JooDee solved...Do You Have An Elk?

Had a message from a guy out on the west coast who's a collector of JooDee guitars.  He shared with me that he nailed down the company of origin for these beauties:  Dyna Gakki.  Which was one of the companies cited in many JooDee discussions!  He said he got the information from a former Dyna executive in Japan.  So I feel confident that we can say Dyna is the maker of the JooDee badge.  Whew.  Only god-knows-how many more badges to go....

Read some interesting things on the Elk badge too, from Vintage Guitar magazine.  I had it in the wrong place, as there was an Elk Gakki in Japan!   From the pics, these were pretty cool looking guitars.  Finding a clear acrylic Elk was fascinating as well.  Does anyone remember a major rock star of the 1970's who played a clear acrylic guitar?  If there was one, I don't recall it.  Anyway, Elk seems to be a pretty scarce badge.  Have you seen one?  Own one?  Did Elk Gakki make anything else? 

So many questions....I may have to learn Japanese.

Checkin Out Some Vintage Ibanez and Weymann Guitars

Had a pretty good weekend last week and checked out some new talent.  One was playing a pretty decent Gibson from the 1980's with gold pickups...sweet.  Another had a vintage 1940's Weymann electric with pearl inlays that was outta sight!  Sounded pretty good, too!  Also saw two Ibanez beauties:  a 1979 bass in honey, Musician MC300NT and a 1973 custom cherryburst Les Paul copy.  Getting to hold them and just look at the craftsmanship was a pleasure.

But I also stumbled upon a new badge this week.  Gession.  Apparently, this was a guitar made in Japan in the 1970-1980's period.  It's a Les Paul with a pancake body...with a darkburst over yellow finish.  Has anyone seen a Gession before?  Rumor has it that it was a Tokai badge, but I don't know...I've certainly never seen one or heard of the badge before.  The person who had it got it at a local flea market pretty cheap (it's not in the best of shape, but playable).  Yet another mystery to solve in the MIJ world.

Oh, well.  I've got a good 40 years yet to look into this.  And learn.  Maybe even solve some of these questions.

JooDee Guitars

In researching MIJ guitars, one badge name comes up frequently:  JooDee.  It's been the bane of my existence lately.

Why?

Because nobody can seem to pin down with any accuracy who made the darn thing. 

I've talked to local dealers, read articles and threads online...yet I can't seem to pin it down to one or two companies.  One source even suggested that there was a JooDee manufacturing company in the 1970's, a fact I haven't been able to find any evidence of. 

Who made JooDee guitars? 

God.  I may be spending a year just on this one.

Starting the blog...calling all shredders!!!!

As just a simple country person with little to no musical ability who has never owned a guitar or played in a band, it probably strikes you odd that I'd have an interest in vintage guitars.  But in doing research on various obscure badged guitars for friends of mine, I found something endlessly fascinating as an amateur historian and internet geek!  Much of what is known about this topic comes from enthusiasts only. To my knowledge other than the occasional article in a vintage guitar mag or paragraph in a vintage guitar collectors' book no one ever addresses the missing information in sum.  It is something that needs to be tracked down and recorded.  To do that, I need all you shredders and threshers out there to help me!

So I started this blog in a five year mission....no, that's Star Trek.... to gather all the bits of information out there on obscure, branded or badged guitars...to try to go back in time, find out who made them and why, and hopefully provide badly needed information to the folks out there who play and own these things and just love 'em to death!

This week I gathered what I know so far from the 1960's-1980's era, which I posted on Hubpages under the title Japanese Manufacturers of Made In Japan Badged Electric Guitars from 1960 to 1980.  This was a period where Japanese firms made hundreds of badged, low priced guitars that were modeled on the more expensive great American guitars during the height of electric guitarsmanship.  Kids everywhere wanted to play like Jimi Hendrix and Carlos Santana, so they got their parents or saved their money to buy Les Paul or Rickenbacker copies made in Japan or Korea for the American market. 

American manufacturers like Aria and Ibanez gave contracts to Japanese companies to produce products that were copies of famous Fender and Gibson guitar designs, reproducing them into cheaper versions with cool sounding names like Raven, Shadow and Vox.  These were transported and sold right here on main street, sold by the thousands...until Fender and Gibson sued for copyright infringement to stop their flooding the American market with copies.

The odd thing is, some of these cheap 'copies' are highly sought-after collectibles that guitarists LOVE to play! 

So let's begin the investigation, my soulful friends, and figure out....WHO MADE MY VINTAGE GUITAR!