Premier telecaster 50s? 60s?

[ubertar]

Anyone know anything about these? All I've been able to find out is that Premier was made by Sorkin and then Multivox, which was owned by Sorkin, and that it was an American company, but some of the later stuff was made in Japan. They made guitars and amps in the 50s and 60s. They are better known for their amps. There's virtually no information about these guitars on the net. Any info would be appreciated.

[VintAxe]

[Michael Ambrose]

Definitely a re-brand. I have a "National" branded Telecaster copy with the exact same appointments... and a low-end Teisco with the same hardware and electronics.

[ubertar]

Thanks for the info...

Just found the exact same guitar, branded "Jedson":

http://www.pbase.com/merlenmeyer/image/84693006

The knobs were missing on mine-- what's on there now are from an old stereo or something.

You're probably right on the Teisco thing:

http://i.pbase.com/o2/20/42620/1/975344 ... coTele.jpg

[Riccalljim]

Yep I concur with that , I have three Jedsons, a single pick upand twin pick up six strings and a bass - all are almost identical to this one but the scratchplate doesn't have the cutout at the bottom, the rest of the hardware is exacvtly the same though.
Jim

[ubertar]

The cutout in the pickguard is because some assclown got the bright idea to reverse the pickguard... so they had to cut out part of the pickguard to make room for the knobs. The other side of the pickguard is black, which looked cooler than the white, but with the shape reversed, it just looked ridiculous. The knobs aren't original-- it had no knobs when I got it. The high e tuner was missing too, so I replaced that.

[Riccalljim]

Ah. I wondered about that, spooky really coz tonight i have been making a new scratchplate for that exact model, the single pickup one, as I got it with a satellite scratchplate on for some strange reason, fortunately I had the other ones to use as templates ( except of course with two pickup cutouts and no, i didnt forget and cut both out)
the knobs are pretty easily available on British ebay if you are after authenticity?

[ubertar]

Oh, I'm not too worried about authenticity... I don't suppose this is worth very much if I were to try to sell it...
I might convert it into a microtonal guitar... take out the old frets, fill them in and refret to a different scale.

[Riccalljim]

that sounds like a pretty good idea - and no, they are probably never going to e very valuable, I have a rule that i won't pay more than £20 for one of these and although you do see them going for £120 plus that is usually from dealers and they hang around a long time before finding new homes - I just like the cheesiness of them really, the Loose rendition of the telecaster shape is almost cartoon-like, after all, they were perfectly capable of making a pretty accurate replica if they wanted. One of the tele style ones built for the british market at least had the right look with the correct appearance, probably they wanted something close but not close enough to get them into a lawsuit? - Interestingly, the bass version has the same fretting as the 6 string - I suppose they just drilled the requisite number of holes in the headstock? - But as Short-scale basses go it's not a bad instrument.

[ubertar]