Thread: Where would this guitar have come from ?

Got any pictures?

My guess is that it would be a Japanese copy of something.

Here are the pics

Gawd!
Looks like something Burns would have done / do.
Brass nut and a zero fret tho...
Do you think the name plate could be screwed over another? Tho why they would bother I dont know!!
Anyway the first thing that slapped into my head was Burns, go with your gut when all else fails...
There again in 30 years time who's gonna know who made the guitars we turn out?
Actually I remember an Ibanez with a bridge and tailpiece like that before too.
I think I'll shut up. I'm just muddying the waters

its very rare and probably of fairly average quality
my guess would be itallian from the early to mid 60's
it has a kitsch eurpean look about it with its multple pickups and toggle switches - it is kind of ekoesque in a clumsy kind of way
eko guitars came from italy in the mid 60's and were made by an an accordian builder - in the 60's accordians were very uncool and this eko factory in an effort to keep up with times built some pretty wild guitars complete with accordian hardware, glitter and pearloid
heres one


the guitar shown isnt a patch on this lil darlin but it has similar heritage.
i especially like the little leg cutout on the bottom lower bout - very handy while you are sitting down for a quiet chord or two on the fabulously awful bridge pickup - they did sound dreadfull and played as badly as they sounded. what they lacked in playability and tone they made up for with cool designs and plenty of knobs and switches to play with

other than that, eastern european or early japanese but my money would be on italy as the origin.

many of these vintage euro guitars are absolutely horrible to play

Yeap, I'd go along with that, the Jap ones tended to copy American stuff.

It has what appear to be the original flat wound strings that sound very 'dead' and switches that are very noisy and need a good clean, Ill get around to to it over the next month or two. It's been over 30 yrs since I picked up a guitar seriously so I'll get my son to give it a go. I'm relieved that he plays as the Les Paul that I bought second hand hand back in 1969 might have ended up like this one.

looks to be quite wide string spacing at the nut. is it a bolt on or set neck?

italian sounds about right from my limited knowledge. deffinately has the burns vibe to it but i doubt it was the same manufacturer. even the name sounds like it could well be italian.

Pickups and buttons look very Eko-ish

http://www.fetishguitars.com/html/eko/index/500.html

Thanks for all the replies, looking at the Italian stuff on the fetish guitars site I can see that my guitar has a definite Italian look to it, its going to take a few evenings to go through the fetish guitars site and have a look at them all.
Below is the other guitar I scored doing a pre sale makeover. The owners were making a large pile in the middle of the back yard of throwaways in readiness for a skip, and while painting the back porch I saw it fly past me and land in the middle thrown by the wife from 5 meters away. Unforunately it took a few knocks and now has some paint chips on it, I don't know much about bass guitars but I'm told this model Ibanez sounds ok, not as good as a Fender P-bass but still ok.
I see many excellent diy guitars in this forum and am looking forward to retirement when I can try to make something for myself, if it is even half as good as the things I see here I'll be happy.

Interesting looking guitar you have there. Definately looks like it could be either Italian or Japanese. I'm guessing it also doesn't have much weight to it.

60's Japanese guitars look a lot like this kind of thing, but then, so did a lot of stuff from that era (Mosrite, Burns etc).

If you feel like tinkering with it, take out the pups and switches and send some photo's. I'd love to know if it actualy is Japanese or not. I am certain that the Serrini Bros badge is aftermarket though.