Thunder Road Guitars, USA 
Latest Blog Post |
The Weird Ones Vol. 2
Last month I wrote a blog titled, “The Weird Ones” and in a way it was my ode to brands like Silvertone, Airline, and Kay from the 60s. Don’t get me wrong, I love the more common stuff, like Strats, Teles, Les Pauls, etc. But part of what I love about what I do is finding the more odd & rare stuff and getting all CSI on these instruments to find what people love about them. This week I got in something I had never seen before and really had it throw me through a loop. Here’s the story behind it.
On Wednesday I get a call from a customer who is looking to sell an “old Vox guitar”. I figured, “hey, I like old Vox amps, and their guitars are interesting, let’s take a drive to see what this fellow has”. So, off I went and after a ferry ride and another 70 miles in the car I arrived to see this Vox. Upon opening the case I realized I had a 60s Vox Ultrasonic on my hands and my eyes couldn’t believe what I saw. It looked like a 335 with a giant headstock, Bigsby like tremolo, and BUILT IN EFFECTS. That’s right, this bad boy had built in fuzz, wah, tuner, bass / treble boost, and a repeater (which sounds like tremolo). At this point I wasn’t really sure what to think. I just knew I had to plug it in. So, I plugged it in and ran it through it’s paces, and to my surprise the effects all worked and actually sounded really, really cool.
At this point I knew I HAD to have this in the shop. It was just too cool to pass up. After a long trek back to TRG headquarters I got photos together and listed this Ultrasonic and the website. Within an hour I had tons of interest and eventually a buyer. To me this shows that even the odd and funky ones have fans, and some a cult following. Honestly, sometimes these guitars are more fun to have in the shop than the more common stuff. Right now this Ultrasonic is on it’s way to France, but I’ll never forget the tones this instrument produced and sure hope to get another in the store at some point.
Being a young fellow in this business I’ve always had the pleasure of hearing stories from folks that have played, bought, sold, and traded guitars for many, many years. Often the stories they share are flat out amazing and really make me love what I do, and love the fact that I can connect with a customer on a level where they feel comfortable enough to share life stories with me. This story I’m about to share came from a customer in the UK. I felt it was so cool I had to share. So
The ten days I didn’t sleep….Sounds pretty cool right? 90% of it was NOT cool. In all honesty most of this time was quite boring. I’m not sure if you’ve spent much time in a tour van, but generally the time between cities and shows just kind of blurs together in a mess of anywhere between 3 and 15 hours and before you know it you’re in a new town, city, state, or country. When you’re on the road 250 days a year summer turns to fall, which turns to winter and
The odd ones, the weird ones, the ones with 7 pickups. I’m talking about the next frontier of the vintage guitar market. Companies like Silvertone, Danelectro, Airline, Harmony, and many others that built guitars in the 50s and 60s have been lurking in the vintage guitar world for many years, every now and then poking their heads up a bit and gaining some attention. Every now and then a Jack White will pop up, or guitar players and collectors will get hip to the fact that Jimmy Page used
