Guitar Info

I recently bought a GuitarKits USA National Supro Res-O-Glas guitar body on ebay and have been seeking out some suitable parts to go with it. The one thing I didn't want was to end up with was a kit guitar that looked like everyone else's.

That's point of a kit guitar I guess.

So, I've been searching "pickup rings", "vintage pickups", "vintage pickup rings" and a myriad of similar and dissimilar terms on ebay and elsewhere. I bid on a nice 50s Framus pickup and pickup ring combo but it went out of my range. I searched through listings with bewildering amounts of information and listings with little more than a fuzzy picture and a ludicrous BIN price (uploaded with my iPhone).

I searched for Art Deco plastic (and wood and aluminium) handles that I could modify into a bridge base and/or funky pickup rings to take a couple of new/old Ovation Viper pickups or old/old Gibson Marauder pickups that I've had floating around for years. Anyway, still no luck so I'll keep looking. One thing I did unearth with the "Art Deco - Guitar" combination was this beautiful guitar from 1962. The most obvious stand-outs are the scratchplate and Art Deco pickup. Now that would suit me fine!

This is what the sellers are saying:

Description: 1962 National Studio 66 electric guitar finished in Sand Buff.

Cosmetic Condition: Various minor nicks, chips, dents & dings; some scuff marks on the body & light weather checking on the neck.

Neck: Bolt-on maple neck with rosewood fingerboard & pearloid dot inlays. Frets are in great shape with no wear. Original Kluson Deluxe tuners are a little rusty, but are in perfect working condition.

Body: Single cutaway, Res-O-Glas body with nickel trapeze tailpiece & fixed wooden bridge.

Pickup: Art deco bridge pickup with single volume & tone controls. 8.87K ohms.

Set Up: Professionally set up by our guitar tech & strung with brand new Ernie Ball .10-.46 gauge Slinkys.

Playability / Sound: Nice, low action; smooth playing neck; cool vintage tone!

Case: Vintage chipboard case included.

I've always been a big fan of Res-O-Glas guitars since seeing one in a second hand shop in East London when I was a teenager, and have been coveting one ever since. They also had a pale green Microfrets guitar which was the dustiest guitar I've ever seen.

But, coming back to this guitar, I especially like the Art Deco pickup and the eccentric scratchplate and pretty much everything else (except the price. Ouch!). And, that's a good enough reason to post it. Now, if I could find a pickup like that...

STOP PRESS: I just found that we posted one of these a couple of years ago but I hope Gavin doesn't mind if I let it ride as it is a beautiful guitar and the ebay pics are stunning. Well worth checking out.

After showing the Eastwood wooden reissue and the Res-O-Glas kits, I couldn't not show the original model - a 1964 Supro Airline. The logo on the headstock is not genuine though everything else is - someone strangely wanted to emphasize the authenticity of the guitar by modifying it! The pickups are not humbuckers but large singlecoils and of course, the body is made of glass-fiber.

I've been introduced to the Supro Dual Tone by its reissue by Eastwood a few years ago, but at the time I was into their more spectacular guitars, like the Wandre Doris, the Tokai Hummingbird or the Airline 59 Custom... Now my taste gets more refined and I enjoy the original humble Supro with its old gold mock-humbucker - actually big singlecoils -, art deco stop tail, 4 knobs in a line and double pickguard (one would say a scratchplate on top of a pickguard, but that's a lot of vocabulary!)

Supro, like Airline and National, other brands reissued by Eastwood, was a sub-brand of Valco, a US company active in the 50s-60s, that eventually merged with Kay before bankrupting. They are at the core of the vintage guitars hype, with people like David Bowie, Jack White or Robert Smith having taken them out of attics and played them on stage again!