12-string soviet plastic body Maria Rhythm

guitarz.blogspot.com:

We've previously seen the 6-string and the bass versions of the made in USSR Lunacharki Maria, here is the 12-string, the Maria Rhythm. Thanks to its lighter sunburst finish, you can see on this picture how strangely shaped its plastic body is - and how beautiful in its oddness...

Bertram D

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1950s plastic toy skiffle guitar with auto-chord attachment

guitarz.blogspot.com:

I love these old 1950s and 1960s plastic toy guitars; sometimes they can be just as fascinating as real guitars. This particular 1950s skiffle guitar has a idiosyncratic auto-chord attachment on the neck so the player doesn't even have to learn chords - just press a button. That is, so long as they don't want to play any chords other than G7, E7, C, A7, D7, G.

Currently being auctioned on eBay UK with a low starting price.

G L Wilson

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

plastic semi-hollow body Lunacharki Maria Leader

guitarz.blogspot.com

When I first saw this semi-hollow Lunacharki Maria Leader (Луначарки Мария Лидер), I was stricken by how much its body looks like plastic - and in a pretty good shape for a 40-year old instrument... Well, it is made of plastic, in a typical modernist attempt in Soviet guitar making to shatter any tradition and create all new instruments like the famous and excellent Tonika (and contrarily to East-German or Czechoslovakian electric guitars that relaid on centuries old luthiery craft). 

When it comes to East-Europen guitars, cheesyguitars.com is an inevitable starting point, but they make a terrible reputation for this guitar as being the ultimate crap - and I found other sources that are a little bit more positive about it - though my Russian is quite rusted (I gave up studying Russian at the fall of Soviet Union when I realised that there was no future in becoming a KGB spy).

There was a 12-string version of this model, and also a bass one, that have been showed on Guitarz a couple of years ago...

Bertram D

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