There were several other Japanese
amp-in-guitar models that appeared
during 1965, including a super-cool
instrument made by the short-lived
Shinko Gakki company in the city of
Tatsuno. The rarely seen Shinko example was sold in the U.S. through the
New York-based Inter-Mark Company,
which branded all their guitars as
“Cipher” models.
The Maier example pictured
below was made by another Japanese
manufacturer, forgotten by time. After
examining the components, this guitar
seems to have been produced in the
Matsumoto area of Japan. Even the
import name of “Maier” is a relative
mystery. After pouring through stacks
of trade magazines from the era, the
only possible clue I’ve found is the R.J.
Maier Corp. of Sun Valley, California.
They were primarily known as a maker
of clarinet and saxophone reeds, but
during the guitar boom of the mid’60s, all sorts of musical instrument
companies were importing electric
guitars. Either way, the Maier variation follows the familiar blueprint of
a single-pickup guitar powering a tiny
amp through a 3" speaker. Finally, this
two pickup variation, also below, was
made at yet another Japanese factory
that remains a mystery. I have owned
this same model without the internal
amp, and the designers simply routed
out the regular guitar bodies to accept
the transistorized components. But this
example features a headphone jack!
There aren’t any records of how
many of these amp-in guitars were
sold, and I often wonder about the
popularity of this format. But by 1966
most all of these guitars had vanished
from catalogs, advertisements, and literature. As with many of the Japanese
The planets aligned,
and soon the technology of both
guitars and radios morphed into
an interesting combination:
the “amp-in-guitar” concept.”
Left: A 3"
speaker with
1 watt of
power was de
rigueur for the
self-contained
6-strings of
he
s
Middle: Sears’
in-house
guitar brand,
Silvertone,
entered the
competition in
1965 with the
el
Far right:
This one-pickup
Cipher model
imported by
the Inter-Mark
Company
originated in
a su
a a
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