Conqueror Hummingbird acoustic guitar

[TinPenny]

Excuse my ignorance in message posting. I recently acquired my father's most prize possession. His Conqueror Hummingbird Acoustic guitar. First of all, I do not want to sell it, I just want to know what I have. I can not find anything online about the Conqueror except a reference about Bruno (C.L. Bruno), the tag inside says made in Japan. My mother says he bought it when I was 3-4 years old, that would be late 1969-early 1970. For $90 in Lufkin Texas.
It is similar to the Gibson Hummingbird, has the Gibson icon, darker Cherry Sunburst and a different bridge than Gibsons. Great velvet sound.
I'm worried because we acquired it for a high school guitar class. If it's valuable, the last thing I want is for it to be in the band hall unsecured.

[hans-jürgen]

Hmm, Tokai made some Hummingbird acoustic guitars during that time, maybe "Conqueror" is just one of those brand names. But this could also be true for any other Japanese manufacturer of course.

[cheepaxes]

I probably found the same picture of the Bruno Conqueror ES-335 copy you did. That guitar looks like a lot of Aria/Matsumou guitars I've seen. If so your guitar is probably not worth a fortune, but if it's special to you I'd certainly not take any chances with it. It doesn't need to be valuable for some high school student to decide he wants it for his own.

FWIW I think I had a friend with that same guitar when I was a teenager.

Good luck,
-Scott McKnight

[hans-jürgen]

Here are two sites with more info on Tokai and Matsumoku guitars:

http://www.tokairegistry.com/ and its forum
http://www.matsumoku.org/ggboard/index.php