guitarz.blogspot.com:We've seen one of Mike Oldfield's guitars up for auction previously on Guitarz. On that occasion it was his ex-Marc Bolan Telecaster which was the main lead guitar used on his now legendary Tubular Bells album.
This time, it's a one-off travel guitar with integral amp and speaker which was presented to Oldfield by the German arm of his record company, Virgin. The guitar appears to be modelled along the lines of a Hofner Shorty (possibly it is a customized Hofner Shorty) and bears Oldfield's name on the pickguard and has a Tubular Bells logo on the trussrod cover.
I remember seeing Mike Oldfield demonstrate this very guitar on a Breakfast TV show back in 1983 (or thereabouts) during an item in which he was showing off part of his guitar collection. I've tried and cannot find this clip on YouTube. I believe he mentioned taking it with him on aircraft flights. I couldn't say if it was ever used on any of his records; I suspect that it was purely a practice guitar.
G L Wilson
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Maybe it's a little bit late, but here is the video of the interview that you've mentioned:
ReplyDeletehttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qloJaYeXKWs
Mike says that it was a gift from a german record company and, almost without any doubt, I think is a Hofner Super Shorty model 181 with Mike Olfield's logos (and maybe the golden hardware too).
You can learn more about this guitars here:
http://www.vintagehofner.co.uk/vintage-hofner/factfiles/shorty/main.html
Forgive me if I'm wrong but I believe Mike Oldfield might have used this Hoffner guitar for some of the lead/solo guitar parts of the epic Amarok album.
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