Author Archives: Michael Wright

1968 Gibson Kalamazoo U.S.A. KG-1. Collectible value in guitars can be defined any number of ways, and not just by having a popular brand name such as Fender or Gibson. That’s certainly the case with this little guitar! Ask virtually any guitar collector for his or her favorite brand, and Kalamazoo is probably not going [...]

1969 Fender Palomino. Photo: Michael Wright. Whether all collectors are as attached to nicknames as guitar enthusiasts is unclear. Do salt-and-pepper shaker collectors have fond shortcuts for, say, a Popeye and Olive Oyl set? “Spinach Special?” Maybe! One thing is certain: guitar players and collectors love to come up with affectionate epithets for their favorite [...]

1986 Ovation GS2-R “Ripley”, For a guitar detective, there’s nothing like a good mystery. What’s the story on this guitar? Where was it made? Who made it? If you’re lucky, you might even get to ask, “Who designed it?” and find an answer! Through the years, it’s been our pleasure to solve a lot of [...]

1933 KayKraft Style A. Photo: Michael Wright. Almost any guitar can be viewed in terms of a confluence of influences that produced it, from the company history to the history of guitar evolution to the kind of music it was meant to play. But it’s rare that you get one so fully loaded as this [...]

1975 Penco Model A-15-JD The 1970s is often called “the Copy Era” for the dominating presence and spectacular success of Japanese “copies” of popular American guitars, most notably of the Gibson Les Paul. Indeed, it was with these “copies” that many Japanese manufacturers honed their chops and became world-class guitar makers. In fact, it was [...]

1980 Renaissance T-200G What is it about Plexiglas? It’s so cool. You can see through it onstage. It’s dense, yet resonant. You’d think it would be the perfect medium for a mean rock and roll machine. And it’s not like people haven’t tried! But for some mysterious reason(s), practically every attempt to make a successful [...]

Circa 1959 Rex solidbody. While a lot of vintage-guitar enthusiasts are content to pursue well-known treasures, there are others who appreciate a good mystery. For me, it’s been a pleasure to spend a good chunk of my life being a guitar detective who has tracked down mysterious guitar stories that were in danger of slipping [...]

1967 EKO Condor The Summer of Love. Hippies, flower power, psychedelic drugs. Sergeant Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band, and feelin’ groovy. 1967 was a heady time for a lot of people, especially the much-discussed and often controversial first wave of post-WWII babyboomers who were heading into their 20s and beginning to flex those cultural muscles [...]

1978 Gibson Mark 53. Photo: Michael Wright. Part of the fallout from the guitar boom of the 1960s was an increased academic interest in guitars that manifested itself in the 1970s. This ranged from Ph.D. theses in musicology – yielding our best biographies of classical players such as Fernando Sor and Mauro Giuliani – to [...]

1971 Mosrite Stereo 350. Remember that line from the old song, “If it weren’t for bad luck, I’d have no luck at all…”? In some ways, it’s a summation of the life of Semie Moseley. In fact, if it hadn’t been for his serendipitous relationship with The Ventures, he might have been one of those [...]