Wandrè Davoli Tigre bass

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It's been too long since we last showed a Wandrè on Guitarz: here is a very cool light blue Davoli Tigre bass. It's one of the later designs of Wandrè, and is not as radical as his earlier models, but it's elegant and inventive nevertheless. I love these wavy lines! 

It still has an aluminium neck, even tough it's not as exposed as they have been, and the headstock is typical Wandrè, as are the pickups.  The big pickguard is as strange as you'd hope and combines beautifully with the instrument outline - that is the work of a genuine artist. 

There was also a Tigre guitar, that really needs to be reissued in my opinion! Anybody?

Bertram D

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

Perl Gold archtop

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We've already shown a very similar PerlGold archtop guitar a couple of years ago (here) but I don't know if the differences of finish, knobs, headstock and pickguard are just cosmetic or indicate different models. My feeling is that is a later PerlGold model, from the 1970s - the only documentation I found is from the 1950s and show mostly acoustic guitars - flattop and archtop -, also lutes and harp guitars;  here we are closer to Musima's style with its 3 pickups and tremolo...

Bertram D

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

1958 Gibson ES-225 T

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You know I can't help regularly showing here a good old Gibson archtop with a florentine cutaway (the rest of the time I would just rant about Gibson's current lack of creativity) - that to me is kind of the perfect guitar (and an unreachable dream)... This time it's a 1958 ES-225 T - this one has been poorly refinished and most of its parts seem to have been updated, but still it's a mesmerizing vintage guitar - and I love a P90 in middle position!

Bertram D

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

1967 Custom Kraft hollow-body

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This Custom Kraft semi-hollow has some killer details - the beautiful Custom Kraft headstock, the double pickguard, the flash-shaped soundholes, the one bloc bridge/stoptail... I cannot tell if the strange positions of the knobs is incoherent or practical (I was playing my 25 year-old Ricky 620 today and I still don't get what knob does what - they have been on 10 all this time...)

When this guitar was made, Custom Kraft was a brand of the short-lived company created by the fusion of Kay and Valco, struggling to survive in the late 1960s and about to make room for the upcoming Japanese invasion. In just two years it released several very cool guitars, we'll definitely have to show some of them here! 

Bertram D

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

Ultra-cool 3-pickup Hagstrom Impala spotted in Chet Faker video

guitarz.blogspot.com:

We at Guitarz are big fans of Sweden's Hagstrom guitars, and although we've featured a Hagstrom Impala on these pages before, it's always nice to get to see a cult classic guitar in action and to hear the kind of coolness that it is capable of. In the video below we see it in the hands of the guitarist in the band of Melbourne musician Chet Faker (aka Nick Murphy) as together they perform a live take of "No Diggity". I'm afraid I don't know the name of the guitarist (if someone can enlighten me, please do!), but he obviously has very good taste in guitars if not in headware!



Thanks to Peter for recommending we take a look at this video.

G L Wilson

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

BJ & Byrne Roundhouse electric guitar handcrafted in London, UK

guitarz.blogspot.com:

BJ & Byrne Guitars were started in 2006 by luthier Brian "BJ" Troup and financier/guitar enthusiast Tommy Byrne. Their range of electric guitars are all named after famous British music venues, and thus we have the Cavern, Marquee, Apollo, Troubadour and - as seen here - Roundhouse models. These guitars have earned themselves rave reviews for their playability, build quality, and vintage-style tones.

BJ & Byrne have also been developing an exciting new technology to produce what they call "The Green Thing". To quote from their website, this technology:

... organically turns soft woods, such as Pine into a hard, denser wood. This technology also increases the stability of the wood by over 80%. Essentially, this intellectual property is able to effectively limit the amount of moisture absorbed in and expelled out of the wood to unheard of levels. Consider a guitar neck, body or in the case of an acoustic guitar, it's Sitka Spruce soundboard which was not affected by the climate. No warping, bending, expanding etc, all of which constantly tests the integrity of the guitar build and constantly throws your axe out of tune.

So now, imagine a guitar that is a little bit lighter, has tremendous tone and sustain that does not dry and crack in the winter or in any dry climate as well as being impermeable to moisture in humid environments. NOW, on top of all of that, IT'S MADE FROM PINE !!! One of the most abundant natural resources on the planet!

Though all standard handmade BJ & Byrne electric guitars are made out of English Ash and Mahogany, we are custom building guitars using this new technology and looking to manufacture them on a larger scale once we have hit our stride in our Research & Development endeavours. We are also experimenting with this Green technology on acoustic guitars.

Indeed, this sounds like absolutely groundbreaking work in the world of luthiery, and I look forward to hearing more from BJ & Byrne on this topic in the future.

In the meanwhile, the above-pictured BJ & Byrne Roundhouse guitar is being offered for sale on eBay UK with a Buy It Now price of £380. It is a used guitar, but compare that to the price of £895 for a new example.

G L Wilson

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

This handmade Explorer-esque bass is quite an oddity

guitarz.blogspot.com:

This hand-made Explorer-like bass is, if not luthier-built, at least assembled by someone with a high degree of woodworking skills. I'm thinking that the hardware and very possibly the neck (the neck plate looks very 1960s/70s Japanese) have come from a donor instrument. However, the truly interesting feature is in the woodwork of the body, which features a sandwich of several types of timber; however rather than running in the direction of the length of the instrument, the sandwiching - and indeed the grain of the wood - has been set at a diagonal. I don't think I've seen a guitar built with the grain of the wood running diagonally before... but maybe you know differently...

Currently being offered for sale on eBay with a Buy It Now price of $499.

G L Wilson

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

3 pickups Orfeus Hebros

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Orfeus is one of the worst documented guitar brand on the internet - roughly all we can tell for sure is that it was a Bulgarian company from the communist era and that's it... Still some instruments pop up regularly to be auctioned online, such as this Orfeus Hebros - though the name Hebros is not confirmed (there was a Hebros bass similar to this guitar but noone can tell if the name was used for the guitar - and I saw a few different Orfeus models tagged Hebros...). 

Anyway this one seems to be the higher end model with 3 pickups and big inlays on the fretboard (though I cannot tell if it's something nicely done...). The wide burst finish is typical of Orfeus that has been noted for its original finishes (we've seen some on this blog...). You'll notice that the pickups have 'Orpheus' written on them when the headstock sports 'Orfeus' (and since Bulgarian uses cyrillic alphabet it should be Орфeyc or Орфей...)

Bertram D

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

1959 Framus Grand Star 5/125

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That is a sexy old lady! 

You can recognize this 1959 Framus Grand Star at first sight with its Framus trademark chromed pickguard / control plate / pickup holder that is still used on some current models. The Grand Star engraved stoptail is also some nice piece of metalwork! 

That's a guitar I'd happily own and play!

Bertram D

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

D-Scala - another wacky guitar from 1960s Italy

guitarz.blogspot.com:

I'm afraid I can find no information about this supposedly 1960s Italian-made D'Scala guitar, not even on Fetish Guitars (unless it's buried away at the bottom of a page somewhere), so for now we'll have to be content just to look and marvel. The orange burst finish is quite interesting, if you'll excuse the euphemism, and possibly the only time I've seen a burst applied separately to a pickguard outside of Fender's Antigua finish.

Currently being offered for sale on eBay with a Buy It Now price of $695.

G L Wilson

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