Thinning the collection a little to raise some funds following the arrival of a 57 Gibson 125 and this has to go...
It's a 1967-ish (maybe as late as 1969 - you tell me) Morales Ventures copy. It's from the Zen On factory and there's discussion on this very forum about if Morales then became Firstman (and in turn Mosrite Japan etc) and I'm no expert but this is a very exact copy in terms of the parts, the look and dimensions and the feel. I had a Teisco factory Excetro some years ago and it was like a cool Mosrite inspired guitar (like a Univox almost) but this is spot-on.
No idea what the body is made out of but this thing weighs a lot. Approaching Les Paul weight. You want to sling it in the air like Fred Sonic Smith but it's instant hernia unless you're a body builder. The build quality is very high and it feels very well put together (again, unlike a Teisco for example). The neck is a laminated affair that looks like tiny floorboards. It's a very comfy neck profile and this particular guitar has barely a mark on the neck at all. It's just had the frets dressed and some of them re-seated as they were lifting when the neck was brought to string tension. All the work was done by the finest luthiers I know and was documented in photos as well.
The pickups are great - very high powered single coils with a pleasing hollowness to the neck pickup that's authentically Mosritian (I made that word up). They're very similar to the single coils in my Brass Rail and they overdrive an amp a good 3 notches before any other guitars I have. These were reassembled and springs inserted to the inner workings so you can adjust the height of them correctly.
Trem arm is non-original, it's a repro Bigsby arm bent a little further up to make it comfy to play. The trem unit is really nice right down to the Morales logo copying the Moseley one. Non original knobs. Original pickguard with some damage (see photos) but looks great. Refinished in it's original colour of white - not the most high end refin but it looks good. If you google search Morales you'll see the paint is a common flaw, it seems to chip away and discolour and this one was on a bad state when it was found (in Japan). Looks great now.
I'm in Nottingham in the UK and bearing in mind the work done on this and the sheer rarity (as well as the closeness to the original) I'm looking for around £450 which I think is fair. Shoot me a message if you're interested.
Chris
More pics: https://www.facebook.com/sumlin/media_s ... 679&type=1