Yngwie Malmsteen Fender Japan Custom Shop Doubleneck Stratocaster

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Genuine Fender doubleneck stratocasters are rare, since they've been only issued by Fender Custom Shop in very limited quantities - and this Yngwie Malmsteen model is probably the most common double neck strat since almost 200 were released in 1993/94 by Fender Japan Custom Shop.

It has the typically Yngwie features - that make it quite unique with its scalloped fret boards - I don't think I ever saw a scalloped 12-string neck before - an even less on a twin necks guitar!

The colour is supposed by be faded Olympic White, though to me it looks more like this pale yellow they used to paint office walls in former East-Germany - different cultures generate different reference fields I guess...

Bertram

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

The MC5's Michael Davis, RIP

guitarz.blogspot.com:

I'm a huge fan of the MC5 and although I was not old enough to have seen them in the days of the classic line-up of Rob Tyner, Wayne Kramer, Fred "Sonic" Smith, Michael Davis and Dennis Thompson, I did manage to catch the reformed DKT/MC5 version of the group (featuring Kramer, Davis and Thompson plus guest vocalists) three times in the early 2000s and these I remember fondly as some of my favourite ever gigs attended.

So, I was extremely saddened this morning to hear the news that bassist Michael Davis had died on Friday 17 February, aged 68. By a strange piece of coincidence I had chosen to wear an MC5 tshirt when I got up this morning, before I'd read the news.

By way of tribute I would like to share with you these photographs from my personal collection, which I took at a gig at the Oxford Zodiac (as it was then) on 14 June 2005. I apologise for the quality of the pictures (I was using a very basic, low-resolution digital camera) but I think they capture the spirit the occasion nicely.

Other people you may recognise in the photos include Wayne Kramer, Handsome Dick Manitoba, Gilby Clark and Julian Cope.

PLEASE NOTE: The photos in this blog post are all my own so if you do want to use any of them on a forum or a blog or whatever, that's fine, but please credit me and link back here. Thanks.

G L Wilson

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

Kramer Ferrnington RT-3 Richard Thompson signature acoustic from the late 1980s

guitarz.blogspot.com:

Apologies for the lack of a Guitarz post yesterday; I was simply too busy to get to use the computer (these days I'm trying to get out and about a little more and actually play the guitar rather than just writing about it).

Moving swiftly on, the above-pictured guitar is a Kramer-made Ferrington RT-3, a signature acoustic guitar for the No.1 English fingerstyle and folk/rock guitarist Richard Thompson.

By the mid-1980s Nashville-based luthier Danny Ferrington had been building one-off guitars for himself and various celebrities. He was one of the first guys to seriously challenge the strict design templates in the Gibson and Martin mould for acoustic guitar that seemed to be adhered to by almost every guitar manufacturer. Obviously Ferrington wasn't the first to make an acoustic guitar with a cutaway, but his designs were exciting and had outlines that you would have expected to be the sole reserve of the electric guitar.

In 1985, Ferrington began working with Kramer who produced his designs mainly in Korea for the mass market. Suddenly Strat and Tele-shaped electro-acoustics became very popular; for me personally, some of those models looked a little tacky and were no doubt the reason that Fender jumped on the "electric-shaped acoustic" bandwagon issuing the (to my mind very cheap and nasty looking) Stratacoustic and Telecoustic models.

I can't say that I've ever been a fan of "electric-shaped" acoustics, but this Richard Thompson guitar is a glorious design. It has an offset-waist and a double cutaway design yet it still conveys visually that it is resolutely an acoustic guitar, and not an acoustic guitar masquerading as an electric. I particularly like the ovoid fretboard position markers which echo the the soundhole and offset waist. The "mandolin point" on the upper rear bout is also a very nice design touch.

It's interesting to see the Ferrington name on the guitar's headstock; later models had the Kramer logo instead.

This guitar is currently being auctioned on eBay with just over a day left before the finish of the auction and with bidding currently at $406 at the time of writing.

G L Wilson

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

Ultima Firebird - the only guitar in the world with a built-in Class A tube amplifier (allegedly)

guitarz.blogspot.com:

Leo Fender's design for the Fender Telecaster dates back to 1949 and over the years we have seen Fender and a myriad of other guitar makers take this very basic design and tweak it and modify it into something new.

Ultima Guitars take the basic Telecaster template and re-sculpt it, add exciting pickup combinations and clever switching options, on-board amplifiers and effects. You could consider their guitars evolved Telecasters although often only the basic outline and the famous Tele bridge provide the only clues as to the guitar's design heritage.

This particular Ultima Firebird (ignore the Gibson-esque name, it isn't relevant) has a highly resonant chambered body of alder and mahogany, a 70s Tele style C-section maple on maple neck with brass nut, Sperzel USA machine heads, Fender Telecaster vintage bridge with handwound pickup (made in UK), two high output boutique humbuckers (made in UK) in the neck and middle positions, Schaller strap locks...

plus...

...a Class A Hybrid Tube Amp/Preamp with six amp voices that provides direct USB stream, high output headphone (dual mono), line level analogue, and High Z Amp output!

Whether it is truly the only guitar in the world with a built-in Class A tube amp, I couldn't tell you, but that's what the marketing spiel says in the eBay listing. You may want to take that with a pinch of salt, because it wouldn't surprise me if someone else had had this idea before.

As intriguing as all that is, I wonder about the road-worthiness of this guitar because the eBay listing stresses: "Collection only, this is not a delivery item".

This guitar has been listed several times on eBay recently with quite a hefty Buy It Now price. This time bidding began at £0.99 and with five days left to run on this auction it'll be interesting to see what price this will fetch.

G L Wilson

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

Samick Greg Bennett E-1

guitarz.blogspot.com

I just couldn't manage to find any information about this Samick Greg Bennett E-1 - it's quite different to the ordinary designs of the guitar branch of this giant Korean music instruments company, usually inspired by the classics without being mere copies, plus a few metal oriented original models.

There are bits of Eko and Danelectro in the E-1's design - a tribute to the times when budget guitars were more than cheap copies of standards and had cool and creative designs? - but the effort is spoiled by the absurdity of the back cutaway: it's OK to do things just for the look, but a cutaway can be useful in term of ergonomics when in the right place, and really counterproductive when like here it leaves a void where an arm rest is expected....

Bertram

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

Red Rubber Ball - The Cyrkle (featuring a Gretsch Bikini bass and guitar doublenck)

guitarz.blogspot.com:

As a postscript to last week's Vintage & Rare post about the Gretsch Bikini Bass, here's the doubleneck version in action! (OK, before some smartarse says it, they're miming. But, still...)

(Thanks Jim!)

G L Wilson

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

Vintage & Rare guitar of the week: Wandre Selene from 1960s Italy

guitarz.blogspot.com:

We at Guitarz are big fans of Wandre Guitars, probably the most eccentric of all 1960s Italian-made guitars, and believe me, they had some stiff competition.

However, Wandre guitars really took the prize for whimsical guitar design, often looking as if they had been cobbled together from various odds and ends from a junk yard.

Rather than try to get more descriptive, I'm going to let the pictures of this spectacularly idiosyncratic Wandre Selene do the talking. Seeing as we can't actually try this guitar out for ourselves, what more is there to say?

This guitar is currently being offered for sale via Vintage & Rare and is priced at €4000.

G L Wilson

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

Wotan - Japanese neck-through guitar, possibly late 80s - Anyone know this brand?

guitarz.blogspot.com:

Following on from yesterday's post featuring a Sanox Sound Creator neck-through guitar, Alex has sent this picture of his guitar (above). He says:

I own this guitar from the mid 80s, probably Matsumoku. But I cannot find more on the brand Wotan on the net, has anyone heard about them?

Other than to say than the design here looks like it owes a little to the more sobre efforts of B.C. Rich, I have to confess that I know nothing of the guitar brand Wotan. Ask me about Wotan and I'd tell you that it was the name of a Supercomputer based in London's Telegraph Tower hell bent upon taking over the world in a 1966 serial of Doctor Who (The War Machines). Sorry, I'm not being much help, am I?

If anyone has any better information, then please share it with us via the comments below. Thank you!

G L Wilson

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

Johnson metal body LP-style prototype - one of only five made

guitarz.blogspot.com

Metal body guitars are not only cool, mostly they have a unique sound, or at least exceptional sustain - since it seems to be the supreme quality of electric guitars nowadays - something that requires rigidity, and what could be more rigid than steel? (don't answer me, physics is not my domain).

This one is a prototype branded Johnson - unfortunately Johnson is too common a name to make serious research about it so I don't know much more about it - based on a Les Paul and similar to a Trussart SteelDeville (since I personally prefer shining chrome to rust and faux-patina, I favor the Johnson copy but that's just my point of view). Johnson's steel body guitars never reached production - the project was to keep it affordable and this didn't succeed - and only 5 prototypes were ever made. Well, honestly, I wish it could be mass produced in a Chinese factory, because this kind of guitar shouldn't be so rare, it could even be a standard, couldn't it?

Bertram

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

Sanox Sound Creator through-neck Alembic-style guitar

guitarz.blogspot.com:

Long-time readers will know of my mostly fruitless search to find out anything I can about the little remembered Japanese brand from the 1970s (possibly early 80s too?), Sanox Sound Creator. Well, it seems that Stef, the owner of the guitar pictured here, has also been searching for more info. Stef writes:

I was looking for some information on the Sanox guitar I own, and I found your site. Here are some pics from my Sanox, bought second-hand; must be around 30 years old. Payed 100 euro for it (Belgium). I was intrigued by the neck-through construction and I like the wooden look. It still plays well; electronics need a clean-up, one pot needs to be replaced I think.

Unlike the obviously Strat-inspired Sanoxs (or should that be "Sanoxes"?) we have already featured on Guitarz, here we see a departure with a neck-through design that looks to be inspired by Alembic guitars; witness the point at the end of the body upon which the strap button is mounted, and also note the elipse-shaped fingerboard markers.

Whilst the neck-through styling would seem to suggest this guitar was built in the 1980s, I'm reserving judgement on this and think it could be as early as, say, 1976 because it is an Alembic copy and Alembic were the originators of multi-laminate neck-through guitars and basses way before the style became fashionable in the 1980s.

I'm guessing that the mini-toggle switches located in the middle of the block of volume and tone controls are coil taps for each of the two humbuckers, which ought to make for a versatile selection of tones.

I'd say that for €100, Stef, you got yourself a real bargain there. Thanks for showing us your guitar and allowing us to document another guitar from the almost obscure Sanox Sound Creator brand.

G L Wilson

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