While most guitars came with one or two pickups, some Teisco guitars had as many as four pickups. One unusual aspect of Teisco guitars were the number of pickups found on some guitars. The machine heads were usually open gear style, the nut was plastic, the bridge and saddle were not tunable, and if the guitar had a tremolo unit, it was a very simple arrangement with one spring housed under a metal plate at the instruments distal end. The hardware on these guitars was very basic.
This was probably not a problem for those who did not advance beyond 3 chord strumming. Teisco necks were sometimes thicker, and on some the intonation was off as you went up the neck. G uitarist Ry Cooder, has replaced the pickups on several of his guitars with Teisco pickups. The pickups were not nearly as advanced as those of U.S. The Teisco guitar bodies were generally thinner than domestically produced guitars. Rose Morris Music imported Teisco guitars. Those guitars sold under the Kent brand name were imported by Bugeleisen and Jacobson of New York. Many Teisco guitars were purchased by importer named Jack Westheimer, and his Chicago company W.M.I., then wholesaled to one of the aforementioned retailers. In 1965 a new Fender Stratocaster cost $200, so Teisco seemed to be a great alternative for many families of budding rock stars. Teisco guitars were affordable and sold in the twenty to one-hundred and fifty dollar range during an era when the average salary of a family in the United States was less than $5,000 a year. Many were sold in department stores such as Sears, Montgomery Ward, and Woolworth.
Sometimes this was a name associated with a particular business. Greco, Alvarez, El Degas, made the instrument more appealing.īy the time Teisco guitars arrived in the United States, most were sold under different brand names including Silvertone, Kent, Duke, Cameo, Encore, Hy Lo, Kimberly, Heit Deluxe Kingston, Norma, Sonatone, Zim-Gar, Kay, and Audition. Typically these instrument were re-branded Teisco Del Rey ( Teisco, the King), at a time when manufactures believed adding a Spanish sounding name to a guitar. The company didn't begin importing guitars to the United States and United Kingdom around 1959. Tariffs made importing foreign instruments unreasonably expensive. The original company produced guitars for domestic use. At that time, Kawai discontinued the Teisco brand on their guitars, but kept the brand name for use on their electronic keyboards. The Teisco brand lasted until 1967 when the company and assets were purchased by the Kawai Musical Instrument Company. Teisco is the name that gave the company it’s recognition. There was another company called Tokyo Sound Co Ltd, that built Guyatone guitars. However, according to the company founder, Mr. The original name of the company was Aoi Onpa Kenkyujo, which can be loosely translated to Hollyhock Soundwave or Electricity Laboratories.īy 1956 the name was changed to Nippon Onpa Kogyo Company, then in 1964 it was changed to Teisco, which most sources explain is an acronym for Tokyo Electric Instrument and Sound Company.
Kaneko teamed up with electrical engineer, Doryu Matsuda. He also played the “Spanish” style guitar. Teisco, was a Japanese Company that was founded in 1946 by a Hawaiian guitarist named Atsuwo Kaneko. It was a fad, but many companies saw it as a bull guitar market and rushed in to make money.
I cannot describe the incredible demand for guitars and basses after the British Invasion. These guitars were normally sold by brokers, who usually re-branded them or had them rebadged them prior to shipment, then sold them to music stores, department stores, and even pawn shops. Although there was no metal name plate on the headstock, by it’s pedigree, I can tell it was made by Teisco at a time when the United States and the United Kingdom were being flooded with cheap electric guitars made in Japan. He owned a grocery store, and took it in as pawn from a customer that could not pay their bill. I have an old guitar that my Dad gave me back in 1965.
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