Help With an ID?

[cheepaxes]

http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?Vi ... 0281288642

I just bought this body of eBay to attempt a pairing with an old Harmony Silvertone neck I have. I'm hoping it will fit OK. It would be useful to know what it is. Any ideas?

I find the placement of the "bridge" pickup to be kind of strange - it's awfully far from the bridge and mighty close to the neck pup. Anyone agree?

Before long this will probably be the subject of a Show & Tale thread.

-Scott

[VintAxe]

Scott, Scott, Scott Scott, Scott

Do not buy any more of this stuff till you check with me. I'll send you a body better than this for nothin' out of love and respect for your considerable guitar restoration skills.

It looks to me that you have acquired a Kawai Stratoid that is a 2nd generation project. That neck pocket has more holes than a honeycomb. I agree that the pup bridge distance is weird, but check that bridge tailpiece relationship. Way too low to be original. This body has suffered from the experimentation of a pre-pubescent kid attempting to create his first "custom" guitar.

The ghosts you see in the picture don't look original to me. The bridge ghost looks like a Teisco bar and the tailpiece looks like a cheap Teisco claw. I've got both pieces if that's the way you want to go, but I don't believe they are part of the original guitar.

This looks like too much work to me. Seriously, if you want a Stratiod plywood body, I'll send you one. Send me an email or private message with your address and I'll ship out a body that you will not need to refinish.

hope you are well

[Spud1950]

Going by the general body shape and pickup placement, I think it may be some sort of Teisco body. The horns look a bit different, but it looks pretty much like these two.

Your body


Silvertone/Teisco


Teisco Spectrum


Edit - Well,Vintaxe beat me to the punch and got his post up first. I bow to his superior knowledge!

[VintAxe]

I think you are on the mark Spud1950. I probably should have said Teisco/Kawai since these guitars were produced under both brandnames as well as many others. I'll sometimes just use shorthand and say Kawai since they were the parent company and it is too convoluted to list all the particular brandnames that were used.

[cheepaxes]

Steve,

Thanks for the offer, it never occurred to me to ask around to see who might have a body they weren't using.

Yes, I noticed all the holes in the neck pocket. I'm hoping it might not be too big an issue. I had my eye on a few bodies that were up on eBay and put in some low-ball bids and the bid on that one actually won. To the extent that that body had any particular appeal it was mostly because it was so freaking ugly. That, and I've wanted a white Strat ever since I saw Buck Dharma playing one at my first rock concert (BöC and Nazareth, Alexandria Roller Rink, '74), there's that Hendrix guy who played one too. Well I know this won't look like a Strat when I get done with it. It'll look wierd is what it'll do. Depending on the exact nature of the ugliness of the finish I may attempt to remove it. It didn't look too bad to me on eBay but the in the version of the pic that Spud posted it looks a little like it's been bathed in semi-gloss latex kitchen paint, which may or may not be all that attractive.

If it doesn't work out I may be dropping you a line, Doc.

"Considerable guitar restoration skills?" Not compared to some of the guys here. "Perverse guitar reamimation tendencies" is more like it. :)

-Scott