Some guitars hit the market at the perfect time to becom e classics – think Les Paul and Stratocaster. Some experience brief popularity, then slip into obscurity – think Bond Electroglide. Yet others are intrinsically interesting but their timing is off, and they have to percolate their way into our consciousness. The Samick Viper is a good example.
Most know that Samick is one of the world’s largest guitar manufacturers. If you own a vintage Hondo or a modern Epiphone, Fender Squier, Washburn, or Hohner, it’s likely to have been made in a Samick factory.
Just as the Japanese guitar industry – while it may have had earlier roots – arose from the ashes of World War II in the 1940s, the Korean guitar industry essentially emerged from the chaos of the Korean War in the ’50s. Samick began as Samick Piano Company in ’58, founded by Mr. Hyo Ick Lee in Inchon, South Korea, primarily as an agent for American Baldwin pianos. In 1960, Samick began making its own uprights. In ’65, it expanded into acoustic guitar production, serving the lowest segment of the market. In ’69, Jerry Freed and Tommy Moore, of Texas-based International Music Corporation (I.M.C.), went to Korea and set up a joint venture with Samick to make Hondo guitars, which debuted in 1970. I.M.C. brought Japanese technicians to Korea to introduce improved production techniques. Initial Hondos were acoustics, followed by the first electrics in ’72.
Samick continued to improve and expand into making other instruments, including harmonicas, banjos, and grand pianos. In ’73, the name changed to Samick Musical Instrument Manufacturing Company and in ’78 it opened an office in Los Angeles, making it a full subsidiary in ’82 – the Samick Music Corporation. Ironically, while Samick is a major guitarmaker, its
main fame rests on its grand pianos. In the ’80s, it began building lower-range Epiphone (Gibson) and Fender guitars.
Samick went public in ’88, trading shares on the Korean stock exchange, and began a push to promote its own brand. For guitars in the U.S. it appeared by ’91, when it was introduced in guitar-magazine ads. Despite initial dealer resistance, Samick pursued an aggressive strategy. In ’92, it purchased a half interest in the small custom maker Valley Arts Guitar, advertising them with endorsements by Ray Benson and Keb Mo. In late ’02 the name was sold to Gibson.
The ’92 Viper KR-564 was an early example of a Samick intended to impress – part of the limited-edition Alternative Series that included the Ice Cube (clear acrylic), Aurora (multi-colored), Nightbreed (different viper carving), and Hawk (carved hawk graphic).
While not perfect, it’s an impressive guitar. Its body is three-piece alder, thin, and with a carved/arched top. The maple neck is also thin, and the two-octave rosewood fingerboard is bound, wide, and relatively flat. The “sharktooth” inlays have a little too much filler, but still look nifty. The licensed Floyd Rose is… well, just that. The pickups on this particular one are not that well-matched and probably explain why the pickups were commonly changed out, and why Samick quickly adopted Duncan-Designed pickups. Controls are a five-way with master Volume and two Tones (bridge, neck/middle).
The viper graphics are not a simple silkscreen. Rather, parts of the snake and skull are carved relief. Discussions with people at Samick suggest these were hand-carved in Korea; Samick did own a furniture business at the time, and may have had access to certain carving machines, but no one there recalls it being employed on guitars. Plus, Samick today produces several elaborately carved guitars, and all are done by hand. In addition, the carving is hand-painted. So, this was not a “wham bam, thank you ma’am” guitar. Priced at $649 – Samick’s most expensive at the time – it was a bargain, especially when compared to the list prices on the best Samick-made guitars for other brands (e.g. Fender’s Squier).
In ’93, Samick opened a new factory in Bogor, Indonesia, to make its low-end acoustics, adding electrics in ’95. Only the top models are now made in Korea. By ’98, Samick was promoting itself as the world’s largest guitarmaker. The following year, Samick began hiring American luthiers to design its flagship guitars, beginning with Greg Bennett. In 2010, the company introduced guitars and basses designed by J.T. Riboloff, and currently produces a limited number of guitars in the U.S.
Dating Samick guitars from the Viper period is easy; the first three numbers represent year and month. The one shown here is 2082134, making it 1992 (2) made in August (08). The Alternative Series was listed in only one edition (1992-’93) of the Guitar World Buyer’s Guide, though sources at Samick suggest they were made until ’96. Certain sources suggest 1,500 were made and Samick confirms the number is likely accurate. In any case, the Alternatives arrived at just the wrong time! In ’92, alternative rock was taking the world by storm in the form of Nirvana and the “Seattle sound,” which preferred lower-budget/retro guitars like the Fender Mustang and the Talman, and lipstick-tube pickups superseded Superstrats and Floyd Roses. Nevertheless, a guitar with a hand-carved skull-and-viper motif is about as timeless as you get! And now you know to keep your eyes, er, peeled!
This article originally appeared in VG‘s April 2012 issue. All copyrights are by the author and Vintage Guitar magazine. Unauthorized replication or use is strictly prohibited.
It’s hard to imagine an instrument other than guitar that has undergone more innovation through its modern history. Perhaps we do an injustice to pianos and cornets, which have reached their perfected forms and not changed much in recent times, but you could fill volumes documenting the wrinkles put on acoustic and electric guitars. Some guitar innovations are wonderful and remarkable, but others (to be charitable) leave you scratching your head. One of the latter can be found on the 1975 Rickenbacker 481.
The Rickenbacker guitar company was born of innovation. When Czechoslovakian-immigrant brothers John and Louis Dopyera (along with Texas-born Hawaiian guitarist George Beauchamp) began working on ideas for National resonator guitars circa 1926, they turned to metal and plastics fabricator Adolph Rickenbacher (a distant relative of the World War I flying ace Eddie) to make their metal bodies. In ’31, Beauchamp obtained a new electromagnetic pickup design from inventor Arthur Stimson.
This was not the first electric pickup. Legend (via guitar historian/author Tom Wheeler) has Gibson’s Lloyd Loar experimenting with electric pickups as early as 1924, but this is not confirmed, and technological constraints put any possibility of success in doubt. Tubes and speakers were still waiting to be invented in ’24, although this was the year that electronic sound recording (versus the old analog method) did appear. Stromberg-Voisinet (Kay) introduced the first commercially available electric guitar in Chicago in ’28. Dubbed the Electro, this apparently consisted of an acoustic guitar sporting a transducer played through an amp with flat-out volume (no controls). This was heavily touted in the Music Trades magazine at the time. The new system was broadcast on WLS in Chicago with various Western bands, but was gone within a year. We don’t know why, but lack of controls probably didn’t help. Later evidence suggests only about 100 were made. None has ever been seen, as far as we know.
National’s George Beauchamp was a visionary interested in electric guitars, but National was not, so Beauchamp talked to Adolph Rickenbacher (who liked the idea) and they formed Ro-Pat-In, a shortened version of Electro Patent Instruments. The result was the famous aluminum “frying pan,” the first Hawaiian electric lap steel. Spanish electrics soon followed and the name of the company and the brand changed to Electro String Instrument Company around 1934.
Ready to retire, Rickenbacher sold Electro to F.C. Hall in ’53 and the Rickenbacker brand was born. One of the principal employees at the new plant was another former National employee named Paul Barth. At some point – the precise year is uncertain, but probably ’54 – Barth hired Roger Rossmeisl, a young would-be guitar designer from Germany. The son and namesake of the Roger brand of German archtop guitars (built by his father), Rossmeisl had come to America and had a brief, unsuccessful stint with Gibson. Among the legacies of Rossmeisl’s gig at Rickenbacker was the redesign of the company’s famous Combo series and, in particular, the introduction of the “German carve” – the rounded edge-relief around the top – to American guitars. It was from Rossmeisl that a young Semie Moseley acquired a taste for the German carve found on his later Mosrite guitars.
Before moving on to design a line of acoustics for Fender in the ’60s, Rossmeisl contributed one other important thing to the Rickenbacker heritage – he created the 4000 solidbody bass guitar with the unique “cresting wave” shape that would become one of Rickenbacker’s most distinctive designs. It was most often associated with Ricky basses, but it periodically showed up on six-string guitars like this 1975 481.
But it isn’t the cool shape that marks the innovation on the Rickenbacker 481. It isn’t the nifty, bound, wine-red maple body or the knobby headstock on the thin, bolt-on maple neck. It isn’t the swell humbucking pickups, the great cast “R” trapeze tailpiece, the crushed-pearl flag inlays, or even the phase-reverse function. It isn’t the decent sound that this piece kicks out. What makes this guitar interesting are the 24 frets.
The frets? Yes. That’s because the innovation on the Ricky 481 is the setting of the frets at a slight angle, not perpendicular to the fingerboard as on most guitars. The idea was that for most rock and roll players, the fingers of the left hand don’t attack the fingerboard straight on, but at a slight angle. Put your left hand in a playing position and you’ll see that the fingers land on the fretboard at an angle. Apparently, someone came up with this notion in the late ’60s, because angled frets were listed as an order option as early as ’69.
However, the slanted frets were codified with the 481 that was introduced in ’73. The one shown here dates from October of ’75 (OJ 6609). The 481 was accompanied by a plainer model 480 that skipped the body binding, fancy inlays, and didn’t have slanted frets.
So the question naturally arises: how do slanted frets work? Aye, there’s the rub. If you’re one of those players who likes to wrap his or her thumb over the top of the fingerboard, having the frets angled offers a very slight advantage. Of course, to get maximum extension you’re supposed to center your thumb in the middle of the back of the neck. This brings the fingers down a little straighter, minimizing any advantage of the angling. But as a pragmatic matter, you pretty much have to be told that the frets are angled when you play this guitar in order to tell much difference from a conventional fret job.
The slanted-fret Rickenbacker 481 had a pretty good run, lasting until 1984. Whether these are particularly rare or not is unknown, but you don’t see them very often. And when you do, this baby might just leave you scratching your head, too!
This article originally appeared in VG April 2008 issue. All copyrights are by the author and Vintage Guitar magazine. Unauthorized replication or use is strictly prohibited.
1966 Guild Thunderbird, serial number SC 120. Instrument courtesy Michael Wright. Photo: VG Archive.
Back in 1958, when Gibson introduced its revolutionary Explorer, Flying V, and mysterious Moderne, the public – rather like Queen Victoria – was not amused. Although a few bold players embraced them, the public apparently wasn’t ready for such a radical look.
Which makes it all that much more strange that Guild should introduce a design as radical as the S-200 Thunderbird in 1963, several years before most Americans began hearing reports of widespread use of psychotropic substances. Indeed, it could be argued that Guild Thunderbirds didn’t become popular until babyboomers began getting high (though “popular” might be too strong an adjective)! But that doesn’t keep the Guild Thunderbird from being a bona fide American guitar classic!
Prior to introducing its first solidbodies, Guild had been known for its acoustic flat-top guitars and jazz archtops favored by notable players such as Johnny Smith (“Walk, Don’t Run”), George Barnes, Charlie Byrd (Mark classicals), twangy Duane Eddy, and Richie Havens. The company was created in 1952 by New York jazz guitarist Alfred Dronge from the ruins of the old Epiphone company. Epiphone had labor problems and faced a strike, and rather than yield to worker demands, Epi Stathopoulis closed up shop and moved to Philadelphia, leaving its union labor in New York. In 1957, Stathopoulis sold Epiphone to long-time competitor Gibson, which is how it became Gibson’s budget brand. Seeing opportunity in the ready supply of skilled guitarmakers, Dronge started Guild – the choice of names was significant! – employing many of the old Epiphone employees.
After a decade of establishing a reputation for making excellent guitars, Guild decided to get into the solidbody game in 1963 with the Thunderbird S-200, the Polara S-100 and the Jet-Star S-50. At first glance, ’63 seemed to be a strange time to introduce solidbodies. Young babyboomers, the driving factor in the demand for instruments, were still heavy into folk music. Bob Dylan and Joan Baez were darlings of the coffeehouse scene. Peter, Paul, and Mary were riding high in the pop charts, although there was this catchy harmonized pop-rock sound from overseas beginning to invade the radio airwaves.
At second glance, the designs of Guild’s first solidbodies seem even stranger than the timing. At a time when Fender’s flagships were the Jazzmaster and Jaguar, and Gibson’s money was on the SG, Guild came up with some guitars that seemed to have more in common with Gumby than the competition! Indeed, Tom Wheeler once described the lopsided Thunderbird as looking like “a melted Hershey bar!” All three of Guild’s new solidbodies had glued-in necks, with a groovy asymmetrical “Florentine” headstock design on the Thunderbird and Jet-Star and a reverse six-in-line on the Polara.
While all three of these first Guild solidbodies are interesting, it’s the top-of-the-line Thunderbird that usually captures the hearts of most collectors, with good reason. In many ways, it was ahead of its time. Initially, the S-200 was equipped with small Guild “Anti-Hum” humbucking pickups. How long these were used is unknown, but at some point (probably early on) Guild switched to “Frequency Tested” single-coils manufactured by DeArmond, as seen on the guitar shown here. The controls were fairly sophisticated, with two tone circuits, each with its own volume and tone control. These were controlled by a circuit sliding switch that changed from a fatter, rhythmic sound to a more trebly lead sound, each circuit using different-value capacitors. In the down or lead position, another sliding switch activated in or out of phase when both pickups were engaged. This may have been the earliest production guitar with a standard phase switch.
The Thunderbird was also equipped with a version of the Hagstrom knife-edge vibrato. Whether Guild licensed the design and made its own or obtained them from Sweden is unknown.
While the wiring is probably the most interesting feature of the S-200, the part most collectors love is the built-in stand; Thunderbirds had a foot-long, hinged, chrome-plated bar set into the back. Play your set, and when it’s time for your break, pop out the bar and set the guitar down on stage… though how much you’d want to trust this little stand with your guitar is another matter!
Before 1964, Guild guitars had a headstock design that was very similar to Gibson’s open-book shape. That year, Guild switched to a new center-humped shape for its acoustics and archtops, and at some unknown point close to this, Guild ditched the Florentine head for the new standard shape seen here, possibly as early as ’64. We have to be a little vague here because Guild never bothered to change the Florentine art in its catalog through ’68, though the majority of Thunderbirds that show up have the standard head. Thunderbirds were available from ’63 to ’68 in cherry or sunburst finishes.
The downscale Polara and Jet-Star were a little more conservative in shape and sported the “Frequency Tested” DeArmonds, but did not have the fancy electronics or built-in stand. Curiously, the single-pickup Jet-Star put the unit right in the center, rather than at the neck or bridge. A one-pickup Jet-Star Bass, with the Thunderbird shape, was also produced at least from 1965-’67.
Everyday garage-band musicians did not rush out to buy Guild’s solidbodies, but there was some curious uptake by pros. Muddy Waters played a Thunderbird on his Electric Mud album. Zal Yanofsky of the Lovin’ Spoonful played one, as did Lowell “Banana” Levinger of the Youngbloods. And Jorma Kaukonen played one on Jefferson Airplane’s Surrealistic Pillow.
It’s not known exactly how many of these early Guild solidbodies were made, but probably not many. Records indicate about 90 Thunderbirds were produced; the serial number on this ’66 Thunderbird is SC 120, SC being the Thunderbird prefix. Knowing that 90 are accounted for, this number suggests consecutive numbering that reflects actual production totals. If so, there were probably 30 or so made in ’63-’64. Add a few more for ’68 and the total output is likely 150 or fewer, qualifying the Guild Thunderbird as being of the rare variety that never really flew. So, even if players never really warmed up to the Guild Thunderbird, they’re now prime real estate for collectors.
This article originally appeared in VG‘s November 2006 issue. All copyrights are by the author and Vintage Guitar magazine. Unauthorized replication or use is strictly prohibited.
Everyone of a certain age – and no doubt some younger folks – remembers the sage career advice given young Benjamin Braddock in the classic film The Graduate: “Plastics.” In 1967, such wisdom was humorous because young people knew business was full of “plastic people” in suits.
So, it’s especially ironic that someone of a certain age would sing the praises of a plastic-covered guitar like this ’67 Norma EG 470-2 Deluxe!
Plastics are “pliable” substances, and there are two basic kinds – natural and synthetic, both made from a “resin.” Natural plastics are often made from tree (e.g., gutta percha, amber) or insect (shellac) secretions, and date back at least to ancient Egypt. Synthetic plastics are made from chemical compounds and date to the 19th century. Synthetics are either thermoplastic (heated, molded, cooled to harden) or thermoset (heated to harden).
Modern synthetic plastics came about as part of a natural-resources crisis inspired by (of all things) billiard balls. Billiards became popular in the 19th century, when the balls were carved from elephant ivory. You could get two or three from a single tusk, but it quickly became clear that there weren’t enough elephants to sustain the industry. So, one ball manufacturer offered a prize for a synthetic substitute. In 1869, American inventor John Wesley Hyatt devised celluloid, a thermoplastic. Basically, he broke down cotton into its primordial cell matter using acid to get cellulose nitrate, then combined it with camphor. He won the prize. The only problem was that early celluloid was highly combustible – not good for billiard balls! Improvements were made and celluloid was manufactured beginning in 1872. Celluloid appeared on guitars later in the 19th century as trapeze tailpieces.
In 1909, another American inventor, L.H. Baekeland, polymerized phenol and formaldehyde by a thermosetting process. His creation, Bakelite, is best-known for its use in another type of ball – for bowling – and telephones. Bakelite showed up on guitars as archtop pickguards, tuner buttons, a bridge made by Kay, and even as the structural material of early electric guitars (e.g. Rickenbacker) in the early 1930s. Bakelite had to be dark because of its composition, which is why its black or brown. A competing compound was developed that could be made a lighter color.
Today, guitars employ more-sophisticated plastics, however, they all derive from thermoplasts and thermosets.
This Norma is covered in sparkle celluloid – a basically clear substance to which other materials are added to create the color. Tortoise celluloid, for example, involves various shades of brown and tan material, and not stirring it too well. Metallic-gold celluloid appeared on guitars as trim in the 1920s and was called “tinsel.” It graduated to pickguards and faceplates in the ’50s. However, it was with European accordion making that application of celluloid as a “finish” began, again, in the 1920s, if not before. Ivoroid, made much like tortoise, was common, as was tinsel trim. It was the Swedish accordion maker Hagstrom that probably first applied the technique to guitars with the ’58 P-46 De Luxe. The technique proliferated in the early ’60s, spreading from Europe to Japan.
Which brings us back to Norma. If billiards created plastics, nuts and bolts created Norma guitars. Following World War II, a part of the restoration strategy for Japan was to build up manufacturing capabilities for export. By the ’50s, Japanese products began to appear in the US. In the late ’50s, a Chicagoan named Norman Sackheim started Heads and Threads to import Japanese nuts and bolts. He was successful and sold out in 1960, staying on as advisor for three years. At that time, the Beatles began to break. Sackheim met with Fred Targ, of music distributor Targ & Diner, who needed guitar suppliers. In ’64, Sackheim formed Strum & Drum and used his contacts in Japanese trade to find manufacturers, debuting Norma Big Value guitars the following year; many were sold to Targ & Diner.
The Norma Plas-Twinkle (seriously!) series appeared in 1967, ironically during the Summer of Love, when “plastic” was a pejorative and demand for guitars had begun to decline. Clearly, the inspiration was the Eko guitars of a few years earlier. The Plas-Twinkle Deluxes came in various sparkle celluloid finishes, including gold, red, and blue, and two, three, or four pickups, all with vibratos. Seen here is the Norma EG 470-2 Deluxe Two Pickup with Tremolo (sic). These were made by Tombo in Japan. The pickups are controlled by on/off rockers, with a master Volume and two Tone controls – basic but adequate. These often need a bit of setup, but play fine, though with limited tonal flexibility.
Strum & Drum continued importing guitars through the end of the decade, some quite noteworthy. American guitar making, especially at the lower-end, began unraveling shortly after the Plas-Twinkles. Valco purchased Kay in ’67 and went out of business in ’68 – the same year Strum & Drum purchased the Noble brand from accordion king Don Noble and put it on one of the first Japanese copies of the Mosrite Combo to appear in the U.S. In August of ’69, the assets of Valco/Kay were auctioned, and Strum & Drum purchased the National brand, which promptly found itself on some of the earliest copies of the Les Paul (Big Daddy, 1970) and Telecaster (Finger-Talker, ’71). By ’72, Strum & Drum was ready to get out of the guitar game and go back to nuts and bolts, and the Norma, Noble, and National brands went into hibernation.
Are Norma Plas-Twinkles rare? That’s difficult to say, given they had a run of a year or slightly more. There’s no way to tell how many were imported, much less sold. By ’67, demand for imported guitars was dropping. And while sparkle plastic guitars may have been cool when bands wore matching suits, they were unhip to youth in non-matching bell-bottom jeans with flowers in their hair. Normas were just too… well, “plastic!”
This article originally appeared in VG’s June 2014 issue. All copyrights are by the author and Vintage Guitar magazine. Unauthorized replication or use is strictly prohibited.
Sex, drugs, and rock and roll. Yea, baby! Okay, to be honest, there’s no real evidence that this 1967 Fender Coronado XII Wildwood was ever associated with sex or rock and roll… But drugs? For sure! Now, this guitar does date from 1967, the Summer of Love, so there’s a good chance it witnessed the ingestion of some illegal psychedelic substances in its day. But the drugs we’re talking about are in the finish. Or to be more accurate, in the wood itself. Because this is one of Fender’s more bizarre diversions, the legendary Wildwood fiasco!
Fender’s Wildwood instruments were part of the contribution to American guitarmaking made by the German luthier Roger Rossmeisl. Born in Graslitz, Germany, in 1927, he was the son of luthier Wenzel Rossmeisl, who named his guitar line (Roger) after his boy. In 1952, Roger came to the United States, where he talked Ted McCarty into a job at Gibson. Rossmeisl reportedly tried to introduce a German-style archtop to Gibson, but they declined, and according to McCarty’s recollection, Rossmeisl left after a year or so, then got a gig as a guitarist on a Hawaiian cruise ship. Rossmeisl ended up in California, where in 1954 (or possibly ’56) he landed a gig as head of the woodshop at Rickenbacker. There, he left his indelible mark on American guitars by redesigning the Combo 600 and 800 guitars, designing the Capri 300 series, and creating the legendary 4000 “cresting wave” bass design. Rossmeisl introduced the so-called “German-carve” top-edge relief to American guitars. A young apprentice working under him at Rickenbacker was Semie Moseley, who once claimed he owed everything he knew about making guitars to Rossmeisl. And Moseley certainly helped popularize the German carve!
In 1962, with folk music booming, Rossmeisl talked Leo Fender into letting him design a line of flat-tops for Fender. This led to the bolt-neck Fender acoustics – King, Kingman, Malibu, Newporter, Palomino, etc. – with the patented reinforcing dowel up the middle known affectionately to collectors as the “broomstick” guitars. Alas, folkies were heavily into traditional guitars. Gibson, Martin, Guild. Bolt-neck acoustics with six-in-line electric headstocks were anathema. While they really don’t sound or play that badly, these acoustics were less than a success, and in fact, Rossmeisl’s association with Fender was less than stellar (though that was not entirely his fault), and certainly not as significant as his stay at Rickenbacker.
In 1965, Leo Fender sold his company to entertainment conglomerate CBS, which may have known something about music, movies, and television, but didn’t know a lot about guitars. Most guitarheads know all about the three-bolt neck that developed from a desire to cut production costs. Less-known are the many endeavors that emerged shortly after the takeover and deviated from Fender’s core competency.
One of these was Roger Rossmeisl’s next project for Fender – the design of the thinline Coronado series in 1966 – Fender’s first foray into the thinline electric. With bolt-on necks and DeArmond single-coil pickups instead of Fender’s own units (again, a first for Fender and probably explained by corporate-think). Three versions were available, with one or two pickups, plus a 12-string with the so-called “hockey-stick” headstock, as seen here. Coronados were also not particularly well-received. Part of the problem was that they were built differently from Fender’s customary method, requiring assembly rather than carving out of solid wood, which challenged Fender’s workers. Another problem may have been trying to compete on the home field of set-neck Gibsons, a situation similar to that with Rossmeisl’s Fender acoustics. It’s tough to displace an ES-335. One problem Fender had was not getting the hang of binding; one batch of Coronados that suffered scorched tops during the removal of bad binding ended up being refinished as the cream-and-brown Antigua models, arguably one of the ugliest finishes ever produced in guitardom!
Which brings us back to the Wildwoods. Also in 1966, Rossmeisl brought the technology of a Danish inventor he knew to Fender. This fellow discovered that if he injected certain dyes into the root systems of growing beechwood trees, they naturally spread the dye throughout the tree as it matured. When harvested, the resulting timber contained a mix of the colored dye and darker grain – very psychedelic, and more or less natural at the same time! The colors produced, and eventually available on the Wildwoods, were green, gold and purple, gold and brown, dark blue, purple and blue, or blue-green.
The Wildwoods were put on Rossmeisl’s broomstick acoustics and the Coronado thinlines, and debuted in 1967. The Byrds were recruited to endorse them, but scuttlebutt has it they intended to ditch the guitars before taking to the stage. Despite their cool reception among players, the Wildwoods are very cool. In the cosmic scheme of things, not all guitars that fail to receive mass acceptance are necessarily failures.
This Wildwood Coronado XII features an attractive green dye in its beechwood. Fortunately, the binding process was refined by the time this guitar was produced, and even the f-holes are bound. The stylized “F” tailpiece was an adaptation of the “R” tailpiece Rossmeisl introduced at Rickenbacker. There is undoubtedly a sonic difference caused by the method of neck attachment. But its significance is a matter of taste, and is most likely negated by various factors in the signal chain. Plus, there’s the tradeoff of being able to adjust the neck set with a shim versus a re-set. In physical mechanics and playability, these are not bad guitars. Once you cut through the competitive clutter, one’s opinion probably will be reduced to how they feel about DeArmond pickups.
Fender Wildwoods lasted only until 1969. How many were made is unknown, but they’re pretty rare. Roger Rossmeisl went on to design the Thinline Telecaster and Fender’s first jazz boxes, the Montego and LTD, neither of which were terribly successful either. Rossmeisl returned to Germany circa 1970, and died in 1979. His legacy is pretty incredible. His Wildwoods may be less so, but they are still remarkable tokens of the rich legacy of guitar history, even minus the sex and rock and roll.
This article originally appeared in VG’s April 2007 issue. All copyrights are by the author and Vintage Guitar magazine. Unauthorized replication or use is strictly prohibited.
Every once in awhile you find a guitar that’s almost too beautiful to play. It’s just enough to sit there and admire it, not risking a ding. A good case in point is this drop-dead gorgeous 1988 Guild Liberator Elite, one of the last guitars to be produced before Guild got out of the solidbody electric game in the late 1980s.
Guild guitars, founded in 1952 amidst the implosion of Epiphone, had been a player in the solidbody game since 1963, though never with overwhelming success. A few Guild electrics, such as the Gumby-shaped Thunderbird and S-100 “Oak Leaf” (plus the thinline Starfires), acquired a sort of classic status, but never really achieved widespread adoption. With the Superstrat craze of the 1980s, Guild redoubled its efforts to capture part of the market owned by Kramer and produced some of its best-quality guitars, but generally with the same old results. It’s from this period that the Liberator Elite derives.
The Guild Liberator Elite was a limited edition top-of-the-line introduced in 1988. Sitting above the set-neck Liberator (DiMarzios) and the fancier “seemless heel” Liberator II (EMGs), both poplar guitars, the Liberator Elite employed materials and workmanship equal to the best solidbodies. It had solid mahogany body with a bound, bookmatched flamed maple carved top. The glued-in mahogany neck had the “seemless heel,” a two-octave bound ebony fingerboard, and wonderful pearl “rising sun” inlays. Pickups were active Bartolini units with an active onboard boost function. Pickups were controlled by three three-way mini-toggles with off in the middle and reversed phase orientation in either end position. This had one volume and one tone control, gold hardware, and a Floyd Rose double-locking vibrato. Finishes were amberburst, cherry sunburst, and transparent charcoal.
The Liberator Elite was a special guitar that plays like a dream. Active Bartolinis aren’t everyone’s cup of tea, but they’re darn good pickups, capable of kicking butt with minimum noise – great for a rack system or recording. This one has a serial number of JK000187, suggesting it had 186 predecessors. Total production numbers are not known, but it’s safe to assume that the Liberator Elite was made in limited quantities. Safe because all Liberators were limited.
In ’88, the Guild Musical Instrument Corporation defaulted on bank notes, went into Chapter 11 bankruptcy, and stopped solidbody production. In ’89, the company was bought by the Faas Corporation of New Berlin, Wisconsin.
After the sale, Guild continued to build acoustics and jazz boxes at its Westerly, Rhode Island, plant, but didn’t return to making solidbodies until it reissued the S-100 and Brian May models in ’94. In November ’95, Guild was purchased by Fender Musical Instruments, and entered a new identity that once again includes American and imported solidbodies. They’re swell guitars, but offer little of the chutzpah and class of the Liberator Elite, one of the most beautiful Guild solidbodies ever produced.
This article originally appeared in VG’s February 2004 issue. All copyrights are by the author and Vintage Guitar magazine. Unauthorized replication or use is strictly prohibited.
When my son was young I used to do “guitar shows” for his classes, showing off 10 or so electric guitars that started with conventional shapes – a Les Paul and a Strat – and progressed to more unusual designs. I’d often conclude with this cool 1981 B.C. Rich Eagle and a rousing rendition of the theme from TV’s “Swamp Thing” that ended by me throwing the overdrive switch. The move always had the 30 little kids putting hands over their ears (and put big grins on their faces!). I’d ask the class to vote for their favorite, and the Rich almost always won the day (though the metallic green Ibanez Maxxas and the black graphite Bond Electraglide with LEDs were in the running).
That B.C. Rich ended up making unusual-shaped guitars was a bit ironic because Bernardo (Bernie) Chavez Rico, the brand’s founder and namesake, began his career following in the footsteps of his father (Bernardo Mason Rico) making classical and flamenco guitars in East Los Angeles. (Rico the elder also made other stringed instruments for local Mexican musicians.) Young Bernie actually studied with flamenco great Sabicas and hob-nobbed with Paco de Lucia and Carlos Montoya. In 1953 or ’54 Bernie started working in his father’s shop and by the mid ’60s was doing a lot of work for country western musicians, though he felt his name didn’t fit with his clientele. A friend named Bobby Rich performed as Roberto Rico and, taking a cue from his buddy, he anglicized his brand to B.C. Rich circa ’66.
Like another L.A.-area guitarmaker before him – Paul Bigsby – Rico was a biker. This gave him a taste for flashy finishes and soon he had a thriving business doing wild refins of electric guitars. By 1968, this led to his making his own custom solidbodies, mainly copies of Gibson and Fender models. By ’69 he was hanging with other guitar makers, including Rick Turner, which steered him in the direction of neck-through-body guitars with no heel. In ’71, Rico designed his first odd-shaped guitar, the Seagull, which debuted at the ’72 NAMM show. It was basically a tricked-out Les Paul-like single-cutaway shape with the cutaway horn flopped downward and a balancing point on the top of the upper bout. The guitar was embraced by Dominic Troiano, who’d just replaced Randy Bachman as lead player in the Guess Who. Troiano favored active electronics, which were provided by Neil Mosher, who would play a big role in the brand’s success through the 1970s. Weird shapes, neck-through construction, and active electronics – Rich’s holy trinity. B.C. Rich guitars were on their way!
The Seagull was heavily promoted and sold fairly well, but players didn’t like its pointy “feather” on the top, which kept jamming them in the chest. In ’75 or so, bassist Bill Bodine lodged this complaint about his Seagull Bass, so Bernie redesigned the Seagull, adding a second cutaway and carving off the offending point on top. This became the Bodine Bass for a short while, but then the guitar got the same makeover and the model became the Seagull II (or sometimes, Seagull Junior). In late ’76 or early ’77 the name game stopped and the model became known as the Eagle, as seen here.
Throughout this time B.C. Rich was really somewhere between a manufacturer and a custom shop. All B.C. Rich guitars could be – and were frequently – ordered with a range of options including custom electronics, vibratos, inlays, and finishes. As a result, there is an enormous range of guitars out there. You could get your guitar passive or tricked out with every conceivable mini-toggle for tapping, phase reversing, or activating other on-board active electronics. The 1981 Eagle shown here is one of these atypical guitars.
This is a swell guitar, like a stripped-down hot rod. It has the usual heelless neck-through-body construction. As you can see, it’s relatively plain in its appointments, with simple pearl dot inlays and no binding on the rosewood fingerboard. The body is a resonant mahogany. It’s pretty thin, so the guitar is not heavy but sounds great. It has great balance and is even comfortable to play sitting down. Whoever ordered this puppy didn’t care about mellow neck tones, just high powered crank out of the bridge. This is a Rich pickup, by the way. You’ll often see these described as having DiMarzios, but Rich usually made its own pickups. There may have been a few with DiMarzios, but those would be special cases, and usually any such description is just wrong.
The guitar shown here was equipped with a Rich-designed vibrato, one of their early designs – the locking vibrato was not widely available in 1981. Most B.C. Rich guitars from the 1970s and early ’80s were stop-tails. The color is interesting, too; it was called “Jump-at-Me Yellow,” a name given to it by a rock star visiting the factory one day.
But, like any good hot rod, the most impressive elements are “under the hood.” While it only has one hot pickup, the mini-toggle hooks up to an onboard preamp. Throw that sucker, and the output doubles. If you’re running at any volume at all, this turns into a nice distortion! The controls are a volume control for passive mode and a volume control for the preamp, so you can control the differential. There’s also a master Tone control that works in passive or active mode.
This particular Eagle has a six-in-line headstock. Previous guitars all had asymmetrical three-and-three heads. In 1981 – the year this guitar debuted, B.C. Rich introduced this design as an alternative.
B.C. Rich guitars aren’t especially rare. This one has a serial number of 85376, and Rich numbers were sequential, not date coded. Once they passed 1,000 in a year, the numbers started getting ahead of the year.
By 1982, the taste for switches and onboard preamps began to wane, and the line began to shift in a more conventional passive direction. This guitar thus represents the apex of that first golden age of B.C. Rich guitars. It’s simple – and great. Great enough to make you cover your ears and wear a great big grin!
This article originally appeared in VG’s June 2008 issue. All copyrights are by the author and Vintage Guitar magazine. Unauthorized replication or use is strictly prohibited.
American guitars made in the 1950s and ’60s constitute an almost-holy canon, yet most players in that era took their first steps on imported instruments – often good and interesting in their own right, like the Goya Rangemaster.
The ’62 Goya catalog (right) included Hagstrõm-made guitars.
In the ’50s, guitars were typically obtained one of two ways – ordered from catalogs published by Sears and Roebuck or Montgomery Ward, or bought from a local music store. There were no Guitar Centers, no vintage-guitar shows, no internet. Stores were supplied by distributors who bought instruments wholesale from manufacturers such as Harmony, Kay, Regal, Valco, United, then marked them up and delivered them to places like Durdell’s Music.
One prominent New York “jobber” was Jerome Hershman, whose Hershman Musical Instrument Corporation was exhibiting at NAMM shows by 1940, maybe earlier. On a buying trip in 1952, Hershman met the owners of Levin Guitars, one of the largest makers in Europe. In ’54, Hershman introduced Levin-made acoustic guitars under his own brand, Goya, as an alternative for players who couldn’t afford a Martin, Guild, or Gibson but wanted something better than a Kay and Harmony. In ’59, he expanded the Goya line with electric guitars made by Swedish accordion builder Hagström, beginning with the innovative plastic-covered hollowbody Deluxe and Standard models with modular pickup assemblies.
Later that year, Hershman established Goya Guitars, Inc. at 51 W. 23rd Street, which may have been a partnership with Hagström. From ’59 until ’63, Hagström built Goya electric guitars before a disagreement caused Hagström and Hershman to part ways. After the breakup, Goyas were again distributed by Hershman Musical Instrument Corp., which by then had moved in next door.
The ’68 catalog (left) showed the final ZeroSette-made Goya thinlines, including single- and double-cut versions. Goya’s mahogany-body thinlines from the ’66 catalog (right) used the same pickups and electronics as in the solidbodies.
Hershman (the company) did not immediately replace the Hagström electrics. Instead, in ’65 he debuted the Goya Rangemaster solidbody electric built in Italy by ZeroSette. Guitarmaking in western Europe had taken off following World War II, with centers in Sweden, Finland, Holland, Germany, Sicily, and Italy. Many were founded as accordion makers, but after the brief accordion boom of the mid ’50s went bust, they began making acoustic guitars. By the early ’60s, some of the instruments were being brought to the U.S., including Eko models made by Oliviero Pigini, of Recanati, Italy, and Egmonds, from the Netherlands. As demand for electric guitars exploded after the Beatles, more turned to electrics, including ZeroSette, which was founded in 1945 as a subsidiary of the American accordion company Giulett. Exactly when they began producing guitars is uncertain, but they were at it by ’64.
In ’68, the Japanese-made line of Greco thinlines (far right) used whimsical ZeroSette/Goya pickups.
Hershman’s 1965 sunburst Goya Rangemaster was made by ZeroSette with two split single-coil pickups. Its principal attraction is the “accordion” switching system, with six pushbuttons on the upper horn (engaging all, 3+4, 3+1, 2+4, 1+2, and kill/off). Three pushbuttons below the bridge/pickup selected Lo, Mid, or High tone capacitors, and were situated near the master Volume knob. The tonal palette isn’t remarkable by modern standards, but there is a novel criss-crossed bass/treble string pairings offered by the split pickups. While the package looks a little silly, it’s actually a high-quality build.
In ’66, Hershman/Goya was purchased by Avnet, an investment conglomerate that also acquired Guild Guitars and became the Goya Music Corporation (Guild was kept separate – it did not become part of Goya). This coincided with the debut of thinline Rangemaster semi-hollowbodies with similar electronics and including a 12-string along with several stop-tail versions. Color options expanded to Fire Engine Red, Jet Black, and Caribbean Blue.
The Rangemasters were later joined by the Panther II solidbody and hollowbody basses with more-conventional pickups, plus some single-pickup hollowbodies. Not cataloged (and probably made only in late ’66) was the Panther S-2 with two single-coils and pushbuttons for off, neck, bridge, and both.
By ’68, the Goya catalog retained only the Rangemaster thinlines, including upscale versions. No production numbers are available, but the sunburst versions lasted (at best) from ’65 to ’67, opaques only one year. The thinlines were around from ’66 to ’68. It’s unknown if serial numbers are consecutive, but a few that have been seen (1316, 2451, and 3259) could be in sequence, based on features.
Goya’s opaque-finish Rangemaster solidbodies were introduced in ’66 and lasted only one year.
Hershman had been offering the Greco line of Japanese-made acoustic guitars since ’65, and when Avnet took over, Goya Music added Japanese solidbody and hollowbody electrics with headstocks clearly emulating the ZeroSette shape.
By 1970, Goya’s distribution was probably just leftover stock that was then sold to amp builder Kustom Electronics, in Chanute, Kansas. When that company folded in ’72, its assets were transferred to Dude, Inc., also of Chanute. Whether any Goya guitars were sold during this period is unknown. In ’76, the brand was bought by the C.F. Martin Organisation, which had purchased the Levin guitar company in ’72/’73. Production of Goya acoustic guitars was returned to Levin – the place where it had begun two decades earlier – and lasted until the factory closed in ’79. A few Goyas were also built that year by Landola, in Finland, before production was moved to Japan, where it became focused on beginner instruments and remained in existence until ’96; in the final years, some were made in Korea.
This article originally appeared in VG’s July 2018 issue. All copyrights are by the author and Vintage Guitar magazine. Unauthorized replication or use is strictly prohibited.
Guitar history is littered with “better ideas,” some of which stayed around, went nowhere, or went somewhere before landing in the boneyard to be occasionally reincarnated. A great example is the aluminum neck on this ’78 Travis Bean TB1000S.
Travis Bean guitars were one of the great ideas of the ’70s that promised to revolutionize electric guitars, found a moment in the sun, then drifted into legend. They were not, however, the first guitars to explore aluminum as a way to create a stiffer, better-sustaining neck.
Technically speaking, the first aluminum necks were part of the all-aluminum Rickenbacker Electro A-22 lap steel (a.k.a. “frying pan”) invented in 1931 by George Beauchamp of National String Instrument Corp., maker of resonator guitars with hollow metal necks. National wasn’t interested in manufacturing electric guitars, so Beauchamp teamed with the company’s cone supplier, Adolph Rickenbacher. Hawaiian music was popular in Europe during the 1930s, so it’s possible Beauchamp’s idea crossed the pond.
Aluminum necks appear almost simultaneously on guitars made in Italy by Wandré Pioli, and in France by the Jacobacci Brothers. Pioli (1926-2004), who had a colorful life as a performance artist/designer, began making guitars in 1957. It’s not certain when he started using an aluminum frame on his necks, but at some point his had an aluminum core with a plastic back and rosewood fingerboards. In the early ’60s, Wandrés came to the U.S. branded as Noble guitars for Chicago accordionist Don Noble.
Vincenzo Jacobacci was a luthier from Catania, Sicily (a big guitar-making center), who, with the rise of fascism, left for Paris and in 1925 opened his own guitar, mandolin, and banjo shop. His sons, Roger and André, joined the shop and took over operations after World War II. In the mid ’50s, the Jacobaccis were awarded a contract to supply guitars to music retailer Major Conn. In ’58, they filed for a patent on carved aluminum necks and in ’59 their first aluminum-necked solidbody, the Major Ohio, debuted with bodies possibly sourced from Levin in Sweden. These were never exported to the U.S. and probably had no influence on later guitar makers.
The back highlights the TB-1000’s aluminum “core.”
John Veleno (b. 1934) was a guitar player from Massachusetts who moved to Florida in ’63, where he worked with aluminum in a machine shop and taught on the side. He fabricated an aluminum guitar-shaped mailbox to promote his sideline when some wag suggested he make a guitar out of aluminum. He finished one in ’67, and in 1970 began showing it to folks in the burgeoning St. Petersburg rock scene. Veleno guitars were carved out of aluminum and plated in chrome or other colors; John stopped making guitars in ’77.
Clifford Travis Bean (1947-2011) was variously a machinist, metal sculptor, motorcycle racer, movie-set builder, and rock drummer. In ’74, he hooked up with Marc McElwee and Gary Kramer to devise their aluminum neck concept. Only Kramer’s account is available, but he apparently financed the operation and went on the road to promote the guitars.
The concept behind Travis Bean guitars was described in their first brochure with a “manifesto” delving into the technical reasons for the idea. They argued that wood was inefficient, with portions of the string vibration dissipating into the headstock and body at the bridge. In addition, they argued, most guitars use pickups mounted in a plastic frame, which isolates them from the body. Their solution was to carve the head, neck, and bridge mount out of a single billet of Reynolds 6061-T6 aluminum, upon which the pickups are mounted. This makes a single, dense, metal base to control the entire string vibration top to bottom, plus it isolates the strings and pickup. All of this is set into a dense chunk of magnolia.
No reliable, detailed chronology of Travis Bean guitars has yet been written. Guitars began to be made in ’74 at 11761 Sheldon Street, Sun Valley, California, with the patent filed in October. Anecdotal accounts place the TB1000S as first guitar, followed soon by the TB1000A Artist and TB-2000 bass. The double-cut Standard had a slab body, while the Artist had a hand-carved/arched top. The bass had a slightly elongated offset body. The first price list was dated March, 1975, and had the Standard at $595, Artist at $895, and bass at $655; a case ran $95.
This Standard (serial number 1210, circa ’78) is a boss guitar. The epoxy-sealed pickups are not loud like a DiMarzio, but they’re clean and balanced, and the sustain is remarkable. Essentially, this idea worked extremely well. But, these guitars are heavy, and that doesn’t mean philosophically deep, as in “That’s heavy, man!”
According to Kramer, he returned from a sales trip to find Bean had filed for a patent in his own name – not all of theirs or the company’s. This precipitated Kramer’s exit and the formation of Kramer guitars in ’76, based on a similar concept. How Travis Bean was subsequently structured or financed remains to be learned, but it soldiered on.
By January of ’76, the Bean line included the down-scale, offset-double-cut TB500, the trapezoidal/carved-top TB3000 Wedge ($1,295), and similar TB4000 Wedge bass ($1,095). Color options were natural, black, white, red, and (for the Artist and Wedges) pearl.
Travis’ interests soon began to wander; production ceased in June of ’79 with total output of 1,422 Standards, 755 Artists, 351 500s, 1,020 TB2000s, 45 Wedge guitars, and 36 Wedge basses. Travis Bean announced a comeback in 1999, but only about 10 were made.
Many pros appreciated their Travis Beans, including Jerry Garcia, Keith Richards, Bill Wyman, Joe Perry, Roger Fisher, and, later, Stanley Jordan. A better idea that was reincarnated by Kramer, Kramer co-founder Henry Vaccaro on his own aluminum-necks, and perhaps…
This article originally appeared in VG‘s June 2018 issue. All copyrights are by the author and Vintage Guitar magazine. Unauthorized replication or use is strictly prohibited.
In the late 1970s, trends combined to spawn several new guitar companies in the Chicago area motivated by a desire to “build a better Gibson.” The list included Dean and Hamer, both of which impressed players with their high degree of hand-crafted detail. To that fraternity should be added Silver Street guitars.
Bruce Hardy today with one of the Taxi prototypes, and in the ’80s with an early production Taxi.
At the time, many guitarists perceived a degradation in the quality of Gibson instruments in the wake of a change of ownership from Chicago Musical Instruments (CMI) to the Panamanian conglomerate Norlin, Inc. Real or not, the attitudes created opportunities for ambitious young makers like Dean Zelinsky, Jol Dantzig, and Bruce and Craig Hardy, of Elkhart, Indiana.
The Elkhart Beat
Silver Street began life in ’79, when Bruce Hardy set out to build a better drum kit. Born in ’48, Hardy’s musical path began with piano lessons as a kid. The Beatles’ appearance on “The Ed Sullivan Show” changed him and, like millions of other Babyboomers, he grabbed a guitar and played in bands through high school, college, and into adulthood when he returned to Elkhart.
At the time, it was common among drummers to stuff things into their drums to “muffle” the tone to give a deeper, more controlled sound. Hardy’s drummer neighbor stuffed his with pieces of foam rubber. At the time, Hardy worked installing carpet at an RV factory, and had an idea to improve the setup; he brought foam rubber from work and – without permission and to his neighbor’s great astonishment – glued it underneath the heads of his drums. It worked well and the concept would evolve to become Silver Street’s first commercial product – the Deadringer drum muffler, for which Hardy received a patent.
Hardy had a fertile mind when it came to developing musical products; he was ultimately granted 10 patents for various guitar and drum-related pieces, but relied on business expertise provided by his brother, Craig, who operated several small businesses near their boyhood hometown of Shelby, Michigan. In June, 1981, Silver Street Incorporated (named for the street Bruce lived on in Elkhart) was formed to handle manufacturing and marketing of Bruce’s musical inventions, and before long, electric-guitar designs.
Other Silver Street products eventually included the Pick-Clip, Cable-Clip, the Headmaster (a plastic tray to safely hold snacks and drinks on an amp), and other, mostly drum-related accessories. Silver Street got a boost from pickup guru Larry DiMarzio, who gave them access to his independent sales reps and allowed them to put product sheets in their binders.
A Taxi prototype in suitable yellow, along with a Cobra and a Spitfire.
Hail a Cab
Silver Street’s move to guitar production was the result of a trip to the Musik Messe trade show in Germany, where in June of ’81 they displayed accessories. Among the products Bruce encountered were increasingly popular small guitars like the Steinberger and the Chiquita travel guitar. Bruce imagined a guitar that would make it easier for big-city musicians to carry in a taxicab. He conceived it having a full-scale neck on a compact body, and on the flight home sketched ideas that led to a model called the Taxi.
In 1981, Gibson was nearly finished relocating from its longtime home in Kalamazoo, Michigan, to Nashville. While Nashville was emerging as “Music City,” the move also reflected a broader move by manufacturers from unionized Northern states to “right to work” states where joining a union was not required and labor costs were substantially lower.
The Taxi’s gig bag – highly portable, by design.
On Your Mark
In ’81, Hardy drove to Kalamazoo, where he met with J.P. Moats and Marv Land, Gibson employees who later stayed in Kalamazoo to found Heritage Guitars. They introduced Hardy to Jim Deurloo, manager of Gibson’s wood shop who in turn put him in touch with Richard Schneider, a luthier who in the mid ’70s worked with Michael Kasha to produce Gibson’s radical Mark Series acoustics. Schneider agreed to build four prototype Taxi guitars along with one bass. They were completed in ’82 and had Gibson-style “sandwich” bodies with two pieces of wood pancaked over a thin, dark slice in the center. The necks were shaped like a Les Paul’s and had rosewood fingerboards; the earliest even had a volute. Headstocks were given a distinct, small shape. Bruce had a friend named Marty (who airbrushed conversion vans) finish the guitars in a bright yellow, the bass in red. Hardy wired the prototypes the night before the ’82 Summer NAMM show, in Chicago. Pickups were DiMarzio Super Distortion Dual Sounds. Tailpieces were Leo Quan BadAss units. The guitars were well-received, and after the show, Hardy ordered 50 Taxi necks and bodies from Gibson.
Silver Street built two Cobras for Quarterflash guitarist Jack Charles, one in Candy Apple Red, the other, White Pearl (below). The first was delivered just in time for the band’s appearance on “Solid Gold.” “It was set up great and was extremely comfortable to play, even though the design might suggest otherwise,” he said. “It had a lot of sustain, and was punchy!” He continued to use them in his solo project, Mien Street. Today, he heads Phantom Guitarworks.
Silver Street eventually employed as many as a dozen people at its Elkhart factory. Bruce continued to supervise manufacturing and design new models – Taxis with one or two pickups, the offset double-cut Spitfire, and the triangular Cobra. All were distinguished by near-complete treble access to the fingerboard and a 24.5″ scale. The majority of fingerboards had dot inlays offset to the bass edge like Gretsch thumbnails or Teisco’s bars, though they also offered other patterns. Bridges/tailpieces transitioned to Schaller assemblies. Early models had serial numbers stamped inside the neck pocket, and control cavities shielded with lead foil. Later models had a serial number on the back of the headstock and black shielding paint in the cavities. Single-pickup models had a coil tap, one Volume and one Tone. Where applicable, they were given three-position switch.
Rainbow Coalition
Silver Street offered a number of options and many players requested custom features, so there was very little consistency. Pickups could be DiMarzio Super II, P.A.F., or Super Distortion in any combination, with X2N units for an upcharge. The buyer could even select bobbin colors; Bruce and Marty did the painting. Standard controls were master Volume, master Tone, and three-way select, though electronics could also be customized. Standard colors included Roadster Red, White, Sky Blue, Rude Pink, Yellow, Turquoise, Porsche Red, and Black. For a little extra, you could get Champagne, Dark Blue, Mercedes Red, Silver, Dark Green, Steel Blue, Gold, Candy Apple Red, Candy Apple Blue, Rose Pearl, White Pearl, Blue Pearl, or natural. Flame-maple bodies were an option, as were custom finishes. In ’83, base prices for the Taxi were $549.95 (one-pickup) and $599.95 (two-pickup), $699.95 for the Spitfire and Cobra.
Things were going so well that Silver Street acquired equipment for making its own necks and fingerboards.
In ’83, Bruce began working on the MX, a hybrid V/Explorer that had more than a little similarity to Dean’s ML, and (with input from artist relations rep Ken Willard, who’d also spent time in the company workshop, and Styx guitarist Tommy Shaw) the Nightwing, an offset double-cut with asymmetrical “French curve” on the lower bout.
Bruce was putting in long hours and continued to devise ideas for new accessories. Silver Street, however, had its hands full and Craig chose not to expand its line. Tension over the situation came to a head in mid ’83, and Bruce promptly exited.
North to Shelby
In many circumstances, the loss of its main product designer might have meant the end for a guitar company. However, Craig Hardy was sitting on a stash of components, an investment in tooling, and business interests in Shelby, Michigan. One of his companies made artificial gemstones and another was a machine shop. So, in mid ’83, construction began on a new building while parts and equipment were shipped from Elkhart. Ads were placed in local newspapers seeking a spray painter. One person who saw the ad was the sister of former Shelby resident Dan Mustard, who in ’83 was working as a house painter in Kentucky. Mustard applied and one of his references was a friend who knew Craig. Mustard was offered a job before the new factory was finished.
Shipping of parts from Indiana was not the final association between Silver Street and Gibson. By ’83, Gibson’s move to Nashville was almost complete, and those who chose to remain in Kalamazoo became the core of Heritage. Some became consultants, including Charlie Garrison, head of Gibson’s finishing department for nearly 40 years. Garrison spent a month or two schooling Silver Street’s new finisher in the art of applying nitrocellulose lacquer.
“Those are fun guitars,” Tommy Shaw said of his signature model (above, left). “I still play the custom TS model shown on the back cover of my 1987 solo album, Ambition, and I used a red short-scale one when Styx headlined the Texas Jam in ’83. I later gave that one to Sammy Hagar, who was also on the bill on that day.” Bruce Hardy designed the Nightwing (middle) with input from Tommy Shaw and artist relations rep Ken Willard. A prototype Taxi bass (right).
The Les Paul Vibe
Mustard was in awe of his new mentor.
“There’s a very good reason why Silver Street guitars, especially the sunbursts, have lots of Les Paul vibe – Charlie Garrison,” said Mustard. “Charlie taught me it’s not just putting on the lacquer; wet-sanding and buffing are the hard parts. It only takes a second of too much pressure to ruin a finish! Nitrocellulose finishes helped put Silver Street on the map because so many companies were switching to polyurethane at that time.”
While many Gibson-made parts were used, the new factory was outfitted with state-of-the-art equipment including pin routers and cutting machines just before CNC.
Silver Street benefitted from having access to local hardwoods direct from mills, and their own kilns.
“We also had Craig’s machine shop,” Mustard added. “Whenever we needed patterns or fixtures, they’d make them. So, we could build to very tight tolerances.”
When Gibson finally shut down in Kalamazoo, a lot of the equipment and materials were auctioned. Silver Street purchased an overhead sander and pallets of wood including mahogany and figured maple. Later, Silver Street got a contract from Brunswick to make bases for bowling trophies.
“A lot of that old wood ended up sitting under a trophy, which is kind of a shame,” Mustard said with a wry chuckle.
The company’s NAMM display and a flier handed out at the event (right).
Jolt of Voltt
The reincarnated Silver Street was much leaner than it had been in Elkhart, running with only three or four employees. Mustard did the painting, final assembly, and setup, while sales and marketing was handled by another young musician, Steven Voltt. It was Voltt who recruited artists to play Silver Streets, including Shaw. A picture of Shaw playing a Spitfire surfaced around the time he was going solo in ’84, so Voltt approached him, and the association led to Mustard designing two new models, the Tommy Shaw and the Elite.
Shaw preferred Gibson’s scale, but also liked Strats even if they were too large for him to play comfortably. His signature Silver Street became the perfect blend – a Gibson-style neck mounted on a down-sized Strat-like body with a pair of humbuckers. By this time, Silver Street was offering an optional Kahler or Floyd Rose locking vibrato.
The final Silver Street designed by Mustard was the Elite, in ’85.
“That was our attempt to make a Gibson-style guitar,” he said. “You can see it was inspired by a Les Paul Junior, with a set neck, and they were made with wood from the Gibson auction.”
The Elite evolved from symmetrical cutaways to a slightly offset shape and was given Schaller pickups in the then-popular humbucker/single/single configuration, with the de rigueur locking vibrato.
Along the way, they made two promotional guitars with bodies shaped like the state of Michigan.
Craig Chaquico (here in the ’80s with a Cobra) still digs his Silver Streets. “I remember how cool those guys were and how refreshing it was to talk to people who understood the needs and aesthetics of guitar players, especially professionals who might play onstage in situations where sound and performance were very important,” he said. “The neck, frets, and the tuning pegs were all first-class and the humbucker in those mahogany bodies sounded so good whether I was playing a rock song like Jefferson Starship’s ‘Jane’ or a groovin’ blues tune when I played with Boz Scaggs.” Other notable artists who played Silver Streets included Chris Hayes (Huey Lewis and the News), Jonathan Cain (Journey), Michael Stanley, Don Barnes (.38 Special) and Rick Springfield, who bought three and used one in the video for “Rock of Life.”A one-sheet for the Taxi, and a Silver Street flier.
The End
Though it jumped into the boutique-guitar game early, Silver Street ultimately couldn’t compete. When Paul Reed Smith guitars emerged in 1985, it was also combining Gibson and Fender elements. And it wasn’t the only competition. Guitar players were increasingly warming to guitars made in Japan by Ibanez, Yamaha, ESP, or Charvel. By comparison, Silver Street guitars were expensive, the company’s margins slim.
By a point in ’86, Mustard was the only person working on guitars before the plug was pulled and the company’s equipment sold to a luthier in Detroit.
Rare Birds?
For better or worse, Silver Street guitars were made by enthusiastic men in their early 20s. They were completed in batches as orders came in, and no one thought to keep production records. Neither was there a meaningful serial-number system. Bruce Hardy guesses that approximately 500 were produced, but the total may be slightly higher. Mustard estimates that slightly more than 300 Taxis were made in Shelby, along with 50 Cobras, 50 Spitfires, 50 Nightwings, 25 MXs, 50 Tommy Shaw models, and 25 Elites. Suggested retail prices ranged from $449 for a single-pickup Taxi to $889 for a basic Elite.
In the ’80s, Dean and Hamer transitioned from merely building better Gibsons to become long-running, respected brands. Silver Street, on the other hand, was on its way to becoming a footnote to Gibson’s final days in Kalamazoo until its story was rescued through the efforts of advocates such as Mustard, Bruce Hardy, and Murray Jackson, a collector and de facto dean of the brand’s history who runs silverstreetguitars.com.
“Silver Street wasn’t a situation where someone had too much to drink and said, ‘I think I’ll make guitars and get rich,’” said Jackson. “They set out to make something innovative, with attention to quality and detail.”
This article originally appeared in VG March 2018 issue. All copyrights are by the author and Vintage Guitar magazine. Unauthorized replication or use is strictly prohibited.
In the late 1970s, trends combined to spawn several new guitar companies in the Chicago area motivated by a desire to “build a better Gibson.” The list included Dean and Hamer, both of which impressed players with their high degree of hand-crafted detail. To that fraternity should be added Silver Street guitars.
In ’83, Bruce began working on the MX, a hybrid V/Explorer that had more than a little similarity to Dean’s ML, and (with input from artist relations rep Ken Willard, who’d also spent time in the company workshop, and Styx guitarist Tommy Shaw) the Nightwing, an offset double-cut with asymmetrical “French curve” on the lower bout.
Jolt of Voltt
Rare Birds?