Guitars that never made it

[NTC]

There were some Gibson Modernes made in the 80's. I remember seeing one in a music store.

 

[mexicanyella]

Roland G-707

Gibson Corvus...I actually got to play the SSS version, like the one in the pic but canary yellow, once and it played and sounded great! I remember it sounding like a beefier Strat.

 

[boxocrap]

The salesman in the music store which I shopped most often called those Gibson Recorder. He said it was designed for studio work. I remember they were pricey and a little ugly. As I recall they also weighed a ton.

ya i knew a fella that had one..he also said they were for recording...and they are heavy weighed a lot more than a standard strat or tele..somwhere around 8-9 lbs i guessed..at least it felt that way when i played it..i had a tele at the time was light by comparison..it did sound nice clean..never got to play it with distortion though

 

[widefault]

Fender/Squier Katana, this one being the single pickup, bolt-on neck Squier version

 

[Zoso420]

Weren't the pickups the ones Les Paul actually preferred?

Yes because he liked plugging strait into a recording console but normal people llugged them into amps and they sounded horrible

 

[brookdalebill]

The Jimmy Bryant endorsed Microfret Guitars.
View attachment 945007
View attachment 945008
i
View attachment 945009

My buddy has one of these Micro Frets. It actually a very playable and good sounding guitar. But uhhhhglly

Also played by Buddy Merrill of the Lawrence Welk Show!

Mark Farner Of Grand Funk Railroad rocked one, also.

 

[O- Fender]

The Fender Swinger.

Can't make my mind on if it's "so ugly it's cool" or "so ugly".

edit: yeah, just ugly.

 

[Chiogtr4x]

Like this one http://gearlicious-images.s3.amazon...d-top-semi-hol-2799-99-1-0-838-alex/b3476.jpg ? I think that's a pretty cool lookin' guitar. I'd still rather have my Starcaster with Fender scale length and a maple board, but that Gibson kind of does it for me when most of their models don't. I'd lose the pick guard and extra poker chips around the knobs.

I would absolutely love to get back my old guitar but it is way out of my reach financially here's a few pictures

Martin M-65 at work -- and he could really play. Hot Little Mama, Gangster of Love, Three Hours Past Midnight and so on.

When the Nitty Gritty Dirt Band did their ( maybe 50th?) Anniversary Concert a few years back (with all kinds of special guests, on PBS), Jackson Browne came out playing one of these Martin electrics.
Besides being funky, it had a great, crystal clear tone!

 

[John Frets]

What - no mention of MusicVox?

View attachment 945040
I ALMOST bought one of these when they first came out...

My goodness. I’ve never seen one of those. For a longer-than-brief moment, I thought it was a photoshopped joke. It looks like something from a Looney Tunes cartoon.

 

[Timbresmith1]

Thise

I really liked the Gibson recording when it came out. Maybe too ugly for the general market. View attachment 944859

Those pickups were totally useless, iirc.

 

[Engine Swap]

If nothing else, this thread illustrates how rigid the paradigm for electric guitar is.

 

[perttime]

Fender's Lead Series never really took off.

Fender Lead Series - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

 

[edvard]

Had one of these Ovations for a short time back in the late 70's, holding it for a friend. He eventually offered it to me for $100.00 and I past on it. Awful to play sitting down.

I love these guitars so much, and never had the coin to drop on one, so I built a tribute in 25.5" scale. It plays just fine sitting down, you just have to hold it like a classical so the neck is angled up and the lower cut sits on your leg instead of the side cut so the body sits in front of you instead of to the side. I remember when Eastwood started building them, there was a guitar player who was wheel-chair bound got one and said it turned his whole playing around because it was actually easy to play in the sitting position.

The Ridiculously Comfortable Eastwood Breadwinner | MyRareGuitars.com

One of our "not-so-best-selling" models is the Breadwinner. We made a replica of this guitar some years back just because it was always one of my favorites, and is stupid comfortable to play. No other guitar on the planet seems so ergonomically correct like this one does. So we keep it in...

www.myrareguitars.com

I used to see these for $450 all the time at pawn shops and small music stores, but then Tom Morello played one for three seconds in a video, and they shot up faster than a Falcon 9 overnight.

 

[edvard]

Fender Performer. These still sell pretty well because they are actually good sounding and playing guitars, but they were even too weird for the Metal dudes of the '80s they were built for:

 

[edvard]

Guild S-60, S-70, and S-300. Aside from a few die-hards like Kim Thayil, they haven't gotten much attention despite being well-built guitars.

 

[Alcohen]

The Gibson Maurader never made it either

My first guitar. Bought it from Don Dimasi in High School. I still have it but will sell it if I ever get around to replacing the cheap frets (worn to nothing up top by too much wheedly-deedly over the years) and tuners (bent and broken). The Bill Lawrence pickups are interesting looking but not great, to my ears. I do like the fast neck, though. Very comfy for the small handed. An odd instrument, very much of its time, the wandering-in-the-desert years of both of the Big Two.

 

[Maguchi]

Two of McCarthy designs from the late 1950's. The Moderne and Flying V.
View attachment 944901
View attachment 944902
The V went on to become a little more successful, but at the time was considered a failure, along with the Explorer. All 3 models introduced in 1958.
View attachment 944903

Agree about the Moderne being a failure. The Flying V has pretty much become a classic and thre Explorer seems to have a smaller but steady following.

 

[drlucky]

Roland G-707

View attachment 945194

Gibson Corvus...I actually got to play the SSS version, like the one in the pic but canary yellow, once and it played and sounded great! I remember it sounding like a beefier Strat.


View attachment 945195

Ah, the infamous Gibson "Flying Can Opener"

 

[bholder]

I always liked the Yamaha SG-7

got me one of those already, the 3 pickup version, and the matching bass, too!

 

[IMMusicRulz]

I don’t think the Hamer Electric Mandocello ever got where it should have gone. The only guy I know of who played a Hamer electric Mandocello was Rick Nielsen from Cheap Trick.