would feel the notches with your finger tips as you play. I tried searching for more info on this but with no luck so far. It may well be an innovation unique to Melobars.
I'm pleased to say, that as it's clearly not everyones cup of tea, I had little opposition in the usual bidding frenzy over there at eBay Towers and it will be winging its way to sunny Barcelona (into the loving arms of the Spanish customs department so they can determine how much to fleece me for this time) very shortly. I stayed up till 4.30 in the morning to bid for this, by the way.
David in Barcelona
Guitarz - The Original Guitar Blog - now in its 9th year!
Micha brought this to my attention - never mind cigar box guitars, these are shovel guitars! (More photos here and see also here). Admittedly, the above video does go on a bit too long, and I guess is supposed to be funny. I suppose it helps if you speak the language.
G L Wilson
Guitarz - The Original Guitar Blog - now in its 9th year!
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