Jim Rodford's doubleneck behemoth comprising Fender P-Bass and Strat

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I was looking on YouTube for some footage of Argent's Russ Ballard playing his customised Holy Stratocaster (which also featured a cut-down body so that the top horn echoed size and shape of the lower horn), and found an interesting clip of Argent playing "Hold Your Head Up" on The Midnight Special TV Show in 1973 with an introduction from none other than John Denver (see below).

Sure, there was Russ playing his Holy Strat, but I was also intrigued to see bassist Jim Rodford thumping away on an enormous doubleneck seemingly composed of a Fender Precision Bass and a Strat. Alas I've not been able to turn up any better quality close-up photos of the instrument itself and so I though I'd have a little shout out to the faithful Guitarz readership to see if anyone has any more information about this remarkable instrument or knows where we might find some better photographs.

A Google search reveals various guitar and bass forum discussions in which this instrument is mentioned. Apparently the P-Bass making up one half of this doubleneck behemoth previously belonged to Chris White of The Zombies (keyboardist Rod Argent's previous band).

There are other clips of Rodford playing the bass as a single necked instrument (e.g. another performance of "Hold Your Head Up", this time from 1972) where the bass is clearly shown to have an enlarged or secondary pickguard on the upper portion of the body. One forum mentioned something about the doubleneck being convertible into two separate instruments, so possibly this upper pickguard was there to hide the join in the body with the upper horn section of the bass.

This is all conjecture on my part. I just think it's an interesting instrument worthy of further investigation.


G L Wilson

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Cyan FU Virgin

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This FU Virgin by German company Cyan Guitars is the signature guitar of Farin Urlaub, the frontman of Die Ärzte, one of the most famous German punk-rock bands. Classic and classy (Urlaub's personal model sports a skull, fortunately non standard), it combines an elegant outline with an impression of strength and efficiency I'd call German if I didn't want to avoid pointless clichés. And I love these modernist soundholes!

It's not only the looks, the pickups choice is special, on the same guitar you have a Di Marzio Megadrive in bridge position and a Duesenberg Grand Vintage in neck position - that probably allows a great range of sounds.

Bertram D

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Gitison Holy Explorer with more than a touch of the Blade Runner to it

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Take a look at that headstock logo. It looks a lot like "Gibson", doesn't it? However, it actually says "Gitison". This guitar is a Gitison Holy Explorer handmade in Budapest, Hungary, by Tibor Turcsak. Although the name and logo would suggest a connection with a famous American manufacturer, the body design is a near identical replica of the Guild X-100 Blade Runner guitar. The guitar supposedly is equipped with two Kent Armstrong mini humbuckers and DiMarzio humbucker in the bridge position which ought to make it more versatile than the Blade Runner.

Currently listed on eBay UK with a Buy It Now price of £880.

Thanks to Zirig Árpád for bringing this guitar to my attention.

G L Wilson

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1960s Japanese-made Guyatone Victoria: one to turn heads with!

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Here's a magnificent example of a seldom seen Guyatone Victoria currently listed on eBay. Here at Guitarz we first looked at this model guitar back in September 2010.

It's a 1960s-era Japanese-made guitar, has quite a unique shape, lashings of chrome and an intriguing pickup selector system: a rotary control pot with positions for Off/Low/Mix/High and a Solo/Rhythm switch. Quite how these function in conjunction to control the three pickups, I could only hazard a guess. It's good also to see that the tremolo appears to be all present and correct. All in all, the guitar appears to be in remarkable condition for an instrument that is around 50 years old.

Currently listed on eBay with a Buy It Now price of $650.

Thanks to Steve C for bringing this guitar to my attention.

G L Wilson

© 2013, Guitarz - The Original Guitar Blog - the blog that goes all the way to 11!
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Bowie and Uriah Heep bassist Trevor Bolder dies, age 62

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Trevor Bolder, RIP.

© 2013, Guitarz - The Original Guitar Blog - the blog that goes all the way to 11!
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1970s Kaman Music Corporation metal-necked Applause acoustic guitar

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Applause guitars were first introduced by Kaman Music circa 1976/77 as a budget brand version of Ovation's roundback guitars. The guitars featured the same moulded round backs as Ovation guitars, although whether this was made from the same "LyraChord" material I could not tell you. More idiosyncratically, these guitars featured one-piece aluminium necks with integral fingerboard and frets! The back of the neck was made of moulded plastic, supposedly designed to feel like mahogany. These metal-neck Applause guitars were built alongside Ovation guitars in Connecticut. Production of the Applause brand moved to Korea in the early 1980s with future necks being made from the more traditional timber choices.

This particular metal-necked Applause is currently listed on eBay UK and has a very reasonable sounding Buy It Now price of £160.

One other thing I have noticed about this guitar in where it differs from its Ovation cousins, is that where Ovations were designed from the ground up to be electro-acoustic guitars, this Applause appears to be wholly acoustic and features no pickups and no electronics of any kind.

G L Wilson

© 2013, Guitarz - The Original Guitar Blog - the blog that goes all the way to 11!
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1960s Vox Phantom VI Special with built-in special effects

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Guitarz reader Andrew K writes:

Okay, what we have here is the Vox Phantom VI Special with the onboard effects. This was the full, top-of-the-line, Vox Effects guitar. While the Starstream and other hollowbodies contained the smaller 3 effect unit the special contains ALL the effects. And I do mean all. Reliability notwithstanding these were truly special instruments, they were just about the only special FX guitar ever built that was fully analogue and actually functioned properly, and to top it off they were dead awesome and dead sexy. They are not as specialised as the guitarorgan or as standard as the Starsteam and other hollowbodies, they stand alone and thanks to the fact the company was circling the drain, there are relatively few of them in good nick. The fact they kept breaking may have counted against them in the long run.

And, Ian Curtis played one in Joy Division's "Love Will Tear Us Apart" video. Enough has been said, but still I will say more.

I am now enclosing an interview done with Bernard Sumner for the excellent book by Pat Graham called Instrument. The instrument being discussed was the self-same Vox Phantom VI Special.

Ian really liked this guitar. The Phantom had tons of effects built into it, as an added bonus. It had a pause unit, and a thing called the 'replat'. when we got the guitar, half the effects didn't work, and we were thinking "what the hell is the replat?" We got the guitar repaired, and it turned out that 'replat' was actually repeat - it was just a misprint. The guitar has a battery in it, and if you press the buttons in the wrong combination it will go into the self-oscillate mode and start to make this strange twittering sound that Ian liked very much. It is a pretty wacky guitar.

Ian didn't' really want to play guitar, but for some reason we wanted him to play it. I can't remember the reason now. It sounded like some of the thinner guitars on the Velvet Underground tracks, clean and jangly. I think Ian used to only play on 'Love Will Tear Us Apart'... no I'm wrong, there was another track too. Maybe, 'Heart and Soul'? I do remember Ian used to play only one chord, which was D. We showed him how to play D and we wrote a song. I wonder if that's why we wrote 'Love Will Tear Us Apart', you could drone a D through it. I think he played it live because I was playing keyboards. On the record, I played guitar, a twelve-string Eko (misspelt 'echo') an Italian guitar that sounded pretty good.

To pick it out, I think we just went to a record shop and said, that one looks cool, get that one and he said, yeah, I like that. I kept the guitar after he died, kept it under my bed in a case and then gave it back to his daughter when she came of age.

We did use it on a couple of New Order recordings. The one I remember is 'Everything's Gone Green'. On the rhythm guitar part on that song, you can hear this guitar. It just plays the D chord. That's a joke...

-Bernard Sumner.

If all of that is not reason enough for a feature, then I have absolutely no clue what is enough justification.

Do as you will.

Andrew K

P.S. if you read the description, It has a neck made by a furniture manufacturer. Quirky enough?

Currently being auctioned on eBay UK with bidding currently at £1,500 and three days left to run at the time of writing



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Frank Hartung Frost Omega one-off

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It happens often that luthiers, to prove their unbridled creativity compared to established guitars companies, over-design their guitars, with contoured outlines, exotic woods, wacky finishes and technical gadgets. But they are never as good as when their creativity express itself through sobriety, like in the case of this Frank Hartung one-off. 

Everything stands in just one line, then one pickup, one knob, and a cool 2+4 headstock (I love 2+4 headstock, so Teisco), that's it!

Bertram D

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Bizarre EMG-equipped headless metal guitar on eBay in Germany

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Will saw this bizarre headless metal guitar on eBay.de (the German eBay site) and has kindly translated the listing for us:

Handmade Metal Guitar Bizarre and Cool!

The ultimate metal guitar! This Metal Guitar was handmade by my colleague, and is a real 'Unikat!' Made of Steel, Brass, Iron & Aluminum. All parts, including the bridge, battery compartment were hand made. Only the pickups, Knobs, tuners, electrical wiring, output jack and a couple of screws were purchased. Very impressive. Comes with Zak Wylde EMG 81 & 85 pickups. 2 volume controls blend the imput of the pickups. Weighs 17.5 pounds. Bizarre & Cool Require a very thick leather strap while playing. Absolute eye-catcher and may be of interest to collectors. Guitar sold "as is." We're always open to offers.

He goes on to add that:

At 17.5 lbs., this is the sort of plank that would make Les Paul players stop whining about how heavy their guitars become after a short time playing them. Check out the frets on this monster. Could they be any fatter?

Remember, it is both bizarre AND cool!

Those frets remind me of the now legendary Gittler guitar - but of course that didn't have the fingerboard.

Unfortunately - for those of you who might have wanted to bid - the listing has now ended. Could this guitar really have sold for as little as €141,50? I would have thought it was worth more than that in scrap metal value alone?

G L Wilson

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Gretsch Synchromatic Jr. G3967 Historic Series

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Gretsch guitars are usually associated with cool super classic outlines, but the rare Gretsch Synchromatic Jr. G3967 really stands out of the lot, with its claw-like florentine cutaway, thin waistline, cat's eye sound-holes and gold finish!

Reviews say that it has its own specific sound with its floating mini-humbucker creating an almost acoustic quality than people often associate with some kind of jazz, but of course you can play any kind of music with any kind of sound!

It's exactly the kind of guitar I love, a classic base with a twist - well this one has more than one!

Bertram D

PS. exceptionally I take the opportunity of this post to invite you to pay a visit to my other blog, where I posted my first pedal review - for the Inductor Guitars Mellifluous Pussy MP-1. 

I enjoyed making this review, and I plan to do more, feel free to leave comments! 

© 2013, Guitarz - The Original Guitar Blog - the blog that goes all the way to 11!
Please read our photo and content policy.