Here’s a very clean 1985 Yamaha SBG1200. Featuring a mahogany body with maple cap, and a maple neck (similar to Gibson Les Paul construction at the time), this is a seriously good guitar.
Yamaha built a range of solidbody electrics from the 1970’s and achieved some success with them, though not as much as with their acoustic line. A number of prominent players were seen with the higher end models, including Carlos Santana and more recently, John Frusciante.
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Here’s a hardworking 1966 Fender Jazz Bass.
Introduced in 1960, Leo Fender’s Jazz Bass tends to have a tighter, more focused tone that doesn’t emphasize the fundamental frequencies as much as the Precision bass does. This helps it to move ‘forward’ in an audio mix, making it more popular in emerging musical styles where there was more emphasis on the bass – for example, rock power trios and funk.
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Four Project Instruments
We often get interesting instruments that require more workbench time than we have to spare, and these four instruments can certainly be saved and deserve to be restored and enjoyed.
They are ideal “project” instruments for the home hobbyist and amateur Luthier.
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This is a 1953 D’Angelico New Yorker, rare and one of a limited number.
John D’Angelico was born in New York City – the Lower East Side of Manhattan – in 1905. His parents were immigrants from Naples, Italy. As a boy, he worked in the instrument shop – building mostly traditional-style bowl-back mandolins and flat-top guitars – owned by his uncle Ralphael Ciani and D’Angelico took over around the age of 18, when Ciani died. Around 1932, he opened his own shop and was building archtops based on the popular Gibson design used by many big-band guitarists. In 1952, he took as an apprentice James D’Aquisto, who ultimately bought the business following D’Angelico’s death in 1964 at age 59.
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Here’s a very cool 1958 Supro Dual Tone!
Supro was in the budget strata of the National / Valco range of instruments, and the Dual Tone shows many of the characteristics of the era. Build components varied widely depending on what was available; many Dual Tones have mahogany necks with rosewood fingerboards, this one has a maple neck with apparently an ebony board.
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Here’s a 1965 Hagstrom III — marketed in the US as the F-300 Futura. These instruments were known for their thin yet wide necks – very “fast”.
Hagstrom originally marketed German accordions, and in 1958 started building electric guitars.
The Hagstrom III was built from 1964 to 1976. However, by 1984, they could not compete with Asian imports and ceased production of guitars and went back to accordions.
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