Questions Questions Questions

[bob2]

I've been around a long time and seen and owned a lot of guitars, not so much as a collector but just a musician surrounded by other musicians, and we all know how flakey musicians are. I want to know which Japanese factory built the Voxton guitars of the late '60s/early '70s. Also, around the same period there was an instrument distributor called Coast who had a line of cheap unnamed copy guitars from Japan. Does anyone know who built these guitars? I'm sorry that I don't have any pictures, but it was a very long time ago. I know the Voxtons were only available for 3 or 4 years and the store I dealt with dropped the Coast stuff and started carrying Univox instead. Any ideas, concepts or urban myths?

[VintAxe]

Hey bob2.

I've never heard of Voxton guitars but I'll look around and see if I can find anything.

Your Coast question needs to be narrowed a bit. Coast was a wholesale instrument distributor located in Los Angeles that began in the early 1900's. They distributed instruments from a lot of different makers. In the 50's and 60's it was American built instruments like Kay, Harmony, etc, and in the late 60's the switched to Japanese imports like everyone else. In the late 1970's Coast was bought out by Kaman. Being a distributor they didn't have much loyalty to particular manufacturers so the suppliers could potentially change from year to year.

Tell me what years are you thinking about and I'll look to see if I have a catalog from that year.

[bob2]

Wow, I didn't realize Coast had such a long history. What brought this to mind was a guitar player friend of mine years ago who bought a Coast distributed SG copy. That guitar was extremely nice in finish and in playability. Greg always preferred that guitar over his Fender Jaguar up to the day he bought a Gibson. The last time I saw him he hadn't played for years so I made him an offer on whatever stuff he had, I bought his Gibson, a Fender Bassman, and some relics that had been Univox Hiflyers. He wouldn't sell me some things including the Coast SG. I also remember that the Coast was under $100 new and that he was looking at another Coast SG with a Bigsby atyle tremelo about a year later and wouldn't buy it because it didn't feel the same as the first one. I wish I could go get you some pictures of that guitar but I haven't seen him in at least 20 years and have no idea where he is today. The Voxton stuff I was told came about because the price of the Italian built guitars was getting too high. So the Thomas Organ company imported guitars from Japan with the Voxton name on the headstock. The pricelist I used to have was dated late '68 and listed four Voxton electrics and some acoustics. The electrics were all Gibson copies, a Les Paul, a 335, an EB-2 and a single cut jazz guitar. I don't think the Voxtons were sold outside the U.S. and had no connection with anything put out by JMI. By this time in Vox history I believe that even though JMI and Thomas were both Vox they were almost independent of each other. Vox as I knew it died the day the Thomas Organ company burned down. I had one of the Voxton jazz guitars, bought it for $35 and had it for a couple of years until it was destroyed in a flood. I was never a collector, but between the ages of 16 till I was in my mid twenties and while my association with Greg was still a friendly one we literally went through a hundred or so cheap to buy guitars. Almost all the keepers were modified in some way and the ones we thought were not worthy became firewood. If I'd only known then what I know now, but who did?