I loved this guitar.  There were all sorts of reasons not to like it.  It was heavy and had a HUGE neck.  The pickups were real low output, the neck joints on this model are always troublesome, and the truss rod design on this model is way under-spec’ed and a real design flaw.  Yet, I loved this darn thing. This exact guitar came to me from a fellow down south who had inherited it from his neighbor, an elderly black musician (and a semi-popular musician who I’d heard of plenty).  A true bluesman.  This was his one and only guitar since the 60s and the old feller apparently played this guitar every day, right up until he passed.  The neighbor ended up with this one, contacted me, and the guitar and it’s stories ended up with me.

When I got this one, it had all this gentle wear around the edges.  I could tell this guitar was loved, and played.  It was all complete, and even had some really old strings on it with the wound G.  A HEAVY gauge, like what could be called a “real man’s” string gauge.  Maybe .13s?  Anyway, within days I set on with reviving this guitar.  Like I mentioned, the truss rods in this model were very problematic and usually just end up rattling around inside the necks even when they’re tightened all the way.  About three days of work went into this guitar.  We did everything except a re-fret.  You name it, we did it.  I was so proud of the way it came out, and I swear to you humble reader, that this guitar had soul.  I mean, this was one of the models that Hound Dog Taylor played.  It was just a special guitar with a special backstory and it had everything you’d want in a vintage guitar, regardless of what country produced it.

Reluctantly, after owning this one for quite a while I decided to sell it and pass it on to the next guitar player with fire in his/her belly.  With a full time job, a family, repair work, writing books and magazine articles, answering emails, running this site, making video demos, giving guitar lessons, etc., etc., I barely have time to sleep.  So eventually I end up selling off guitars to keep newer stuff coming in to the shop.  Answering emails alone is usually a 2 hour nightly routine since I started this site.  I get emails from all over the world and often have to translate text.  I think of myself as a part-time guitar question “answerer” and part-time psychologist since I’m regularly talking people off the proverbial ledge on all sorts of topics.  A lot of the dudes that email me seem lonely, often feeling like I have felt…that we have this passion for oddball guitars that no one else seems to care about.  Of course it’s not necessarily true, as I’ve quickly learned over the last few years, and I’d be lying if I said I didn’t feel like that once upon a time.  I suppose finding someone else with your same quirky passion is a relief, so I often find myself getting to know a lot of you dudes and dudettes in personal ways.  Usually it’s all good.  But this one night I get a semi-frantic email from one of my regulars, asking if I’ve noticed how prices on many Japanese guitar models were surging on ebay.  Peeps, there are many guitar collectors who notice everything about ebay auctions and spend all waking moments studying trends and who’s buying what.  I could seriously write many pages on ebay idiosyncrasies, but let’s keep on topic.  What said emailer was wondering was WHO was buying up all these guitars and seriously outbidding everybody with vengeance?  I remembered it well because I’d noticed it too since the prices were getting really high.  Guitars that were selling regularly for $300 were suddenly going for $700 to $900, and that WAS weird.  I remember my emailer saying “who is this guy!?!?!  He must be a SERIOUS collector!”

So yes, many vintage models were seriously spiking in price.  Especially old Teisco guitars, who everybody seems to love and collect mainly because it’s the most common name to people.  In the US, everyone calls a vintage Japanese electric guitar a Teisco.  It’s just a matter of fact.  Around this same time I listed this very guitar, my beloved Kawai SD3W, on ebay to sell.  These SD guitars were also spiking in value so I figured maybe I could actually MAKE money on one of my auctions rather than break even.  In the auction ad I told the back story on this one, didn’t drop the bluesman’s name or the Hound Dog Taylor name because I sorta hate that name association thing, and within like 10 minutes someone hits the buy-it-now.

The buyer was a guy on the west coast, and we exchanged a few emails.  He said he knew this site and we talked about vintage guitars.  Everything was cordial and cool, and then a few red flags popped up.  Right away I had a sinking feeling about this transaction and I hadn’t even boxed up the guitar.  But check this: First off, the buyer (let’s call him Rich) started complaining to me that he recently bought a similar Kawai SD guitar and claimed the seller had lied about a bunch of stuff and the two of them were currently going back and forth through ebay’s resolution center. I’m not sure why he wanted to tell me this, but I saw it as the first sign of foreboding.  It’s sort of ironic because the seller Rich was having trouble with, I knew.  This other seller is in his 70s and has a heart of gold.  He’s not a tech guy or much of a guitar player, but he does like old guitars and spends every week traveling around his vicinity searching yard sales, flea markets, and antique shops for interesting guitars.  Not a bad profession if you ask me!  But how Rich was describing him seemed more than a bit off.  The point is, the seller always takes good pictures and describes stuff really well.  He may not know everything that’s wrong with a particular guitar, but he’s an honest dude.  Anyway, Rich started asking me all these questions about the condition and playability (this was after he bought my SD3W).  I answered every question in turn, and promptly boxed up this wonderful guitar and sent it off.  Over the next few days Rich kept sending me emails with questions and I started to feel like a sponge that was being wrung out.  He sort of exhausted me but I kept on with his questions, even though I started to see some pomposity becoming evident.  First, he sent me some pictures of him on like a red carpet Hollywood sort of event, and pictures of his awards, like gold Oscars.  Yup.  Dude was wearing sunglasses at night, for real.  Other pictures included some shots of his old band from the 90s.  Oh man, the anecdotes and comments that ran through my head when I saw these photos!  Listen, I identify myself as a punk rocker at heart and I’ve always despised corporate anything.  I’m the son of a steel worker and a hairdresser, and believe me when I say, I’m grounded.

Then he starts to show off pictures of his recent acquisitions, and what do I see?  All those Teiscos that were commanding HUGE prices!  Every single one of them!  Of course there were other models nestled in his studio, like some real (what I would call) pretentious guitars and some real expensive guitars.  Peeps, this Rich was spending thousands in a matter of weeks and apparently sending some living-beathing Teisco collectors halfway into the nuthouse!  I had a to chuckle a little about all the hoopla.  But this guy was a serious collector and money was no consequence.  There was a time when I was younger when I would’ve really resented a dude like Rich, having tons of dough to blow on guitars as I was struggling to get through a gig with a pieced-together vintage Japanese import that was squealing like a banshee!  Thankfully now, I’m a slightly wiser man that’s come to a certain peace about such things.  But then my SD3W arrived at Rich’s studio.

The emails from Rich came at an alarming pace, like three lengthy emails within an hour.  I’d just got home from a 10 hour workday, made dinner, got the kids to bed, and sat down at the computer trying to wrap my brain around Rich’s email comments.  First, my packing job was awful (something I’d never heard from any other buyer since I always try to overpack my stuff).  He had all sorts of criticisms about how the guitar wasn’t packed properly.  But get this, the guitar arrived safe and sound!!  He just didn’t like how I recycled packing stuff and how the box wasn’t enough of this or too little of that.  He also said the the guitar was “damaged”, and the guitar’s set-up was awful.  In fact, the overall tones of these emails was pretty damning of me and my beloved SD3W.  I thought on these emails that night and all the next day.  Was he trying to be rude?  Was he just coming across that way and I was reading it all wrong?  So I examined these comments again.  What happened was after he unpacked the guitar and started strumming or staring or whatever this dude was doing, one of the little knobbers cracked and fell apart.  OK, 60 year old guitar.  It happens.  I can remedy that.  Then again to my packing job and how it was awful.  Hmmm.  Rich said that this was the first guitar he’d ever received that wasn’t double boxed.  Again, hmmm.  Let me ask you, how many guitars do you get delivered that are double boxed?  It’s not many for me.  In fact, I’m happy when a guitar gets delivered in an actual guitar box rather than some pieced together amalgam of diaper boxes taped together!!  So on and on it went and I thought about each of his criticisms.  But the one that finally got to me was the playability critique.  He talked about buzzing all up and down the neck and how is other ones played so much better and how he could’ve done a much better set-up and how he should’ve kept the other SD guitar he sold because it was more original and cleaner and this and that.  Then the ominous negative feedback issue came up with Rich, and the whole ebay resolution thing came up, and then I started to feel held hostage by this dude’s demands.

I used to study religion and philosophy quite a bit, and I still do read a lot on the topics.  There was an old Buddhist story I’ve always liked that went something like this:  During a long prayer/meditation exercise many young monks were practicing the process of emptying their minds of thought.  Simply practicing the art of true meditation and sort of losing oneself in one’s own mind.  I never tried it, but it sounds hard and since I probably have ADD it’d be next to impossible for me!  But the interesting part of all this is an older monk would be walking around among these younger monks with a thick bamboo shoot, and every once in a great while would apply a serious WHACK to the bodies of one of these young monks.  But why?  To bring them back to reality!  My take was, it’s never good to lose too much of yourself in the clouds, and every once in a while you need a good whack to bring you back to the real world.

So I did send a reply and called him out on his rude tone, rude comments, and overall rudeness.  It’s something I used to never do, but I just didn’t care in this case!  I just let him have it, in a rather polite way considering what I really wanted to say, and ended by telling him I never wanted to exchange another email or correspondence ever again.  If he wanted to give me negative feedback, then fine.  I gave him a crack with the bamboo!  You know, months later I got an email from ebay stating that they had removed a feedback comment from my record because it didn’t reflect my long history of positive reviews.  I never even saw the comment/feedback since ebay removed it before it ever was posted.  I wonder who might have left that out of whack comment?

But in the end, I really still feel bad for this wonderful old SD3W.  Somebody really loved that darn guitar, and somebody cared enough to give it another shot at making music, and then it ended up with Rich.  Bummer, huh?  So now the Teisco market seems to have calmed down.  Guitar prices seem semi-normal again and I haven’t had a frantic email in a while about a mystery guy buying everything within a mouse click.  But I’m sure the problem of the “serious” collector invades all of our hobbies now and again.  It’s like being at a party with all your buds and then….here comes that loud a-hole that nobody likes but nobody says boo to the guy about how much of an a-hole he really is!!

Folks, don’t get too crazy about this hobby of ours.  It is a hobby after all.  I remember when my son was a few months old, he was sick and throwing up and shivering all over and it was just about the most scared I’d ever been in my life.  Just the image of him suffering struck me to the core, and one of my first thoughts was that I would get rid of everything I owned to see my boy get better.  It’s really true, and was a good realization for me.  Think about that for minute.  Would you get rid of all your guitars, right now?  Maybe you could just keep one.  But would you?  I’ve been meeting many folks during the past few years who would sooner get a divorce, lose their house, or damage their careers to own another guitar.  I’m not sure what to make of these people and I’m not going to judge them for their passion or affliction, depending on your slant.   Unless you need me to give you a good whack with a bamboo shoot….

After we started talking, I quickly learned that Nate had a love for old Guyatone guitars.  Like, I love all kinds of old Japanese stuff, but Nate just had this real interest in Guyatone.  Nate is just a Guyatone freak!!!  Nate wrote a really good history of Guyatone and he knows a lot about the company.  He’s probably the biggest Guyatone fan in the world!Anyway, ol’ Nate connected with the Guyatone company and he now finds himself as the exclusive seller of Guyatone gear in the USA!  Can you believe it?!?!  I mean, he’s now supporting his favorite guitar maker in the world!

Now if you don’t know, Guyatone was probably the very first manufacturer of electric guitars in Japan.  The founder, Mr. Matsuki, was a real engineering whiz, and one of his sons currently runs the company.  Guyatone has survived all sorts of ups and downs in the business world, and they still produce some really awesome gear like pedals and amps.  They also have plans to make some limited run guitars in the future!Please check out the current pedal lineup here and please support Nate and Guyatone!  Peeps, this is like a dream come true for Nate, and if anybody is worthy of support it’s this guy.  Plus, the current Guyatone gear is really well built and sounds AWESOME!!  Nate is fully stocked with pedals right now and he’s done a few demos that you can see here!

Nate and Guyatone are also developing a new line of pickups, and these are nice custom pups.  DeMont Guitars is in charge of designing, manufacturing and marketing these new Guyatone pickups that will be super hot sounding, featuring alnico magnets and custom engraved covers made right here in good ol’ USA!

Now I don’t usually like to hype a particular business, but in this case, I just have to support Nate.  See, I have loyalty imprinted on my DNA.  And when a good friend needs a little support, I’m happy to lend a hand.  Peeps, check out the sites linked above, and if nothing else shoot Nate an email to lend him your support.  WIth so many snakes in the business, it’s always pleasing to see a nice guy making his bones!

www.Facebook.DeMontGuitars.com

Ah yes, the Japanese brand name game can usually result in total confusion as people struggle to figure out who made their mystery guitar.  What I’ve learned over the years is not to focus on the headstock name, but rather, focus on the build clues to figure out the maker.  Take for instance this old Kawai made electric.  On the headstock, there was just a remnant of a logo that showed SE…., and the rest was torn off.  

So which name was it?  Years ago I would’ve focused on solving that mystery.  Like, who was this “mysterious” Segova dude?  Or was Sekova a factory in Japan?  Let me tell you peeps, it don’t matter a hill of beans!  What’s more important is to notice the pickups, knobs, and neck plate on this guitar to learn where it was born.  And from there, this old geetar could’ve had any number of names on the headstock.Check out that 5 screw neck plate.  We always called those “tombstone” plates, and Kawai used them a lot in the early 60s.  It was kind of a bad design, since the necks and bodies were attached, like a pseudo set-neck, the finish was applied, and then the neckplates were screwed in there.  And that one screw set right into the neck heel.  So why was this a bad design?  First, the reinforcement rods were not adjustable.  So if the neck goes screwy, it cannot be removed easily without ruining the finish around the joint.  Later on Kawai stopped finishing the joint area and that allowed for much easier adjustment.  But in the early days, this is what they used.

The sad part of that design was when a guitar’s neck went sideways, people either ruined the guitar trying to fix it, or the guitar simply went into the trash.  People are always talking about old guitars like these as “slide monsters“.  Of course, you know what that means!  But if you have a good, old-time tech in your area, or within shipping distance, these necks can be saved.  And to bring an old guitar like this back to life again is a noble deed, dude!

Now the real beauty of these guitars can be found in the pickups.  You know, there’s a common conception that these old Japanese guitars used poor electronics with really microphonic pickups.  But in the early days of Kawai, they used really good electronics and nice wiring.  And the pickups, there were plenty of guitar makers in the US, UK, and Europe that used totally poor pickups.  You have to remember that the 1960s were still the early days for many guitar makers who were still honing their craft.  Anyway, these particular pickups sound great and can be found on a few different Kawai made guitars.  People always talk about gold foil pickups, but these pups come from the same era and sound every bit as good.  AND they have none of the cache’, so you can buy these much cheaper and get your own sound!  Here’s Mike jamming out to an old Joe Cocker tune, check it out!  Those pups sound great!

I’m not sure if Kawai actually made this one in their factory, or farmed it out, but either way the guitar is built really well.  In fact, very well when you consider the time it was made.  Kawai had several similar models like this during the early to mid 60s, but these models were soon shelved.  Basically, if you ever find one of these you can safely bet it’s pre-1965.

The set-neck construction had a solid joint but a non-adjustable truss rod.  But alas, the combination of time and heavy gauge original strings strung to pitch just wreaked havoc on this poor neck.  I’d almost given up on getting this old gal playable, until Dano got a hold of this one.  WIth some wood clamps, a heat gun, a can of beer and a prayer, friggin’ Dano saved this wonderful guitar from a life of wall hanging!  Everything is totally serviceable on this guitar, even the tuners!  Hey, I guarantee someone could spend the rest of their lives picking away on this guitar and be totally happy.  With a slide, this thing just sings.  Using a slide on this guitar is a good thing too since you have almost constant contact with the guitar.  Believe me, this one’s a howler!  The pickups aren’t really microphonic, but the body just vibrates with sound….it’s crazy!  I’ve never played a guitar like this.  Maybe the closest would be my old Gibson ES125?  It must be the small body, but this guitar just resonates wonderfully.Good ‘ol St. George is up there on the headstock, and that name belonged to George’s Music Stores in upstate New York and Hollywood.  They imported a ton of Kawai made guitars throughout the 60s, and this is one of the earliest models.  So there it is, another great old guitar salvaged by a mad genius and played by the man with the biggest heart this side of the Mississip!  BIG thanks to Dano at Happy Guitar Repair and Mike Dugan for showing what this guitar is capable of.

When I bought this guitar, the seller said, “works great!” 16 hours of tech work proved otherwise…

This is sort of a fun poke at the interesting world of buying and selling guitars on Ebay.  Always an adventure, buying guitars site unseen is a relatively recent experience, especially for those of us that remember actually visiting REAL guitar shops that carried cool old gear.  I’ve been buying and selling on Ebay for over ten years, and in that time I’ve noticed all sorts of ways people will describe a guitar, to basically say something without saying something, dig?  Especially vintage guitars.  You know, the kind we all like!  I’ll get this started but I’d love for this to be collaborative, so if you have the same sense of humor then feel free to add the quips!!  Here we go!!!

THE EBAY CODE BOOK!!

“Butter”  As in, plays like butter.  I still don’t know what this really means, but when someone uses this term I usually avoid the auction.  I have to watch my cholesterol.

“Estate Find”  Usually estate thievery.  Man, I never find cool guitars at estate sales, but the people that prowl estate sales usually uncover cools tuff.

“Great Slide Guitar”  Basically another way to say the neck is totally messed up and strings are buzzing like a hornet’s nest.

“Hen’s Teeth”  As in, rare as hen’s teeth.  Probably not that rare.  Whenever I hear this, I think I my great grandfather who was from Austria, was mean as hell, and was literally a giant.  If you said this to him, he’d probably punch you for “talking dumb.”

“Holy Grail”  The impossible quest for the elusive grail seems to have found a home on many Ebay auctions.  Implies rarity or desirability, or both.  Usually neither.  Again, look at the definition of Hen’s Teeth to see what would’ve happened to you if you said this around my great grandad.

“I Don’t Have an Amp to Test this Guitar”  90% of the time it’s cause the guitar don’t work!!

“Looks Original”  Look again please…usually means stuff has been changed.

“Mojo”  Usually means beat to hell, and not in a loving way.

“Original Strings”  Back in the day, string gauges were really heavy and if the guitar has been strung to pitch, with the original strings, for the last 40 years, well, you know…

“Rare”  The most overused word on Ebay.  Most likely not rare.

“Ry Cooder”  This poor guy’s name comes up all the time to increase the value of many Japanese pickups. The guy modded a few guitars with Japanese pickups and suddenly Ry played every type of Japanese pickup ever played.  Also, I really despise name association to sell guitars.

“Slight Bow”  As in, there’s a slight bow in the neck.  Slight usually means the neck is shaped like a banana.

“Straight as an Arrow”  Referring to the neck.  Most people don’t even know what a good set-up is.  People who mention this phrase also tend to say, “I don’t know much about guitars.”

For about six years in the 1960s, the Hoshino Gakki company (better known by their most popular brand, Ibanez) produced guitars at their Tama plant in Japan.  And yes, it was the same place that produced the early Tama drums.  The factory churned out some really kooky designs and this Hy Lo model 2103 is a good representation of the kook factor!  The segmented guard is very reminiscent of the early UK Burns guitar design.Most of the Tama made guitars had their share of quirks.  For instance, many of the clear celluloid pickguards they used tend to deteriorate over time.  And the thicker guards they used, like on this Hy Lo, were prone to shrinking.  But some of these Tama models had cool little details like sparkle inlays on the pickups, small puffy labels (remember those old puffy stickers?), and some cool graphics.  Plus, this particular tremolo is one of my favorites from the old days!  The switches almost always seem to be a source of frustration when it comes to tech work, and honestly they were some of the worst to come out of Japan.  The switches never seem to be fully off, so unless you sink some work into them there is always this tone “bleed”, especially since the wiring is parallel.Notice that strip of darker wood running through the headstock.  That was sorta a Tama trademark, as was the small metal label often nailed to the headstock.  These guitars were made under a few different names (like Maxitone) and most had this small label with similar graphics.  These Tama made guitars were also imported into many European countries, and it seems like the wackiest designs were destined for locations outside the USA.  Serious collectors spend lots of time searching all over the world for those rare little weird nuggets of Tama guitar design. Hoshino made quite a few different models and the identifier is often located on the back of the headstock via that small sticker, which ALWAYS seemed to fall off!  But the necks on these feel very fine, just a little chunky, and the bodies were almost always made of solid wood.Notice that little “Japan” stamp near the neck heel?  And check out this subtle belly contour.  And you have to take note of that trapezoid neck plate, that’s a definite Hoshino marker.  This guitar is on the light side and balances real well.

I haven’t seen too many of these model 2103s, so I’d say that this is a rather rare model.  I’ve seen maybe three in about five years.  Of course, that doesn’t mean they’re not floating around out there.  It just means there ain’t too many of them!  At least we have this one documented for posterity.  Dano at Happy Guitar Repair made this one playable, and Mike Dugan makes it play.

So there you have it, the last guitars to feature the awesome Hound Dog pups.  People are currently paying big money for those old Hound Dogs, but Kawai was building much better guitars at this time, and these Winston 449s are much cheaper alternatives with the same sound.  As always, Dano at Happy Guitar Repair dialed this one in, and Mike Dugan tears it up!

Big time props need to go out to Dano at Happy Guitar Repair.  He did some MAJOR work bringing this one back to life and cleaning it up.  And as always, Mike Dugan gives her the once around!