Want to start a cool clone project?

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Dennisthe Menace
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Re: Want to start a cool clone project?

Postby Dennisthe Menace » Sat May 24, 2008 9:39 pm

dubtrub wrote:
MWaldorf wrote:For what it's worth, I emailed the guy with the white mosrite in the ebay auction to ask what he'd take for the whole thing, and he wanted $1200. A bit to much for me to spend, especially on a project. Looking at the vibrato assembly, I wonder if this was originally a 12 string guitar that's got a replacement neck and a celebrity vibrato?


Reading the auction description the seller mentions Gene Moles and this being one of his guitars. I used to visit Gene's guitar shop periodically and knew him on a casual basis. Gene purchased a lot of the Mosrite stock when Semie went belly up. A lot of the inventory that Gene had was incompleted necks and bodies and a boat load of miscellaneous parts. Gene was a darn good self taught luthier, so any guitar Gene put together either as a scratch built or parts guitar would be first cabin. However, that still doesn't put a Gene Moles guitar in same league as a Mosrite and $1200 would be pushing it for a refin. It would be cool to have one of Gene's parts Mosrite completed by Gene in it's original un molested condition.

Danny

Judging by the bigger fret markers, that neck looks to be more from the 70s. And the other difference from the 70s (you got to look closely) the spacing between the 2 rows of Machine Heads. They are wider on the 70s era. And the Vibrato? That came from the Celebrity Series and the later Combo Series. The Early Combos had the "all in one" unit just like on the Ventures model.....
make the Mos' of it, choose the 'rite stuff.
.........Owner of 9 Mosrites...
.....proud owner and documented:
1963 "the Ventures" Model s/n #0038
http://www.thevintagerockproject.com/

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dubtrub
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Re: Want to start a cool clone project?

Postby dubtrub » Sat May 24, 2008 9:49 pm

Gene Moles did used the larger fret markers on all his guitars. He did this to help differentiate his guitars from a Mosrite even when using left over Mosrite stock. A simple method of simply drilling out the tiny fret markers and installing bigger one's. One other thing that I recall is, Gene normally altered the 'M' shape on the end of the headstock but the celebrity vibrato would be correct for his guitars. So there may be more to the story than what the seller either knows or is stating as fact. I would suspect that it could very well have been a parts guitar put together by Gene Moles as I remember having seen a couple of unfinished Mosrite necks lying around his shop shortly before he passed away. Now I wonder what ever happened to the old stock in his little shop?
Danny Ellison


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