1967, the Summer of Love. Everything still seemed possible, and anything went. No more war, racial and gender equality, Fresh Cream, the Beatles best record ever, the Jimi Hendrix Experience. Phew! What a difference the next year would bring! And that applied to guitars. None more than this classic minimalist La Baye 2×4 “Six.” This [...]
The banjo and American music cross paths in a remarkably entangled web of complexity. The banjo was brought to the New World – conceptually, at least – by African slaves who used it to create music subsequently appropriated by 19th-century white entertainers, who created blackface minstrelsy, which became the basis of Vaudeville and a great [...]
1978 Gibson Marauder M-1 Every once in awhile, someone in Gibson R&D gets a brainstorm like, “I know! Why don’t we make a bolt-neck guitar!” So they do. And the result is almost always interesting – and almost always a commercial flop. Call it “Les Paul syndrome.” Guitar aficionados are the beneficiaries of both sides [...]
Joining playful mid-’60s cultural icons such as the Ford Mustang, NBC’s “The Monkees,” the Beatles’ “Nowhere Man” and Cassius Clay, the Teisco Del Rey Spectrum 5 was the high-water mark of original Japanese design from the era. It’s also one of the most sought-after import guitars – with good reason. Debuting circa 1966 and lasting only a [...]
It’s hard not to associate doubleneck electric guitars with images of Led Zeppelin’s Jimmy Page or fusion guru Mahavishnu John McLaughlin in the ’70s; however, the fact is that by the time the Big Js were stopping shows with these multi-headed beasts, they were already relics of the past. Doubleneck Spanish guitars got their first [...]
Little Deuce Coupe. T-birds. Cars and the California lifestyle are inextricably intertwined… and of course, guitars figure in, too – just flash back to those mid-’60s Fender ads showing surfers and guitars on the beach. So it should come as no surprise that Fender would market a guitar – entry-level, of course – to potential [...]
Some years back, an insurance company promoted itself as “the quiet company.” While they probably wouldn’t like to hear it, in many ways that description fits Yamaha guitars. Whether you say acoustic or electric, Yamaha is almost never the first name that leaps to mind. Nevertheless, since the mid 1960s, Yamaha has been quietly turning [...]
One of the more successful Japanese-made guitar brands of the 1970s was Electra, the brand name used for electric guitars sold by St. Louis Music of St. Louis, Missouri. If prices on eBay are any indicator, it’s clear that guitar aficionados have little appreciation about how good and innovative these guitars were. Let’s take this [...]
Custom Kraft Red Fury Photo: Michael Wright. Most guitar aficionados are comfortable with the notion of guitar brands being made by the company of the same name. But when it comes to guitars made by one company and sold by another, we frequently stray out of our comfort zone. Yet, some of the most significant [...]
1982 Daion Headhunter HH-555 in Honey sunburst. The trajectory of the Japanese guitar industry in many ways has mirrored that of the United States, though in a slightly compressed timeframe on the front-end because America had a fairly big head start. In any case, people worked for someone, had a better idea, went out on [...]
