Ibanez Talman TC420

guitarz.blogspot.com

OK, OK, OK, lately we've been showing plenty of über-cool guitars, vintage ones, rare ones, exotic ones, custom ones, but guitars need also to be simple, humble, cheap, practical, mainstream and still cool, such as this Ibanez Talman TC420 - a short lived model that existed in many versions but only between 1994 and 1998 (there still is an acoustic version).

The Jazzmaster-shaped Talman was first made of fiberboard (a MDF called Resoncast) with lipstick single coils à la Dan'o, then with mini-humbuckers, humbuckers, P90s and different pickups combinations, then it shifted to different kinds of woods - this is the case of the basswood TC420 that is one of the later models. I like several things on this guitar, particularly the strat/tele control plate with one knob and the jack socket (I wish I'd find one of these for my projects - I love one knob guitars) and the perloid pickguard (I usually don't like perloid but here it fits), but in general this guitar has a good feel (and I don't hate Ibanez just because Steve Vai is a show-off)(too many brackets).

Bertram

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

Tantra Surya from 1983

guitarz.blogspot.com:
For the guitar enthusiast such as I, there is always something "new" to discover. Yes, the guitar world is extremely conservative and set in its ways, but that doesn't mean there have never been any mavericks. You just have to look a bit harder to find the more unusual stuff.

This French seller currently has this Tantra Surya guitar from 1983 on eBay. It looks for all the world like a very curvy Flying V, and has an almost Sci-Fi/flying saucer feel to it. The pickguard appears to be made from alumunium and has an integral bridge with the saddles attached to an up-turned lip at the rear end of the plate.

Unfortunately I can tell you very little else about this model, and the seller doesn't seem to know much about it either, but mentions a possible connection with French superstar Johnny Hallyday.

As ever, if anyone has any more info, please use the comments below!

G L Wilson

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

Formanta Borisov from Belorussian Soviet Socialist Republic

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Another Soviet guitar - literately - this 1980s Formanta with its rough switches (for built in effects) is one of my favorite eastern guitars. I missed one on eBay a few months ago and I still sigh with melancholy just recalling this...

This guitar had many interesting finishes, I like this combination of metallic blue, perloid brown and mate aluminium - I saw it in different sunbursts, mauve and even a sparkle pink one that didn't look silly at all!

Bertram

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

Electro Saz

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I've been wanting to show here an electric saz for ever, and I finally found a good picture of one. The saz is a Turkish version of a lute or oud (hence a close cousin of the guitar), with a longer neck and a specific scale of 15 intervals tuned in just intonation, and 3 double strings (if you want to make some research about the saz, it's also called bağlama).

The saz seems to be used in every form of Turkish music - its electrified version has the same status as the electric guitar - and I particularly heard some Turkish jazz and jazz-rock music played by incredible saz virtuosos that really attracted me to this instrument... Unfortunately so far you cannot find Made in China cheap saz to try out the instrument that stays quite expensive, so I couldn't get one yet (I played an acoustic one though, and really enjoyed it).

Bertram

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

Crazy Russian guy makes guitars out of shovels

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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!

A rather eccentric German electric from A. Hoyer

guitarz.blogspot.com:
Here's another German guitar currently being offered for sale on eBay. It's a very eccentric-looking instrument by Arnold Hoyer with such features as that huge neck plate, a super thin body, Hoyer-branded parallelogram-shaped pickups, crude-looking Bigsby-esque vibrato, antique-looking controls, and a 5-pin DIN output socket.

What's more, as is evidenced by this video, it plays rather nicely too!

G L Wilson

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

Hofner 500/8BZ bass with built-in fuzz

guitarz.blogspot.com:
You could be forgiven for thinking that Hofner were a one-trick pony when it came to bass guitars, but there were other models than the one popularised by a certain Beatle. For example, how about this attractive Hofner 500/BZ from 1968 with semi-hollow construction and twin Florentine cutaways. It also features on-board fuzz circuitry as was sometimes the fashion in the day. Fantastic!

G L Wilson

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

Lemon Yellow Orfeus Guitar from Bulgaria

guitarz.blogspot.com:
This very crude-looking Bulgarian-made Orfeus from the 1970s is a delight to behold. It looks for all the world as if it could have been cut out from cardboard by someone who wanted something roughly between a Jazzmaster and a Stratocaster in shape. In common with other Orfeus guitars it has a 5-pin DIN output, and Orfeus' own very peculiar pickups which were single coils wound around a trio of square magnets and held in place with bands.

Alas, I can tell you nothing more about this particular instrument; it's not even listed on Cheesy Guitars' Orfeus page.

Any further info would be gratefully received.

G L Wilson

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

Jet Harris plays Fender Bass VI

guitarz.blogspot.com

We've been often showing baritone guitars and short scale 6-string basses on this blog - really exciting instruments I must say (I have a Dan'o baritone for a few months now and I start to figure out what to get out of it!)

For people of my generation, the Fender Bass VI is mostly the unique sound of the Cure in 1981, but it's not bad to hear how it was used in the early 60s when it was released. Jet Harris was the bassist of the Shadows (the first one to use an electric bass in the UK - a Framus one, yes, a German guitar) then had a short and fulgurant solo carrier. He's playing here on his Bass VI the theme of the Man with the  Golden Arm - a brilliant and catchy song.  

bertram

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

Robert Smith's custom Fender Jazzmaster

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Robert Smith is famous (amongst guitarists) for his versatility in his guitar choices: for about twenty years - until he finally got his signature guitar by Schecter in 2004, the very appealing Ultracure - he's been changing guitar regularly (Gibson, Fender, Gretsch, National, Hopf, Ovation, Guild, Vox, Mosrite..., all of them black or refinished in black), and from one tour to the next you can see him changing his sound sometimes radically with a different instrument - also in one set he could switch from solid body to semi-hollow to acoustic to 12-string... He's been faithful though to the Fender bass VI that have been essential to the Cure's early sound, but it seems (I'm not sure and I'd like to know more about this) that he's been using lately a one-off Ultracure baritone instead.

But I've been interested lately in his early sound and I realized that his best music (I belong to the people who think that the Cure's best drummer was Lol Tolhurst but this makes sense only for Cure's old school fans) has been composed and played on a customized 1965 Fender Jazzmaster - with the addition in middle position of the neck pickup teared off a plywood cheapo - the Silvertone 313 sold by Woolsworth as the Top 20 (Smith's guitar until 1979, on the picture on the right). I really love this kind of spirit, and laugh at all these tone fetishists who would purchase high-end pickups to upgrade already expensive guitars just to reproduce a vintage sound heard a million times, when one of the most influential musicians of our time created his sound with the lowest grade material!

Originally there's been two of these custom Jazzmasters, the backing one was beige and became the main one, refinished first in white, then in black, and used to record Seventeen Seconds, Faith, Pornography and The Top... I could tell several anecdotes, like Smith chose the Jazzmaster because he saw Elvis Costello playing one on TV, or that he paid his first one 100£ after his producer claimed that he couldn't record an album with his Top 20, or that the guitar was used again for the Trilogy concert in 2003 to play Pornography extensively with its original sound - but if you want this kind of details, you can pick them on impressionofsounds.com or wikicure.com (in French).

Bertram

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