Weird Guitar of the Day

Here's my favorite version of the Yamaha model that Carlos played:

His Yamaha looked similar to the singleneck version of this.

I don't think I've ever seen Carlos playing a doubleneck.

No, that's this:

John McLaughlin had something similar that Rex Bogue customized. It was called the Double Rainbow or something like that.

There was no such thing as "retro" when these first came out.

Danelectro also made one.

The Ibanez 2670 Artwood Twin is an extremely fancy 12/6 doubleneck guitar from the late 1970s. It's kinda shaped like the Bob Weir signature model they had around the same time, and has a German carve around the body and tree-of-life inlays covering the neck and headstock just like Bob's top-of-the-line model. Each neck has a bank of three switches below the strings: a 3-way switch to choose what pickup you're playing, and a 3-way Tri-sound coil tap/series/parallel switch for each pickup. Each neck also has a volume and an tone control, and there's also a 3-way neck selector switch and a master volume control. This guitar

Ibanez 2670 Artwood Twin

This account also featured the Betty Boop guitar!

Jimi Hendrix's Gibson Flying V. It's in the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame in Cleveland, OH.

Nice! I saw it at the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame last year.

Here's a guitar that Hamer built for Judas Priest guitarist Glenn Tipton. It's a mix between an Explorer and a Dean ML guitar, but this one's different. You know how some of these guitars have a point on the body that you can whack your elbow on? Well, this guitar has a point as well, but it's on the bottom half of the body. This lets you use it to brace the guitar against your leg, as Glenn's doing in the picture. It's got two humbuckers, one volume control, a 3-way switch, and a Kahler locking trem.

Hamer GT

The Vox Starstream name was originally used for a teardrop-shaped guitar in the 1960s, but this newer model is something a lot weirder. Its body has a small wooden core and a frame that holds a large plastic strip. This strip helps create the normal guitar shape (narrow waist and two cutaway horns), but is spaced far enough away from the core that it actually leaves large gaps that you can see through. The guitar has two humbucking pickups, one volume and one tone control, a 3-way switch, and a Strat-style trem that also contains piezo pickups. It also has a modeling preamp, which has an 11-position knob for the presets, a knob to control drive or reverb, an on-off button, a cancel button, a write button, and a 1/8" headphone output.

Vox Starstream

YouTube video by Burls Art Turning 1,600 Sheets of Newspaper Into a Guitar

New Burl's Art alert!

Rick Turner was known for his Model 1 series of guitar, but did you know that he also made basses? It's got the same single-cutaway body shape and movable pickup assembly, but with a bass humbucker instead of a regular one. This is a deluxe model with a piezo pickup and special preamp. There's a cluster of 5 knobs in the normal spot and one up by the upper bout, but I haven't been able to find out what exactly they do. I bet they're controls for volume and tone, a piezo volume, and EQ knobs.

Rick Turner Model 1 bass

The Meazzi Hollywood Mustang was an Italian response to Fender's offset guitars. It's got three singe-coil pickups, one volume and one tone control, and a rotary pickup switch. All of the electronics are mounted on a large pickguard, as well as the tremolo/string mute combo. A large black plate with the company's logo is screwed into the guitar's green body, and a smaller one is on the 6-in-line headstock.

Meazzi Hollywood Mustang

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krystal swords with a guitar

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You hit it right on the head.

At first glance, this looks like any normal hollowbody electric guitar in the ES style: symmetrical body with two F-holes; two Gretsch-style single-coil pickups, each with its own volume and tone control; 3-way switch on the upper horn; and a trapeze tailpiece. Look at the pickguard and the mushroom-shaped 3/3 split headstock, however, and you'll realize that this isn't any normal hollowbody. It's an Ovation, specifically the Thunderhead model. I had no idea Ovation made anything that wasn't an acoustic guitar until just now. Turns out David Cassidy played one of these on the Partridge Family TV show, as well as a Breadwinner. Who knew?

Ovation Thunderhead

I thought the bass was pretty funky, while also trying to fight against the wall of noise.

YouTube video by rockclubvictoria Xtc - All along the watchtower (1978)

Let's get funky!

I had an acoustic guitar from them ages ago. It was blue!

Here are the Gumby and Pokey I mentioned:

The first post I made that got lots of attention was when I posted guitars that Johnson made that looked like Gumby (guitar) and Pokey (bass). Here's another one they made. If you look at the hardware on this guitar, it's a fairly standard super-Strat: one humbucker, volume knob, locking trem. No big deal, right? Well, instead of having a normal Strat body, this body's shaped and painted like Betty Boop. Her right hand's on her hip, and her left knee is popped out. Her head is the headstock of the guitar, and the tuners are arranged around the edge of her hair. The locking nut looks like a necklace. She's wearing a garter belt that says "Johnson" on it. The pickup and bridge are in her stomach area, and the volume knob is on her left arm.

Johnson Betty Boop

I can't really call it a guitar because it doesn't have a fretboard.

I like harp guitars, especially Luigi Mozzani's.

I don't know how I'm going to top this Explorer-shaped harp that Gibson made in 1993. It's got 18 strings, an oversized Explorer body, a massive unfretted neck with a gap in the middle to give you a place to grab onto it, and a gigantic 13/5 split headstock. The top 13 tuners are vertical, and the bottom 5 face the ground, making for some weird string angles. It's got a massive zebra-stripe humbucker, one volume, and one tone control. It's even got its own hardshell case with orange fuzz on the inside!

Gibson Explorer harp "guitar"

Did he play one of these? I just thought he had one of these:

The Steinberger Spirit GT-PRO Deluxe is a headless travel guitar. It's got a roughly rectangular body that gets narrower toward the neck. This model has two humbuckers with a single coil in the middle, one volume and one tone control, a 5-way blade switch, and an R-Trem locking tremolo.

Steinberger Spirit GT-PRO Deluxe

I tried finding a picture of the Jackson Soloist from the 80s with this paint job, but couldn't find any.