Beach Boys Gear

[Rocker]

It's not a straight copy though. Look at that thing:





Are those Humbuckers? The head and obviously the rear body are very different to a Tele.

[Joshilyn Hoisington]

I wonder if it's an ESP...  It's kind of a Tele migrating toward a Les Paul shape.

[Rocker]

I tried to get a better shot of the guitar. Here's what I got:

[Joshilyn Hoisington]

The headstock is throwing me off.  The three-a-side tuners and the kind of pointy profile are unusual.  It looks a lot like any number of 80s-90s guitars modeled after the classic shapes - Charvel, Hamer, ESP, etc... but that headstock is not familiar to me.

[DeanEntwistle]

Here's another 1995-performance where Carl can be seen playing the same guitar: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dn905_69mKk

[Joshilyn Hoisington]

Here's another 1995-performance where Carl can be seen playing the same guitar: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dn905_69mKk

Huh, sure enough -- only with different pickups.  I still don't recognize that headstock...

[c-man]

So happens I've got a late '90s ESP Horizon, although not the Tele body-style. Headstock seems similar, but I can't tell enough from the blurry images here. If only Carl would hold still, especially for a close up...

I recall the Stones (or at least Ronnie) used ESPs quite a lot in the '80s, mostly Strat-style bodies, but the headstocks were different.

EDIT: Nah, the headstock on mine is pointier than what Carl's playing here.

[Rocker]

So happens I've got a late '90s ESP Horizon, although not the Tele body-style. Headstock seems similar, but I can't tell enough from the blurry images here. If only Carl would hold still, especially for a close up...

I recall the Stones (or at least Ronnie) used ESPs quite a lot in the '80s, mostly Strat-style bodies, but the headstocks were different.

EDIT: Nah, the headstock on mine is pointier than what Carl's playing here.

I saw an ESP Horizon from the mid-90s with a headstock that looks similar to Carl's. Obviously only the headstock, the guitar itself is a different one.




ESP Horizon Guitar MIJ mid 1990's Made In Japan



EDIT: Forget it. I just took another look and it seems like Carl's guitar's head is sharper.

[Rocker]

That headstock screams Ibanez to me, but it won't match with anything I can find on the web. Something like this comes fairly close, but still, the head... Carl's has tuners on both sides, this one only on one.




http://guitarz.blogspot.com/2015/07/ibanez-fr365tfb-sunburst-tele-monday.html

[c-man]

It's not a straight copy though. Look at that thing:





Are those Humbuckers? The head and obviously the rear body are very different to a Tele.

I'll be darned if the headstock doesn't look kinda like a Baldwin here!

[Wiggy]

It's not a straight copy though. Look at that thing:





Are those Humbuckers? The head and obviously the rear body are very different to a Tele.

The headstock looks exactly like my Westone Thunder 1-A (Japanese guitar made in the 80s) which has humbuckers, though all those models had the volume and tone knobs in a straight line.

I was browsing around https://westoneguitars.net/guitars/ to see if I could spot anything similar. The Prestige Series https://westoneguitars.net/guitars/prestige-series/ seems closest, though the colours don't match the model Carl is playing, though I can't easily tell whether the models from other years match. Their 1984 catalog shows this :

  .

Wiggy.

[Rocker]

That's probably the closest thing yet. Thanks, Wiggy!
The upper cutaway looks rounder on Carl's guitar though, doesn't it? But that may be just a different model.

[Rocker]

I guess you know Norman's Rare Guitars. They just got a new load of guitars, including a Carl Wilson Rickenbacker. At ca. 6:30 mins.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oW8R0wj1XME

[Rocker]

It's not a straight copy though. Look at that thing:





Are those Humbuckers? The head and obviously the rear body are very different to a Tele.

Looks like Carl is playing the same guitar on July 4th 1995:





https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GenjG494HFU

[Rocker]

I just came across this forum and thread:

https://www.tdpri.com/threads/beach-boys-guitar-setup.323097/


There's someone who got to talk to Al about some technical stuff. I'll just copy some of the things he posted in here. The main discussion unfortunately is starting from the wrong idea that the Beach Boys didn't play on their records and that instead it was the Wrecking Crew from the early beginning.


I too wondered and luckily one Beach Boy, Al Jardine, lives nearby and I used to see him at the library and at the store. I asked him about his sound and wondered if he used a 3 position Stratocaster or a 5 position Stratocaster. He told me his had 4 positions and he liked the in between tone. I don't know if the techie wired it that way or he was mistaken and used only 4 out of 5 positions or carefully put the selector switch either between 1 and 2 or 2 and 3 (if it was a 3 position setup).

He didn't seem all that concerned about gear and was a songwriter for the song at heart and working for that. On his level, what separates his band from the Stones or the Beatles (and we talked about this) were the songs. I didn't understand it all then as I was a kid but now I see when one band has Revolver, another has Aftermath, then another Pet Sounds, and then Sgt. Pepper, then it's all about the compositions as the '60s really came into their own for rock and roll. Deeper than that we talked about what's inside and he was into TM even though I never looked into that.
 



 
Doug 54 said: ↑

        At times in late 60's Carl would use a blonde Tele w/Bigsby.

   
That was acutally Al's backup guitar (among several backups) and it ended up with one of my friends who didn't play, who was friend's with Al's son Matt Jardine (who at that time also didn't play). In a jam session, he brought it in with "Beach Boys" spray painted on a flight case and pulled it out for us to jam on. I knew with Al's studio just down the coast from town and this guy being Matt's friend, it was the real thing. I expected to see a white strat, but Al kept that and this was the tele with bigsby on it. I don't ever remember Al telling me about that guitar but being a Beach Boy, I am sure he had everything. In reverence to the Beach Boys I didn't use it for our jam session and told the kid to put it back in its case and at least, learn how to play and keep it with the non-original but official Beach Boys case.

In high school I urged Matt to jam with my band, but he didn't seem to be into it but later he joined his dad's band.

Anyway, here's Carl playing it here:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DJ1UqDnY7as
   




Thanks! The next time I saw a late-60s era Telecaster with Bigsby was about ten years later when a guitar player had one listed in the paper for $650. It was basically the same as Al's guitar but in the neighboring small town, and this guitar was refretted by local luthier who does all stuff around here including Al's guitars, and it was stripped and refinished to make it look like a natural wood instrument. Stripping colored teles was common then.

The original finish, from the cavity, was the same off white as Al's, and being done up by same luthier it made me wonder if this was somehow the same instrument. There was no way for me to tell and I had lost any contact with Al or his son and the son's friend. I live in a small town, back then which had more people in the past and maybe 3,000 residents, and late-60s Bigsby Telecasters just don't come around my parts that often.

The one thing which makes this guitar seem different was that it came with original Fender hardshell black case. The case I had seen Al's tele in was the flight case with Beach Boys designation on it. I kept this one for awhile and it was a very nice sounding guitar which I got to put on a couple of tracks on a CD in '91.

[Joshilyn Hoisington]

Man, that thread is infuriating.  It's from 2012 but I'm sure those attitudes are still around.

[Rocker]

Here's yet another shot of Carl with that mysterious guitar from above. Probably the best picture yet:




https://www.reviewjournal.com/sports/aviatorsbaseball/5-things-you-might-not-know-about-cashman-field-in-las-vegas/


So, anyone got an idea?

[Joshilyn Hoisington]

I remain stumped and assuming it's a boutique deal.  Maybe one to run by Hinsche?

[Emdeeh]

Running now.

[Rocker]

I remain stumped and assuming it's a boutique deal.  Maybe one to run by Hinsche?

That's a good idea! Since Carl obviously played it over a periode of time, he may remember it as opposed to a one-off concert.

[guitarfool2002]

I haven't commented on this one, even though I'm more than familiar with that July 4th '95 show in Philly! I'll wait like everyone to see what Billy H. says about it. But for me, the headstock helps tell part of the story. That is a pretty "rough" headstock, meaning it's pretty roughly cut and shaped and has no real design or signature curves or angles to it, and it's an unorthodox layout of the tuning pegs - very unusual actually. And that's why I think it may be a custom maker's guitar rather than a brand or even a small factory's model. The headstock - surprisingly - is a main element of a guitar's design which is subject to copyright. So if some guy cranks out guitars in his basement with a copycat PRS or Gibson cut on the headstock without going through channels, he'll get slapped with a lawsuit.

So until Billy H clears this up, if he does, that could be a one-off guitar either sold or given to Carl but to my eyes it isn't a production model from a known maker...and thus it's pretty hard to ID without inside knowledge.

This reminds me of a similar time around the Beatles Anthology hoopla when George Harrison was pictured with an unusual-looking electric guitar that no one outside the guitar community could identify, and it turned out to be from a custom builder named Bernie Hamburger who had made instruments for Carl Perkins and George and still has a company called Hamburguitar making hand-built instruments: http://www.hamburguitar.com/

[Emdeeh]

Billy Hinsche thinks the guitar might be a Carvel or a custom model, and he's looking further into it.

[Rocker]

Billy Hinsche thinks the guitar might be a Carvel or a custom model, and he's looking further into it.

Great. Thank you!

This reminds me of a similar time around the Beatles Anthology hoopla when George Harrison was pictured with an unusual-looking electric guitar that no one outside the guitar community could identify, and it turned out to be from a custom builder named Bernie Hamburger who had made instruments for Carl Perkins and George and still has a company called Hamburguitar making hand-built instruments: http://www.hamburguitar.com/

Ah yes, I remember reading how he got the guitar to Carl and Harrison resp.
BTW some info about Carl Perkins' guitars can be found here: http://the-jime.dk/Rockabilly_Guitar/Carl_Perkins_Guitars_and_Amps.htm

[jparis51]

Billy Hinsche thinks the guitar might be a Carvel or a custom model, and he's looking further into it.

The best resemblance to that headstock I can find is a Jackson, and they controlled the Charvel name. They were founded in California in 1980.

https://www.jacksonguitars.com/gear/guitars/pro-series-monarkh-sc/2916921568

[HeyJude]

It seems to be possibly/likely a Charvel guitar body. While it's a sort of rip-off of other more famous guitar body styles (a Telecaster most specifically), this Charvel variant of that style is distinctive with the slightly oblong upper part of the body near the neck matched with the cutaway on the lower part.

Here are some examples (first is from 1989, second and third are newer updated versions of the same body type):







These guitars have different pickup, etc. configurations of course.

The headstock is obviously different, and sure enough, it indeed seems to match one style of Jackson headstock:



So one possibility is a Charvel body with a Jackson neck/headstock. It does appear by the 90s they were part of the same company.