Mystery Jaguar Ripoff

[gtkid2002]

Alright, so if anybody can even SLIGHTLY help me out, I'll be happy as can be. Here's the story. Few years back I get a hit on craigslist, dude wants to sell me some teisco off brands. I say sure, ask how much. $25 and a 40 ounce of Olde English 800. I'm a minor.

So of course an hour later I meet him with the fifty bucks and two malt liquor bottles, and we trade. Two guitars and cases for the booze and bucks. I go home happy with two crappy guitars, and he goes home slightly intoxicated. Win win for both of us.

Well, I intended to only go for the guitar on the right of this picture. I ended up trading that for a computer, and keeping the center one. The one on the left is in pieces around my house because it sounded completely bloody awful. The one in the middle is now my bastardized pride and joy. The top pickup is original as far as I can tell, and the bottom is a decent sounding cheapo humbucker that came out of somewhere, and was hackjobbed into the pickguard. It had horrible ground issues when I got it, and none of the knobs work really to this day (they're both backwards of the other). I've since done a few upgrades, but I would still love to know who the heck made this thing.

The pickguard seems original, and on the top left corner where it's notched out, there seems to be a portion of the pickguard missing. If I could pick one of those up somewhere, that would be awesome, but I don't even know where to begin searching for. If it'll help I can post nicer pictures after the 10th, because right now I'm out of state on vacation.

Again, any help is appreciated. Love the site though, I've already searched through here and found some info on my SG clone!

[concrete_charlie]

Hey man, those all seem like Kawai made guitars from the 1960s. The one on the far left is definitely Kawai, and I'd guess that the middle guitar is also. There's lots of info regarding Kawai guitars out there, and if you do a google image search you'll see some similar guitars.

[VintAxe]

I think concrete_charlie is correct.

The guitar on the left is a Kawai S-80 from around 1963.

The guitar in the middle has a Sekova style headstock from the early 1970's. I think most if not all Sekova solidbody guitars were built by Kawai. Sekova was a brand name used by U.S. Musical Merchandise distributors of New York on their Japanese import guitars.

The guitar on the right also has several Kawai characteristics although I can't positively ID the model.

[gtkid2002]

The guitar on the far right was labeled an Audition. No truss rod, gold foil pickup. Wasn't that bad, but wasn't that great.

Thanks for the ID's! Google image searching Sekova returns some amusing results, but I still haven't been able to find one like that. It still is my favorite.

[Big Beat]

The middle guitar is an Imperial, there is a pic of an intact one here:

http://www.vintaxe.com/boards/viewtopic.php?t=2741

But that headstock looks suspiciously like Greco. A non-original neck? Or maybe a slightly later or slightly earlier variant, which means there is some relationship between Imperial and Greco, both being made by...?

The S-80 is probably the best of the lot, though, once sorted properly.