eBay of the day: Musiconics Guitorgan

In 1969, the Musiconics corporation of Waco, Texas, bought a bunch of Gibson ES-335 copies, and retro-fitted them with 6-note polyphonic organ boards, and an in-neck switching system (each fret is divided into six, with the strings making an electrical contact, I think) to make a Guitorgan. People who have them, love them: "This is one of the strangest instruments ever made. It has a huge "wow" factor, and despite its oddness, it is amazingly usable in most band settings. When you hear it for the first time, it is hard to believe that it was made so long ago." Now here's ebay item #110000014204, a possibly working Guitorgan M300, 9 days to go, just $105.50 (They normally go for $800+) (Thanks, Gerald)

Posted by Tom Whitwell.

Comments:

They stuffed them in Mostly Univox made archtops, not just 335 copies. That one pictured is a Barney Kessel type guitar.

# posted by

Anonymous : 7:05 am

so, i presume that's the reason you call a person "waco"... "you mad person who turns guitars into organs!"

# posted by

Anonymous : 12:58 pm

Me and My friend walked into some random music store once and they had a black 335-looking one of these for $300 cdn. There was a huge clunky expression pedal with a multi-pin cable remininscent of a leslie cable that went to the guitar. We plugged it in and it definately had a vox/farfisa sound to it. Niether of us bought it coz we spent all our money on a Korg Stage Echo.

# posted by

Anonymous : 7:09 pm

i have a black version of one of these. i love it. i play in a band w/ a farfisa player, played back to back, it's hard to tell a difference.

the main thing is, you can play it as a guitar really well, or an organ really well, but it takes a true guitorganist to play at the same time really well.

# posted by

Anonymous : 11:01 pm