Yasuki 1980s Japanese-made Les Paul-style guitar with built-in effects

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We've previously looked at other Japanese guitars with built-in effects, drum machines, etc. The LP-style guitar with built in FX that we most commonly seen is the Univox-made example loosely modelled on the original Roland GS500 Guitar Synth Controller. However, the above pictured Yasuki LP-style guitar with built-in FX is modelled on a more traditional LP design, although the addition of the effects unit seems to be almost an after-thought. You would have thought that it would have been more elegant if the effects had been rear-mounted. The least they could have done would have been to put the battery compartment cover on the rear.

You'll notice that this picture showing the effects unit removed from the guitar betrays the ultra-cheap construction method of Les Paul copies from this era; the arched top of the guitar is achieved with bent plywood on top of a solid (plywood) body - and with a big pocket of air between the two! You just know that this guitar is never going to sound like a real Gibson.

Currently listed on eBay UK with a Buy It Now price of £399.

G L Wilson

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Vintage 1960s MEAZZI Dynelectron Longhorn Fretless Bass

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Back in the late 70s, when I first left home, I lived near a street that was famous for being chocablock with second hand shops. I spent many a Saturday morning rummaging through the treasures there, picking up amazing records from bands I never heard of, dilapidated furniture and bits and bobs to decorate my freezing hovel. Ahhh! Such memories.

Amongst all the bric-a-brac was the occasional guitar. A green Microfrets was in the window of a shop that I never saw open. There were Silvertones galore, with and without amp-cases and ghastly Teiscos with nasty flower motifs on the scratch plate and strings like cheese wires.

It was in one of those shops, I first saw one of these Dynelectro guitars. That got me a bit confused as I then thought they were the originals and Danelectro were copying them. It's hard to imagine now but, in 1965, a company copied another's product, even down to the almost-the-same name, and sold it openly. What is now known as "passing off" or back then "ripping off".

I never did buy a guitar from that street but I did, eventually, buy a reissue, late '90s Dano U2 and it sounds and plays really well but I've never had the opportunity to play a Dynelectron. From what I've read about them Dynolectrons were at least as playable as the originals and this seller agrees.

The pictures also seem to support that pretty well, as does the fact that it was once owned by Walter Becker.

A rare 1960s Meazzi Dynelectron fretless longhorn bass(copy of Danelectro) - previously owner by Walter Becker of Steely Dan and also used on David Lynch's production of Lux Vivens (can be seen on the Lux Vivens youtube video) - comes with signed papers as to its authenticity - bass is set up and very playable, has stress/finish cracks at neck pocket(see pic), and some small dings and wear as shown, bass has an awesome growl and is very light weight - comes with non-original newer tweed hard case - this bass is also featured on FetishGuitars.com under Meazzi

This is obviously a well made instrument and probably, given its provenance, is priced about right. But, it has a fairly specialised appeal, I'd say (although I wouldn't say no) and, as the seller has put it in a long-term listing, I don't think it'll be a quick sell.

That means we can drool over it and imagine if we had the cash/space for even longer.

One last look...

Ooooooh!

David In sunny but autumnal Barcelona

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Gibson Les Paul / SG Special - very rare 1961 three-quarter scale model

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Here's a rare doublecut 3/4-scale Gibson Les Paul / SG Special from 1961. Note the position of the bridge nearer than usual to the base of the body, plus the extrat length of fingerboard beyond the point where the neck meets the body. According to the eBay listing, which in turn quotes the Vintage Guitar Guide, ther were only 61 of these guitars shipped in 1961.

Currently listed on eBay with a Buy It Now price of $3,000.

G L Wilson

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Custom handmade short scale bass - Alembic meets Danelectro!

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Guitarz reader Paul H. writes:

I'm an old Deadhead, so I love me an Alembic-style bass. This one is weird. Love the rosewood tailpiece/bridge, but I'm not too sure about the Dan-O headstock.

The eBay listing tells us that:

This is a custom/proto-type hollow body bass. It is short (30.5") scale and was made as a test platform by a custom luthier to work on ideas for a line of instruments. The body, as stated, is hollow. It's got massive bracing, so there are no issues with feed back, and the tone (when using the recommended "Pyramid" brand strings) is somewhere between a Hofner and a Guild Starfire. (Listen to the bass on Lucy In The Sky or Baby Your A Rich Man and that will give a good idea what this sounds like.)

The body has a Yellow Heart core, with laminations of walnut, quilted maple and the stunning birdseye maple faces. The neck is a Dan Electro that has been modified with peg-head laminations and re-finished in nitro lacquer. The tuning machines are locking Sperzels. The peghead emblem is a slice of English walnut (the actual nut).

The pickups are Duncan BassLine units. The bridge and tailpiece are hand-carved cocobolo, the saddles are hand-cut brass.

Currently listed on eBay with a Buy It Now price of $1,400.

G L Wilson

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James Trussart Steel-O-Matic leftie - steel-top Strat in Satin Black finish

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Here's one for the left-handed player with a bit of cash to splash, and preferably someone who's in the market for a boutique S-type guitar.

This James Trussart Steel-O-Matic is the first time I've seen a Strat-style guitar from Trussart, who normally favours the Telecaster design, although he has dabbled with LP and Jazzmaster-derived guitars too. This Strat-styled Steel-O-Matic could be the companion model to Trussart's Jazzmaster-styled Steelmaster, both featuring steel-topped wooden bodies and being somewhat reminiscent of guitars made by legendary British luither Tony Zemaitis.

Personally, I think that Trussart's all-steel bodies have more of the cool factor about them, but can understand they might not be to everyone's tastes. (I realise that the slab-bodied Telecaster design lends itself to production in steel, whereas more contoured designs such as the Strat and Jazzmaster are more easily replicated in wood).

Currently listed on eBay by leftyguitarsonly.com with a Buy It Now price of $4,740. I wonder what the Fender Custom Shop would charge for a steel-top Strat?

G L Wilson

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Gibson Custom Shop Les Paul guitars in unique tie-die finishes

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While Fender have over the years produced a number of "love 'em or hate 'em" finishes (Paisley, Blue Flower, Antigua, Splatter, Bowling Ball, etc), Gibson by comparison have been known more for their sober "tasteful" guitar finishes.

However with these Gibson Custom Shop Les Paul Tie-Die limited editions from 1996, we witness a slice of Gibson history in which they delved into the Fender-dominated territory of questionable taste. Apparently only 103 such Les Pauls were created, each one being a unique design individually hand-signed and numbered by the luthier George St. Pierre. Above we see numbers 42, 47, 66 and 84 respectively.

Each of the above four is currently listed on eBay with a Buy It Now price of $2,000. Note, guitars are currently located in Italy.

G L Wilson

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Tikanta Benincaso featuring three necks, 34 strings, Fernandes Sustainer, GraphTech Ghost acouctic/MIDI system...

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Well, this is certainly a very eye-catching instrument. I'll allow the luthier responsible for this remarkable creation tell you more:

My name is Michele Benincaso, born in 1976 , I'm an Italian luthier and I live in Stockholm since 2007.

My interest in instrument making started more than 20 years ago, when I was 16 years old and after I listened Jaco Pastorius I pulled off the frets from my bass. After I was studying jazz and classical music on bass and double bass and I decided to move to Cremona, the city of Stradivari where the violin was born. There I studied at the international school of violin making Antonio Stradivari, and I worked on violins for couple of years before moving back to my first love: the guitar.

But that wasn't enough and I started searching something in the past for looking in to the future, and here you can see my latest instruments: http://www.benincaso.com/index.php/trikanta.html

The wood I used for the Trikanta is the same that Stradivari used for his violins (Italian Spruce, Bosnian Maple and on top of it I used 8000 years old oak tested with Carbon 14), melted with electro-acoustic system, midi system and Fernandes Sustainer. The tools, hand curving, varnish process come from the traditional violin making school.

Kind Regards from Stockholm

Michele --- www.benincaso.com

The Trikanta features a harp neck with 20 strings, piezo system with acoustic chamber, a 7-stting guitar neck with Lundgren Pickups, Fernandes Sustainer, GraphTech Ghost acoustic/MIDI system, and a semi-fretted lower neck with 7 strings, 3 on the fretless side and 4 arranged in two courses on the fretted size, and a piezo system.

G L Wilson

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Rare Vline guitar by eccentric luthier Vincent Berton offered for sale on eBay

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Currently listed for sale on eBay with a starting price of $8,000, here's a Vline sword guitar, built by avant garde luthier Vincent Berton in the early 1980s. Unlike the previous example we looked at on this blog, this example is not quite so literal in the sword analogy, and even has something of what we might call a "body".

Sources are still undecided as to how many guitars Berton actually made, with numbers varying from "two dozen" to 100 depending on who you choose to believe.

G L Wilson

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Eko B4 N fretless acoustic bass from 1982

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Although it wasn't the first acoustic bass guitar, and not even the first production model acoustic bass guitar (it was pre-dated by the Ernie Ball Earthwood and, I believe, by a Guild acoustic bass), the Italian-made Eko B4 was for many the first affordable and readily available acoustic bass guitar. These basses started cropping up everywhere in the early 1980s. The example pictured here is a Eko B4 N lined fretless acoustic bass, and even appears to be fitted with either the original plastic-coated tone-robbing strings or else a very similar modern replacement set. Anyone wishing to get a half decent fretless sound out of these basses pretty quickly ditched the horrible plastic strings and replaced them with a decent set of roundwounds.

In many ways Eko led the way with these distinctive looking basses (the oval sound hole was a nice design touch, whereas the trapeze behind the bridge was pure common sense given the tension created by a set of bass strings). The "Unplugged" craze following MTV's series of the same name was just around the corner (the first MTV Unplugged act was Jethro Tull in November 1987), and very soon many of the major guitar manufacturers were offering acoustic basses.

These Eko acoustic basses were purely acoustic, although I believe they did later offer versions equipped with piezo pickups. Unlike many modern acoustic basses which rely on on-board electronics to even be audible, the body was large enough to allow proper acoustic playing without need to amplify to be heard above your mates playing acoustic guitars.

Currently listed on eBay UK with a starting bid of £150. Includes a supposedly prototype never-went-into-production hard case.

G L Wilson

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Music Man Sting Ray II guitar from 1977 (back when they were cool)

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Music Man had as one of its founding members a certain Mr Leo Fender, who had sold his previous eponymously named company to CBS in 1965. They started out in the early 1970s producing hybrid solid-state/tube amps, but by 1976 had started production of guitars and basses. This particular Music Man Sting Ray II guitar dates from 1977, their second year of guitar production. Its Fender pedigree is quite apparent in the design - you can see how this instrument could represent the next logical development following the Telecaster and the Stratocaster.

The original Music Man guitars were not as well known or as popular as their basses; some would say that this was because they weren't particularly good instruments, but I can't believe this to be true. I've personally seen one in the hands of Doggen Foster (sometime guitarist with Julian Cope and Spiritualized) and he certainly made it sound incredible. Of course this guitar dates from well before Ernie Ball got their mitts on the Music Man brand; their later guitars would become very popular, endorsed by the likes of Eddie Van Halen, Albert Lee, Steve Lukather, and John Petrucci. Note how this pre-Ernie Ball Music Man features a headstock with six machine heads in a line a la Fender, as opposed to the later ridiculously small headstocks with a 4+2 tuner arrangement that Ernie Ball nicked from certain Gretsch and Teisco guitar design from the 1960s and then claimed was their own copyrighted trademark.

Currently listed on eBay with a starting bid of $1,090.

G L Wilson

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Please read our photo and content policy.