This little gem came in recently after my friend Tone bought it in Melbourne while on tour. It's an interesting vintage Japanese guitar for its intriguing construction features and hardware.
All Esquire branded guitars I've seen in the past were either rebranded Ibanez guitars (mostly Gibson style) or full hollowbody 335 style guitars and basses. While the Ibanez versions would have been made by Fugijen (or possibly earlier ones made by Tama through Hoshino) the hollowbody versions I've seen were almost definitely made elsewhere.
I had taken a fairly educated guess at them being made by Teisco-Gen-Gakki (not Teisco confusingly) due to their build quality and features and this Tele, which is the only one I've seen like this confirms beyond reasonable doubt this assumption.
This Tele is almost exactly the same as the Burns SG-28 that appeared in 1969. No, not THAT Burns but Burns of Tokyo which I've written about before. The pickups, trussrod cover, string tree, knobs (same as the Honey SG) and plate and bridge are all the same as the SG-28 and some other related brands, except the Burns is a solid body Tele with mainly sunburst painted tops.
The Esquire is a hollowbody Tele much like the awesome Aria 2000T, but has the vinyl covered drum shell plywood as a top, with binding around the edge to hide the plywood ends. This feature really makes the guitar stand out and would have meant the tops didn't have to be painted.
The SG-28 had a similar bridge pickup plate although mainly made from scratchplate material and also used an offset style vibrato.
While this guitar definitely has all the signs of being Teisco-Gen-Gakki, my guess is it was made after the Burns versions using parts just before (or slightly after) that factory went bankrupt in 1970. There were quite a lot of guitars made during this period using parts from several brands all made by that factory and the evidence of the Mosrite half vibrato here, which was used by Teisco-Gen-Gakki on their Mosrite copies for Firstman is probably to use up left over parts as things went bad or the factory closed. You see other related brands (Idol, Honey, Excetro, Burns etc.) from this period using up hardware in a similar way.
The construction of this guitar is actually VERY similar to my TMI guitars, which were in fact influenced by Teisco-Gen-Gakki and Matsumoku who also constructed hollowbodies in a similar way. This has a "frame" about 10mm thick around the outside with a solid "spine" running from the neck pocket to the rear strap button. Although this is considerably more "hollow" than mine.
This has a laminated neck with rosewood fretboard and a 24.75" Gibson scale with a zero fret, which I have just changed as the original was very worn and Tone wanted a slightly wider string spacing at the string guide.
It's a very cool guitar and a bit of an anomaly in the vintage Japanese guitar world which as most of you know, is something I love about these guitars. It's a VERY hollowbody sounding guitar (it's 3KG) with a thin almost Mosrite feeling neck with the strings high above the body running on a roller bridge and big single coils (both very Mosrite) and of course that vibrato which isn't in use here but is in fact the best vibrato ever made.
