O.K., after I saw the coconut and single malt amps, I started looking at weird guitars. That led me to lordbizarre’s electric guitar & amp museum and lordbizzarre happens to have a very impressive collection of “Iron Curtain” guitars like the Defil Kosmos, made in Poland.
Now, you have to understand something, I’m no stranger to Teisco’s, the Burns Bison, Mosrite’s, or Stella’s, any of that stuff. I used to go to Fatdog’s a bunch back in ’80s and, I’ve known other merchants that peddled the off the wall axes. I started out on a Supro guitar. But, it seems there was some guitar making going on behind the iron curtain the likes I’ve never seen.
lordbizzarre had a link to a site called Cheesy Guitars with some further info. For instance, Czechoslovakia had the heads up on the wireless idea way back.
In 1963 Jolana factory at Krnov started manufacturing a “wireless” guitar named BigBeat. Guitar of a very futuristic shape, as a matter of a fact a frame with a neck, it had a primitive vibrato and one pickup. A removeable amplifier was attached to the frame with special screws. It had 2W power rating and ran off four batteries. If you are bored with making music, it´s switchable to medium-wave radio.
That’s a beauty.
Cheesy Guitar’s supplied the info on the Tonika brand but the picture below is from lordbizzarre’s stash.
Hail the Russian Telecaster! - Tonika was the first Soviet mass produced solidbody electric guitar.
Tonika was the first electric guitar made in USSR, and it was the first experience of Soviet luthiers. In end of the 60’s (most probably 1969), when this guitar was made, not too many Soviet citizens were allowed to go abroad, and probably no one of the Tonika creators had any experience in electric guitar building. There probably were a couple of Fenders and Gibsons to copy, but it’s hard to beleive any of ordinary Russian workers had a chance to work at some place where normal electric guitar were made to gather some experience. The only possibility was to visit other Socialist countries - DDR, Czechoslovakia, Poland or Bulgaria to see how cheesy Jolanas, Musimas and Defils are being made. It could give Russians some impression of how the process is organized, but not how to build a quality electric guitar.
What they’ve made is an unplayable super-heavy guitar with sick body shape, thickest neck you’ll ever find and sound suitable for anything but music.
Gadgets? Check out the Formanta from the U.S.S.R.
three single-coil pickups (what is that special shift of the middle pickup towards the bridge? nobody knows, but at least it looks more like Teisco, not some American guitar), and lots of electronics. Two knobs and two switches above the pickups are the built-in effects’ controllers.
But, for overall form and design, I got to go with the Marma.
This is a guitar from the sixties. Made in DDR (Eastern Germany), with one “Gitonama” pickup on the bridge position. It looks completely crazy, and we don’t have much info about it.
It does my heart good to see these guitars. When I first started playing, everybody I knew had some wacky, off brand contraption of an electric guitar they were learning on. Do the best you can with what you got, you know? The Iron Curtain was mystery of the age but, like I always say, there is common ground. A guitar is a guitar and, it’s nice to see that there are folks dedicated to preserving these.
Rave on children.
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Tags: Cheesy, czechoslovakia, Guitar, guitar building, iron curtain, lordbizarre, Music, Russia, USSR
Ovidiu - GuitarFlame.com wrote,
This is either a sinuous path to “THE SHAPE”, either a lot of bad taste. Actually, I find some of them quite ugly, but I ask myself if people of that period find them ugly or nice, because it may also be a fashion thing. Like with those stretched pants of the 80’s…I guess that who was into this in the 80’s , used to love them back then, even if now they seem…at least strange.
Ovidiu - GuitarFlame.com’s last blog post..Not all songs come naturally to you
Link | June 2nd, 2008 at 2:19 am
Pribek wrote,
There are things that were thought to be fashionable, at the time, that later on look silly. Sometimes, those things sort of become lovable over more time.
’80’s Spandex pants, however, were goofy then, are goofier now and, in the future will look like one of the silliest things ever worn by men.
Link | June 2nd, 2008 at 2:55 pm