50s/60s Electric hollow body guitar with original caseDoes anyone out there seen anything similiar or have any more information on this guitar? Personally I wouldn't have likened it to a Fender Jazzmaster, other than to say it has an offset waist. If anything the design is more proto-Ovation Breadwinner LTD.
This must have been a very spectacular and futuristic guitar in its time!
It has a very unique combination of features:
First of all it's completely hollow. That makes it very light and very nice to play (even unplugged!).
It has asymmetrical body shape, reminiscent of a Fender Jazzmaster.
It has 2 single coil pickups. The neck pickup gives a very warm and vintage jazzy sound. The combination of the two pickups make it sound twangy, like a surf guitar. It has a 3-way selector. Two volume and two tone knobs.
The bridge is a solid ebony movable bridge, the type you mostly see on acoustic gypsy jazz guitars
It has a black plastic fingerboard(!!!!!!!) with large fret markers and white binding and zero-fret (again mostly found on vintage gypsy jazz guitars).
The finish is a amazing metallic brown sunburst. The scale is 65 cm.
It only has a few repaired cracks at the bottom (see last picture) but it's all solid and stable.
The guitar was sold by 'Casa Garrido' in Madrid. There's a label in the case and a stick on the headstock.
Unfortunately I wasn't able to find any info on the guitar nor the 'AZOR' brand. But in my opinion this is a very unique instrument in a great condition.
Currently listed on eBay with a starting price of £350.00 / €424,23.
G L Wilson
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Azor guitars were made in Spain. Maybe in Madrid. They were hand-crafted by carpenters under supervision of musicians and sellers like Leturiaga and others. Dated in the early 60's. Back then it was impossible to get an electric guitar from abroad: first because of the anti-import laws and second, the price: a Fender Stratocaster costed 1000 times what a musician earned per gig. You can see references to that brand of guitars (and others) here:
ReplyDeletehttp://elpais.com/diario/1998/05/18/madrid/895490668_850215.html
and here:
http://www.rockers.es/FORO/tabid/315/forumid/18/postid/235791/scope/posts/Default.aspx
Sorry! bad maths in my previous comment: a musician in the early sixties earned 1000 pesetas per gig aprox. The cost of a Fender Strato was 30000 pesetas, so it was "only" 30 times more. I'm from Málaga, southern Spain.
ReplyDeleteThis one is such a bargain. I'm glad to read that it's spanish. I never quite understood why Spain, being the homeland of the guitar, didn't produce more electrics... Almost every electric guitar produced in Spain that I had the opportunity to give a try was a real player but most of them where luthier's products. Could they devellop a proper industrial process? Spanish manufacturers do have the skills! (I'm not spanish, I'm french but I believe in Europe)
ReplyDelete