This was a special project for a friend. I was recently asked to fix up some guitars for a good friend who died recently so his family could have them in working order. The list included, among others, a nice old 8 string Teisco slide and this Ibanez 1241, the oldest Ibanez I've ever worked on.
This guitar was made by Guyatone (or more accurately Tokyo Sound) and was originally released as the HG or EG-80K in early 1958. In mid '59 it was renamed the LG-60B and a very small number were exported from Japan by Hoshino Gakki under a select few brands like Star, and to Australia under the new Ibanez name. They were available in Maple Finish or Ebony Black Finish. Soon after this model was introduced the newer LG-40 and 50B were released with the same body but with different pickups and scratchplate and a long 6 a side headstock to appear more "Fender"
This guitar with the original "Ibanez Rhythm" decal still on the headstock would have come to Australia in '59 or 60 making it the earliest example of a Guyatone I've worked on, and I've worked on hundreds and hundreds over the years. The next oldest I have owned would be a 1960 LG-70 and as I've said before, it's amazing how quickly these Japanese manufacturers improved production and quality.
Not that this is a bad guitar at all. It is actually VERY playable and sounds really good. The construction of this guitar is very good, but it feels more "basic" than the slightly later Guyatones, which very quickly started to feel more like overseas brands.
The main giveaways to this being early is there is no trussrod in the quite big, very V shaped set neck and the body, and the whole guitar feels VERY small. I absolutely love this body shape and prefer the 3 a side headstock on it but the body is SMALL. Almost like a 3/4 size LP Special.
The body is solid timber with a thin grained laminate front and back and is double bound with its original checked and chipped Nitro lacquer. The set maple neck is laminated with a strip of walnut down the middle and has a small rosewood heel. The rosewood (just listed as hardwood in the catalogue) fretboard has small rectangular inlays and some had bound fretboards although having never seen another Ibanez version I can't say whether this was also a feature on these export versions. The headstock is bound with a very neat binding running from under the fretboard angled with the headstock.
The tuners are original, and this guitar still has the original model number sticker on the back of the headstock, which is quite frankly, amazing. The trussrod cover is just for show as there's no rod underneath.
Fred didn't look after his gear particularly well so it's amazing this old thing is even as close to original as it is. Many years ago, I made a new scratchplate for it and changed the electrics. The last time I saw it was in a very similar condition except in the intervening years the neck pickup cover was smashed and the pieces lost. Being that the pickups are an odd size and pickup production during this period was changing so quickly an original cover would be unobtainium, I decided to make a new cover by hand to the original dimensions.
I wasn't trying to make one exactly like the original, just so the original coil underneath was protected from damage as it was still working fine. I actually would have loved to rewind one of these being so early in the evolution of Japanese guitars, but I'm not going to unwind and rewind a perfectly good coil after 65 years.
This guitar also has the original bridge, tailpiece and amazingly, the original cover. The bridge is a wound third bridge being so early so cleaned and dressed the fretboard and strung it up with 11-49s with a wound third. With no trussrod or angle adjustment I was worried it was going to be more of a wall hanger than a player, but the intonation is spot on, and the action is great, and it sounds amazing. Very clear with great frequency response. I love all these early Guyatone and Teisco pickups and these are no different.
The neck is a little too thick and V for me (remember, I'm a Mosrite guy) and the small body makes it feel a little less than adequate, but this is a really nice guitar and could easily be used for recording or even live.
I didn't clean it up too much and even "relic'd" (I hate that word) the new pickup cover as it stood out like a shiny piece of plastic on an old guitar. I wanted to leave all of Fred's grime and patina on it just the way he would have wanted it. He may not have been particularly kind to these things, but he totally understood what they were for, which was making noise with, and he didn't need expensive, collectable or particularly high-quality stuff to do it with, and boy, did he make a lot of great noise with what he had.
Did I mention I love this shape? I will be making a tracing of this guitar to hopefully make a TMI version down the track although I will probably make the body slightly bigger.