Shaftesbury shortscale bass, rough copy of a Fender

guitarz.blogspot.com:

Ahhhh... now this one brings back some memories. It's a shortscale Shaftesbury bass, roughly modelled on the original slab-bodied Fender Precision/Fender Telecaster bass, and I guess it's from the mid 1970s.

I remember back in the early 1980s when I was first getting into starting bands with my mates and doing a spot of home recording on the then-new Fostex X15 multitrack cassette recorder; one day a couple of my friends came round wanting to record a demo. They brought a couple of cheap guitars with them. I don't remember what the six string was, but the bass was one of these. It was bad. I remember thinking it how dreadful it was. It was boomy, as you'd expect from a short-scale bass but I've played many that were streets ahead of this. I don't think the flat wound strings helped (I've never liked them and never will). I can't explain exactly what was wrong with it, just that it felt bad and it played bad. It was a cheap and nasty bass and performed accordingly.

This one on eBay UK has a starting price of £199. That is what I'd call seriously optimistic. Don't be fooled by the fact that this was "Made in Italy". It's not one of their finer moments.

G L Wilson

© 2011, Guitarz - The Original Guitar Blog - now in its 10th year!

Gibson Victory MVX

guitarz.blogspot.com:

Hello,

I love your blog. Here are some pictures of my Gibson Victory MVX guitar. It is from 1980. It weighs a ton but has a beautiful resonance to it. I think the shape is amazing and these could be reissued (probably in mahogany rather than solid hard rock maple (every part of it).

I changed the knobs to chicken-heads because I like those best—but it came with the usual Gibson speed knobs.

If you are interested there is more info and links on these at this site:
http://www.vintageguitars.org.uk/gibsonVictoryMVX.php

Thanks,

Erik in New York

Thanks Erik. We were recently discussing the Fender-esque designs of Gibson and its offshoot companies and I guess that the Victory series could be said to fall into this category, the doublecut body with offset horns being reminiscent of the Stratocaster. Also the pickguard shape, pickguard-mounted pickups and controls, triple pickups (even if the outer two are humbuckers allowing for more tonal options), headstock layout, etc. Of course the guitar has Gibson attributes too, most notably the 24 3/4" scale and the set neck. (Interestingly, the Victory basses were more Fender-like with bolt-on necks).

G L Wilson

© 2011, Guitarz - The Original Guitar Blog - now in its 10th year!

Kingston Swinger from 1967, but what's the deal with the trem?

guitarz.blogspot.com:

You only have to take one look at this guitar and you know straightaway that it's 1960s Japanese. It's a Kingston Swinger from 1967, and is currently being offered for sale on eBay with a Buy It Now price of $499.95. I personally feel that's a tad optimistic for an old Teisco. Kingston was a brandname often applied to Teisco guitars, and the striped metal pickguard seen here is a dead giveaway as to the guitar's Teisco origins.

The seller comments that it "Has an unusual whammy/vibrato bar." Now, I'm not too well up on my old-fangled guitar hardware, so am not quite sure what the deal is here. To my eyes it looks as if there's something missing and perhaps there ought to be an arm and a spring maybe beneath that furled knob sticking out of the tailplate. Does anyone out there know what it should look like? I'd be surprised if that knob itself was the tremolo as the seller seems to be suggesting. Please forgive the gaping holes in my guitar knowledge here; as I've said before, I do not claim to be an expert and am learning all the time.

G L Wilson

© 2011, Guitarz - The Original Guitar Blog - now in its 10th year!

Luthier-built electric guitars by T Carter of Shropshire, UK

guitarz.blogspot.com:

Here are some interesting original guitar designs by T Carter of Shropshire. Both of these he refers to as being prototypes. I'm not sure as to the extent of his operation, but that would imply that there are future models to come based on these designs. I particularly like the guitar in the third and four images of the above montage, with its scrolled body horns and offset asymmetrical f-holes.

Both these guitars are currently being offered for sale on eBay, with starting prices of £325 for the more angular-looking chambered bodied guitar and £395 for the solidbody with offset faux f-holes (the cavities only extending just past the f shape).

These are priced very competitely and as the maker himself says, "heaps more interesting than a Mexican Fender or something else in this price range."

G L Wilson

© 2011, Guitarz - The Original Guitar Blog - now in its 10th year!

Univox Ripper, 1970s Matsumoko-made Japanese Strat-a-like

guitarz.blogspot.com:

Here's a 1970s Univox Ripper, made at the now legendary Matsumoko factory in Japan. It's obviously a Stratocaster-derived guitar, and whilst I've seen other similar Univox Strat-type guitars - complete with triple humbuckers, one angled at the bridge - the others I have seen have always had Strat-type necks too. The neck on this example looks like it belongs to another guitar, a bolt-on neck Les Paul copy maybe. Not only are there block inlays and binding on the 22-fret fingerboard, but the headstock is a LP-ish 3+3 affair. Looking at the picture, I can't help wondering if the scale length is LP-like too?

As to those pickups, the seller claims that:

These are hi-output pickups that produce their own, unique sound. The humbuckers sound more like the P90s in a Jag than a Strat or Tele. Some positions sound single coil-ish, others are fatter with more growl. I'd certainly take this over ANY Strat, it's way more versatile.

It's certainly an interesting variation on the Strat design, that's for sure, but it does have that Frankenstein mix'n'match look to it.

G L Wilson

© 2011, Guitarz - The Original Guitar Blog - now in its 10th year!

Superman logo guitar

guitarz.blogspot.com:

There's not much really to say about this allegedly "rare authentic" Superman guitar. It's currently for sale on eBay with a Buy It Now price of $149.99 and is apparently "is not purchasable in stores".

G L Wilson

© 2011, Guitarz - The Original Guitar Blog - now in its 10th year!

Aria Pro 2 615-SPL Tele-inspired guitar from the mid 1990s

guitarz.blogspot.com:

Here's an Aria Pro 2 615-SPL from the 1990s, very probably Korean-made, and although this is from after their famed Japanese Matsumoko-made period they were still producing some nicely made instruments at this point. (Some modern Arias I've seen I have not been too impressed by).

The design is obviously derived from the Telecaster but in its own way makes for quite an attractive guitar. I like the swirled outline of the pickguard. The eBay seller says it's a "very rare model" and whilst it's not a guitar that has come across my radar before I doubt it has any great rarity value. It is what it is: a mid-90s Korean-made Telecaster-derived guitar and is in all probability a very nice little instrument and may well be worth a bid or two if you're in the market for such a guitar.

I'm also reminded of Saint Blues, who took the Telecaster but remodelled it with their own smaller distinctive body.

G L Wilson

© 2011, Guitarz - The Original Guitar Blog - now in its 10th year!

Kay Model K5935 Deluxe Bass

guitarz.blogspot.com:

Our second guitar here on Guitarz today is also an American-made bass from the mid 1960s, possibly even from 1966, and is also from a brandname beginning in the letter K. This one is a Kay Model K5935 Deluxe Bass. Unlike the Kay Thin Twin bass from the 1950s that we looked at recently, this is a solidbody - it's slab-bodied even - and shares more in common with the Kay "Truetone" guitar that we looked at in September 2010. This bass also features what the seller calls a "speed bump pickup", I'm guessing because of the shape of the casing rather than it sounding like a vehicle scraping its underside on a speed bump.

G L Wilson

© 2011, Guitarz - The Original Guitar Blog - now in its 10th year!

Kalamazoo KB bass from 1966

guitarz.blogspot.com:

A couple of years ago when Gibson announced its plans to launch a decidedly Stratocaster-like signature Jimi Hendrix guitar with full support from his adoptive sister Janie Hendrix (see here), there was as outcry on the internet and the whole project was abruptly and conveniently swept under the carpet, Gibson acting as if it had never happened.

The reason for the outcry was two-fold. Many thought it was in poor taste, a crass attempt at cashing in on Hendrix's legacy. But many seemed shocked at the very idea of Gibson issuing a guitar so obviously based on a Fender design.

I was surprised at the fuss was being made over this secondary complaint, for this was nothing new. In the late 1980s, Epiphone - a subsiduary of Gibson - issued budget guitars based on the Stratocaster and Telecaster (which are NOT as "rare" as eBay sellers would have you believe). At around the same time Gibson themselves issued the US-1 and the U-2 - guitars firmly in the Superstrat mould.

Even before this in the mid to late 1960s, Gibson decided that they wanted a slice of Fender's success with their student models and from 1965 produced bolt-on neck guitar and bass models under the Kalamazoo brand (named after Gibson's original home of Kalamazoo, Michigan) which looked suspiciously similar to Fender's Mustang series. These were indeed budget instruments with bodies being made from Medium-Density Fiberboard (MDF). It's not surprising that Gibson wanted a different brand name on them, which isn't to say they were bad as such, but that they didn't represent the usual high quality build that Gibson were known for.

In 1968 the design was changed so that the bodies took on more of a SG-inspired shape, but still used the same MDF construction with bolt-on Fender-esque neck. These were still being produced into the early 1970s.

Gibson continued to flirt with bolt-on neck designs throughout the 1970s and 80s. These included the S-1, the timber and composite resin bodied Sonex, the L6-S, the unexplainably weird-shaped Corvus, etc, but with the exception of the latter named these all had more of a familiar Gibson look to them and wouldn't be mistaken for a Fender or derivative thereof.

The above-pictured 1966 Kalamazoo KB bass in Las Vegas Blue is currently being offered for sale on eBay and looks to be in fine condition for a student model of its vintage. It had a starting bid of $0.99 and has been attracting a fair few bids. I don't think it's going to sell for big bucks but these Kalamazoos have certainly been generating a lot of interest in recent years.

With thanks to Colin Brown who suggested featuring this auction via our Facebook page.

G L Wilson

© 2011, Guitarz - The Original Guitar Blog - now in its 10th year!

Tokai AJG88 Silver Star

guitarz.blogspot.com:

This 2011 custom order Tokai AJG88 Silver Star really appeals to me as a stripped-back version of the Fender Jazzmaster; it has a basic layout with no fancy switches and no trem, but still manages to look über cool in this burgundy mist finish.

The spec is as follows:

BODY : Solid Alder
NECK : Maple
FINGERBOARD : Rosewood
FRETS : 22F (Regular)
BRIDGE : LS-VB Bridge LS-VT Tailpiece
NUT Width : Bone(42.0mm)
PICKUPS : PAF-Vintage MK2×2(Japan)
CONTROLS : 1V.,1T.3way Toggle SW
COLOR : burgundy mist metallic
WEIGHT : About 3500g

G L Wilson

© 2011, Guitarz - The Original Guitar Blog - now in its 10th year!