1960s Migma Favorit hollowbody teardrop electric from Germany

guitarz.blogspot.com:

Here's an intriguing German-made guiar currently listed on reverb.com with a Buy It Now price of US $1,400 + shipping. It's a Migma Favorit, according to listing made by Heinz Seifert (?) if I am reading that correctly. It's supposedly from 1960, in which case it would have pre-dated the Vox Mark IV (a.k.a. Teardrop) by three years. I guess the shape might have been based on that of a lute - it would seem to be the obvious genesis for this design.

The example being sold here is obviously missing a pickguard, which would have hidden the enlarged part of the lower f-hole. I'm guessing it was made that way as an easier way of getting the pots in place during assembly. And just to prove that this is a playable guitar, here's a video of Linas Pečiūra playing "Corcovado" on this very instrument.



G L Wilson

© 2014, Guitarz - The Original Guitar Blog - the blog that goes all the way to 11!
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Migma 2000

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In the second half of the 20th century, it was common to add '2000' to a brand or to the name of a product to sound futuristic - could be cars, radios, vacuum cleaners, toothpaste, street artists… Now in 2014, when people carry around smartphones that are more powerful that the computer that helped Apollo to fly to the moon,  it sounds very retro, like putting data on audio-cassettes, the stratocaster or Soviet Union…

So here is the Migma 2000, that must have been something very advanced at some point, the acme of socialist technopop! I still wish a guitar company would revive some east-european models from the 1960s/1970s. A few months ago Eastwood made a 'cheesy guitars' (what a stupid and insulting name) contest to have their fanbase choose a bizarre guitar to reissue, and I think they finally picked a Wandrè, but there were a Tonika and a Jolana in the lot. The choice was based on oddness, I wish they'd be genuinely interested in these guitars, and I'd love to see a brand new Migma or Orpheus or Defil, with decent wood and good electronics, like they do in China these days...

Bertram D

© 2014, Guitarz - The Original Guitar Blog - the blog that goes all the way to 11!
Please read our photo and content policy.

Migma hollow-body

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It's been too long since I last shown a Migma guitar here - the odd twin company of more famous East-German Musima. This hollow-body model has their trademark strangely shaped pickguard, extra long whammy bar and sound-holes for which I guess there is no descriptive name (feel free to propose one!)  

Bertram D

© 2014, Guitarz - The Original Guitar Blog - the blog that goes all the way to 11!
Please read our photo and content policy.

Vintage German-made pearloid-finished Migma solidbody electric guitar

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Most regular readers probably already know how much we like vintage German guitars here on Guitarz. This Migma solidbody was made in the former East Germany; the seller claims it is from the 1950s, but I think 1960s is far more likely, especially considering the pearlescent celluloid finish. Surprisingly, the guitar appears to have a set neck rather than a bolt-on, and in fact other than the headstock shape the whole neck looks as if it could easily have come off an archtop acoustic guitar - note how the neck joins the body at around the 14th fret, also the block markers and the very top end of the fingerboard without frets. The guitar's heritage is all very clear.

Note also the unusual attachments for clipping on a guitar strap.

Currently listed on eBay with a Buy It Now price of €649.

G L Wilson

© 2014, Guitarz - The Original Guitar Blog - the blog that goes all the way to 11!
Please read our photo and content policy.

Musima Elektrina III soildbody electric from Germany circa 1961

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From Germany, here is a vintage Musima Elektrina III guitar, a model which appeared in their 1961 catalogue. It features three Rellog Gitona pickups and a Bigsby style vibrato which is probably not original to the guitar. The square buttons on the tuners have quite an Art Deco look to them - if only the colour scheme of the guitar was something cleaner, like black and white, it would help enhance the theme. However, there's something about the design of this model that I find very reminiscent of Australia's Maton guitars. Is it just me or does anyone else see this?

Currently being auctioned on eBay UK with a starting price of £150.

G L Wilson

© 2014, Guitarz - The Original Guitar Blog - the blog that goes all the way to 11!
Please read our photo and content policy.

See a Migma thinline guitar in a Wall of Death video

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In this video of French band Wall of Death (who opened for the Black Angels on their last tour, the guitarist mimes playing on an übercool Migma thinline such as this one (we also posted about the blue model with floral  pattern that is on the video but I cannot find the link [here it is - GLW]). From the live videos I could see online, he doesn't play it on stage…

I wish you a happy New Year 2014, full of Peace, Love and Guitars!

Bertram D

Edit: here is the guitar 

© 2014, Guitarz - The Original Guitar Blog - the blog that goes all the way to 11!
Please read our photo and content policy.

Meinel und Herold jazz guitar

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Meinel und Herold was a renowned German late 19th century accordion and harmonica company that later turned into a music instruments mail order distributing company - though they didn't build them, their violins, flutes or mandolins were as sought after as their previous instruments. 

They eventually got involved into electric guitars and had them built by East-German Migma - as I assume was this beautifully eccentric electro-acoustic archtop - the finish is original and quite cool.

Bertram D

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

Musima 1657B hollow body bass

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This Musima 1657B may seem unimpressive - a mere approximative copy of a Gibson EB-2 bass -, but I like it a lot: not only have I a thing for hollow body basses but I myself have a Musima 1657B and I'm very happy of it. 

I bought it by chance for 150€ on a Berlin flea market - I just wanted a cheap bass to learn how to play, but it got me into vintage guitars and east-European instruments! It's dark red and is better preserved than this one, which had its pickups, knobs and tuners replaced. 

Bertram D

© 2013, Guitarz - The Original Guitar Blog - the blog that goes all the way to 11!

Vintage German-made Goldklang archtop hollow body electric guitar

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Surely this Goldklang archtop is a relation of other German brands Musima, Migma and Perlgold guitars? There are too many design and hardware similarities for it to be mere coincidence. It's a fantastic looking guitar and don't you just love the name Goldklang?

This guitar is being sold by a seller in Poland and the eBay Buy It Now price works out at approximately £484 / $764.

G L Wilson

© 2013, Guitarz - The Original Guitar Blog - the blog that goes all the way to 11!

refinished Musima Eterna

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This is not the first time we see a Musima Eterna on Guitarz since I even presented my own here a few years ago, but this version roughly refinished in blue (usually Musima models are black and Migmas are perloid red) with a replacement wooden pickguard allows to see how well designed this guitar is - it's not just some eccentric East-German guitar interesting for its mere oddity... 

OK, the sound is a little bit raw and the neck is very thick so don't expect to shred on it but it's the perfect garage guitar - it makes me think that I don't play enough on mine (but I never play enough on none of my guitars!)

Bertram D

© 2012, Guitarz - The Original Guitar Blog - 10 years and counting!

Musima Herrnsdorf archtop

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Here is a good old DDR Musima-Herrnsdorf archtop. Herrnsdorf was another Markneukirchen-based instruments company started in the 19th century, turned electric in the 1950s - producing inevitably cool Schlaggitarren, mother-of-toilet-seat covered Hawaiian guitars and solid body upright basses - then merged with Musima in the early 1970s. The top of the guitar sports a Musima logo and the all-in-one scratchplate / control plate / pickup cover the Herrnsdorf brand.

It seems unlikely that in the 1970s anybody would still produce this kind of device to turn an acoustic archtop into an electric one so I guess this guitar is probably old stock put together - after all Herrsndorf pickups were also known as Rellog, a quite famous East-German brand, so they had to be used, even if the guitar itself - though elegant and well proportioned - has nothing of the flamboyant models of the 1950s...

Bertram D

© 2012, Guitarz - The Original Guitar Blog - 10 years and counting!

1960s German-made Perlgold Musima/Migma bass in stunning pearloid

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This 1960s Perlgold bass is quite obviously from the same stable as Germany's Musima and Migma guitars - the shape and those pickups are quite distinctive. And isn't it great to see three pickups on a bass? Remember this instrument is from the era when four pickups on a guitar was commonplace. I don't really have a lot to say about this beauty of a bass, other than to urge you to enjoy the photos!

This item is located in Hungary and is currently being auctioned on eBay with a starting price of $209.

G L Wilson

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

Vintage Otwin X-7 western-style acoustic guitar

guitarz.blogspot.com:

Here's an Otwin acoustic guitar which the seller on eBay dates somewhere between 1957 and 1963, telling us that:

It was manufactured by Otwin Guitars some time between 1957 and 1963, the only clue to the age of this guitar is X-7 which I am told refers to the model, X being the model and 7 being the serial number. The X series were produced in small numbers by a german luthier better known for his Archtop jazz Guitars... so this guitar has a 6 year window. The logo on the headstock is a simple screen print [...] so it is likely to be earlier rather than later.

We are also told that that guitar has a solid spruce top and maple laminated back and sides, whilst the fingerboard is maple which has been ebonised except for the block markers which have been left in natural maple.

I like that the guitar has a very hourglass shape, and in keeping with a manufacturer best known for archtop guitars rather than flat tops such as this, it has a floating bridge and strings anchored at a trapeze-type tailpiece.

As regular readers of Guitarz may have already suspected, Otwin was a brandname for guitars were actually manufactured by the Musima Company in East Germany.

This guitar is currently listed on eBay UK with a starting price of £75.

G L Wilson

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

1950s/60s East German Musima Record archtop guitar with generous German carve

guitarz.blogspot.com:

This Musima Record (the seller thinks it's from the 1950s or 1960s) is quite a glorious object to behold even if it wouldn't be your inclination to make music upon it. It features a generous German carve with an inset stripe (inner binding?) of what looks like mahogany around the perimeter of the arched centre section on both front and back. Binding is also mahogany which contrasts beautifully against the rich amber of the main timber (Spruce? Pine? Maple?).

The neck is a multi-laminate affair fronted by an ebony fingerboard with pearloid position markers and has a Rellog pickup tastefully and unobrusively installed in the end of the fingerboard with the output positioned, rather strangely, on the heel of the neck.

This Musima Record would appear to be the larger sibling of the Musima mandolin that we looked at last November.

The guitar is currently located in Poland and has a Buy It Now price of approximately $1,923 USD (£1,228 or €1.453).

G L Wilson

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

All of us are looking at the stars

guitarz.blogspot.com:

A Migma Star 61 to be exact. Maybe. It's hard to tell really as every search I've made has revealed a whole range of different Migma guitars claiming to be Star 61s. This one doesn't have the typical Migma tailpiece either. Anyway...

We've all heard or used the expression "a Mickey Mouse guitar", I'm sure. Well, for this seller, his Migma Star 61 has always been his Kater Karlo guitar because it looks like a cartoon (Kater Karlo is the Disney character - Pete - sometime villain and general tough guy). He says the model is rare and, if the paucity of Google searches is anything to go by, he's right. It has a large, thick body, of which he says, "What is the material of the body - no idea, it looks as if he had joined like two halves of bread. Maybe it's made ​​of fiberglass, is certainly very hard. It has a slight Flitteroptik (glitter effect, I guess). You can see on the photos that all the edges of the body are rounded off.

"Contrary to expectations, the guitar is very playable, the pickup works, although only one of the pots seems to function".

The guitar has its own design quirks such as the chunky pickup and the rather haphazard placing of the control panel but it's undoubtedly a Star guitar.

A little research indicates that these were probably not fibre glass but carved wood. There is a seam showing but the joint looks pretty accurate and there's no strip to hide the join like with a Res-O-Glas guitar. Someone once showed me how make a very tight fitting guitar case by making a box to size and then splitting it with a bandsaw lengthways to leave two perfect fitting halves. Maybe this uses a similar approach.

A little more research on http://www.schlaggitarren.de/home.php?text=hersteller&kenn=87%20mfg reveals that "Lothar Junghänel is the inventor of the extravagant "Star Series". They were designed by him and built in Zwickau, and later manufactured under license by Migma.

He celebrated his 82nd birthday on 20/05/2011. His son Hanno Junghänel contacted schlaggitarren and soon they will publish a detailed article on the history of Star & Starlet instruments, and its inventor."

Schlaggitarren also have some nice photos of other Star models and their designer plus a lot of other interesting guitars, so it's well worth checking out.

David in dull and dismal Barcelona Brrrrrrr! Anyone got a brolley?

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

One-off über-psychedelic Migma doubleneck bass/guitar

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Who can think of former East-Germany as a place and time of stern and dull design? Look at this  Migma doubleneck bass/guitar (it sports no brand but its look and finish cry Migma - there were some models shared with twin brand Musima but Migma was into wild post-accordion finishes) and praise whoever could have conceived and built this delightful monster.

Its fierce horns exceed their Burns model to reach an almost Wandre extravagance that allows the mother-of-toilet-seat-from-hell finish to escape Mitteleuropean kitsch to rocket to the crepuscular twirls of psychedelic heaven! I would love to listen to the music for which it was conceived... And I wish this guitar was mine!

This guitar is too crazy to be a series one - its seller on eBay.de (the excellent e-shop Vintage*Guitar*Collection) says that it's unique, so it must be a custom job... I don't know about Migma, but it seems that in Markneukirchen where most of the GDR music instrument companies were established, more or less everybody was a luthier, and people would easily have an atelier at home and make some extra instruments upgrading company models - their version of nowadays custom shops. 

Bertram

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

Musima 8-string mandolin with german carve

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This is not a GDR guitar but its baby sister, a beautiful vintage Musima mandolin. I'm not a specialist but I've never seen one like this, with its wide german carve and wooden pickguard. Remember that Musima was not just a guitar company but produced all kind of music instruments, and you can still find accordions, zithers and violins auctioned online.

Bertram

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

Musima Lead Star superstrat

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Usually when one thinks of GDR electric guitars, what comes to mind are superb and very German hollow-body jazz guitars, or these later through-the-looking-glass designs, both familiar and  askew, sometimes radically and wildly beautiful (have you seen the sublime Marma in the Guitarz 2012 calendar? what, you don't have it yet?), sometimes rough and uninspired, but all well rooted in the Continental European guitar flourishing of the 1960s that happened mostly in Italy and Germany...

Well that's what I thought so far - until I discovered this Lead Star guitar by Musima, the perfect 1980s Japanese-style superstrat with the long pointy horns, the bridge humbucker and the fancy finish - though it doesn't have a Floyd Rose trem but a classic strat one, probably a patent issue, if not a budget one...

It's one of the latest Musima electric guitar models before the post-reunification progressive collapse of the famous company. Online information starts to be a little more solid, there is now a good page on Schlaggitarren.de - in German but the Google instant translation isn't too bad!

Bertram

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

Migma Violin Guitar

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I've shown already a bass version of this Migma violin guitar, but not only a violin guitar is a much rarer instrument, but this one has astounding soundholes, in addition to its very cool violin shape, and its crazy pickguard...

And I was thinking, if I had such an instrument (I actually do, but not so special), I'd put it on stage! I'm getting frustrated lately to see and show so many of these vintage guitars, and to know that they are widely exchanged over eBay, but to never hear or see them played. I understand collecting, I do it myself, but guitars are for music, aren't they? So since more and more readers send us photos of their instruments, please show us also that they are used! 

Bertram

Guitarz - The Original Guitar Blog - now in its 9th year!

Migma Elektra Deluxe

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Time for another East-German guitar! Here is a Migma Elektra Deluxe - and like usually for this kind of guitar, there is little to know about it. It is from the 70s, and there was also a Musima version of it (regular followers of this blog know about this, otherwise click on the Musima /Migma label below), with a slightly different body shape, and a more sober finish.

Because the finish of this one is quite astonishing, and at first I thought it was a recent and eccentric retrofit, but I found out that some Migma guitars had this kind of accordion plastic finish that you find also on Hagström or Eko guitars of the 60s, when the whole music world switched from accordion hell to the beautiful guitar era. This finish is actually more tasteful than the usual blue sparkle, mother-of-toilet-seat or faux-wood, and makes this guitar quite a looker. 

I would consider adding it to my budding communist guitars collection, if its mislead eBay seller didn't ridiculously overprice it. I hope that the guitar won't sell and that these instruments can still be bought by musicians and not only vintage speculators. 

Bertram

Guitarz - The Original Guitar Blog - now in its 9th year!