Above: Tony Mottola with a Gibson ES -355 in 1966.
Misc Fender guitars circa 1966: a Coronado 2, an acoustic (perhaps a Villager?), a Jaguar, and the humble Musicmaster.
Above: the very rare Gretsch Fury Amp circa 1966. This is actually a fairly unique amplifier. There is one on eBay right now that’s about to sell and it has two output transformers: whether this is a 2-way system or perhaps an dry/effects split operation or panning tremolo I cannot tell. Can anyone provide a schematic for this unit? It does not seem to be currently available on the ‘net.
Above: The Harmony Silhouette guitar circa 1966. I passed on an unplayed, flawless example of this thing for $175 last year and wow do i regret it. While not a great instrument in most senses, in the right hands these Harmonys have a zing-y percussive tone that cannot be imitated. The instrument’s personality comes across even in the iphone-audience-recording that’s i’ve inserted below. Great Lennon-meets-Hendrix playing here. Also btw check out how Annie Clark (or her FOH guy,,,) flips on the vox ADT effect for the choruses. Great performance all around.
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I thought Gretsch amps were outsourced to Valco, and not particularly notable in general. I think Guild's were as well.
Tony Mottola is most famous today as father to Tommy Mottola, who married Mariah Carey in a then-record-breakingly expensive wedding and paid a lot more to get rid of her. I think she walked away with something like $25 mil so the record company could end its contract with her. Makes Malcolm McLaren look pretty small time.
Those old Harmonys were the bane of my youth because my dad bought me one after another despite my protests they were no good. The action sucked. Dad was a W.T. Grants executive and that's what they sold: I suspect they were all vendor samples.
When I went to college one year I gathered them all up and fed them into a bonfire. Now, of course, they have a little value and a good tech can make them play halfway decent, but back then no way. No one knew how to set up a guitar or do a fret job.
All the American made cheap guitars were made in Chicago, in huge plants. They sold them at every department store, at truck stops, at carnivals, in record stores, at Radio Shack, everywhere.
Most were gifts by well intentioned parents or relatives for kids, or were bought by poor people who knew they were junk but could afford nothing else.
I owned a Harmony Rocket as a teenager and played in a band. Actually it was a real decent guitar. This was back around 1964-1965. I'd love to have it back.