How much rarer ARE the British-made Vox guitars?

[audiodrome]

The comment in the Vox Starstream thread got me to thinking about this. As it is, I very rarely see any Vox Phantoms on eBay anymore, but I don't think I've seen a British-made one for sale since I bought mine back in 2000. Going on memory here, Vox Phantoms were made in the UK from 1962-1966 (and maybe a little longer), and then, sometime in 1966, they switched production over to Italy where they were made until around 1969? I would imagine that there aren't that many British-made Phantoms in the US as they didn't start importing them until Vox made its deal with Thomas Organ, and by that time, they were being made in Italy. You would think that there would be a fair number of them still around in the UK today, but I still don't see any for sale anywhere (or very rarely). As far as numbers go, how much rarer do you think the British-made Phantoms are compared to the Italian-made US models?

[audiodrome]

British-made Phantom (note the headstock and pickup selector):



Italian-made (US) Phantom (note the headstock and pickup selector):

[RogerT]

You CAN NOT go off the pickup selector to identify Brit vs Italian. I've seen examples of both on either made guitars. I have pics to prove it.

The Brit Guitars did had the name on the headstock, though, as noted.

Still, JMI did make a lot of guitars and the reason you see so few these days is that they are just being kept by their owners. And I agree, you don't see many Italian Phantoms either recently.

As far as the Brit guitars being rarer, yes they are. I do not have the actual numbers of Brit vs. Italian, but as the Magic 8 Ball says, "soon it will be revealed".

[audiodrome]

I agree that there does seem to be a lot of inconsistencies within the models themselves, so there are no hard and fast rules except that you'll never see a US Phantom with "Phantom" on the headstock and you'll never see a UK Phantom with "Vox" on the headstock. The serial number on the truss rod plate also seems to be a UK-made Phantom trait.

[RogerT]

Talk about inconsistent - once you start getting into the Italian made Crucianelli models they are all over the place. The rule of the the day seemed to be "make it with what you want...!"

[Riotonsunset]

I saw this british Phantom Special for sale priced at $4995.It is the same model that Ian Curtis(Joy Division) had.If it was white the would probably want more.

[RogerT]