I grew up in Hawaii and used to work at Island Guitars when I was a teenager back in the early 90s when the vintage market was still building. Of course, at the time, I don't think that any of us in Hawaii knew that it was going to explode the way that it did. To give an example, we had a '62 Strat in Lake Placid Blue that was sold for about $5,000 and customers were kind of amazed that we had the audacity to put a guitar on the wall at that price.
Of course, I was lucky to put together a nice little collection of vintage guitars and at one point had 28 instruments. Now I'm down to my core group of 10. I've always loved surf music and I have a '64 Fender Jaguar that I was very lucky to purchase pre-grunge / indie rock craze, but I've always wanted a Mosrite. I had a friend who had an original '63 sidejack sunburst that was his very first guitar, bought new. I think that I got to hold it ONCE - he was so protective of it. Unbelievably, I've never actually played a Mosrite.
I'm not a musician by profession, but I'm in a hard rock band playing originals, influenced by The Stooges, The Stranglers, The Flamin' Groovies, etc. I haven't bought a new instrument in about 10 years but I was discussing Mosrite guitars randomly with a Japanese customer of mine and I've reawakened the itch.
I went online to check out the current market for Mosrite guitars and research used ones and also new ones. I know that there have been a lot of clones over the years and when I worked at Island Guitars we had just stopped carrying the Japanese-made ones. I know that Dana Moseley is now making them in the US with a Japanese company and I'm very curious about that. I guess that I have a lot of questions and so will be digging through the forum for answers. I think that I'm going to drive up to Bakersfield one Saturday soon and try to actually play one - I've often heard of Back Porch Music and know that it's an amazing store but I've always been afraid to check it out... or at least afraid of what my bank account will look like afterward
So thanks for having me on the forum and thanks for reading all of this!! You all seem like a nice bunch and everyone is super informative about Mosrite guitars from the looks of it and I can't wait to keep digging.
Thanks!!!
Yves
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