TEISCO POSTS AND VIDEOS AT CLOUDY PROJECT:
- Making the "Motherless Child" video
- "Motherless Child" on the Teisco Del Rey
- Guitar Vid - More Teisco!
- Guitar Video - Teisco ET-200
- Potting Teisco Pickups
I’m not an expert on these things, and a Google search will point you to more info than I can provide. If you’re really really into the grooviness of Japanese 60’s era guitars, a good resource is this website for vintage guitars; they have a pretty good forum going. I do think they’re pretty cool guitars… here’s why: Teisco made an endless array of “student” guitars from the fifties to well into the seventies. They weren’t “professional” guitars by any means, but for a lot of American and European kids they were the first “rock and roll guitar”. The “good” guitars of that era - the Fenders, Gibsons, and some euro models - had developed in a long evolution from acoustics to hollow bodied electrics to the first big “jazz” guitars and finally the solid bodies, the most notable being the Fender Stratocaster and Telecaster, and the Gibson Les Paul and S.G. The timing of the development of premium solid bodied guitars coincided with the early years of rock & roll’s evolution from blues and country, and were well established by the time Jimi Hendrix, Creem, Jimmy Page and others began experimenting with loud playing and big amps driven into distortion. The solid guitars were perfect for this sound, rock got big & heavy, and the demand grew for electric guitars.
dude, you totally rock!
In came the Japanese to fill the low end of the market with product. And it’s my belief that, while the high-end guitars mentioned above inspired rock and roll, the Japanese guitars were “inspired by” rock and roll. They were cheap guitars designed to look cool. The fact that some sort of cultural miscommunication came into play (IE, what Japanese guitar designers thought was “cool” often meant four pickups, swoopy body shapes and strange pickguard designs) means there were a lot of crazy, chromed-up guitars designed back then. And today those guitars hold an undeniable charm, a scrappy cheesiness that’s mixed with the fact that just about ANY guitar will gain some character after a few decades of existence. That’s a fairly undeniable fact that’s driven prices for vintage guitars up into luxury car pricing levels. As for the Teiscos and the other cheapies of their era… there is something cool about a forty-year old instrument. And some of them sound damn good, too. I’ve got a Teisco hollow body ($100!) that will make you cry.
