Maltese Cross guitar from Madrid in the style of Harvey Thomas

guitarz.blogspot.com:

I got quite excited just now when I saw that this Maltese Cross guitar had just been listed on eBay UK with a starting price of £300. Then when I looked closer at the listing I saw that it was a copy built by a Spanish luthier and was not an original by eccentric American luthier Harvey Thomas. The Thomas Maltese Cross guitar was, of course, famously played by Ian Hunter of Mott the Hoople (see this blog post for more).

This guitar features maple body and neck with a relic nitro finish, two handwound Strat-type single coil pick-ups with Alnico V magnets, metal dot markers (the orignal Thomas Maltese Cross had cross-shaped markers), a light German carve to the body, and headstock binding.

Alas the guitar needs some work doing to it as the tremolo is said to be "not working" (who knows what that means, it might just need an arm, or it might need more attention), and control knobs are missing.

G L Wilson

© 2011, Guitarz - The Original Guitar Blog - now in its 10th year!

1964 Harvey Thomas Model C

guitarz.blogspot.com:


I'm guessing Model C stands for COOL and this could well be one of the coolest guitars we've ever posted.

The seller certainly thinks so and I for one, find it hard to disagree. This is what he says:

1964 Thomas model C, finished in goldburst, new tuners, name and social security card number etched into back of headstock and tremolo cover, neck and fingerboard and frets have wear, sounds very much like a Gibson SG Special, if you are looking for the coolest of cool, you have finally found it.

The price is also pretty damn cool. $15,000 plus $750 insured delivery. I think if I could afford to spend fifteen grand on a guitar, I'd jump on a plane and pick it up in person.

Not only is it a beautiful piece of guitar quirkiness, it's innovative in design and manufacturing techniques. And, it also points the way to the solution to a guitar mystery that Gavin posted about waaaaay back in January 2003.

Firstly, the innovation and manufacturing techniques....

This is re-posted from The Thomas Guitars Gallery with the kind permission of Tim Olsen, where he's talking about a white version of this guitar:

I think this is a Harvey-made whammy. These are the "bubble" pickguards. The plexiglas was heated in an oven and layed over a mold to form the bubbles. The pickups are just loose coils of wire and bar magnets wrapped in masking tape stuffed under the bubbles. Note also the fancy pickguard shape. It's a kind of Grand-Ol-Opry kind of snazz. And the little raised secondary pickguard says that this is a fingerstyle guitar. The white body lets you see the complex beveling plan of the top. Looking at this you can see the Moserite inspiration. Thanks Buzz! What a great example of Harvey's eccentric genius.

There are a lot more OMG! guitars and great stories about the designer on Tim's site so you'd be doing yourself a favour by moseying on down and checking it out.

While you're there, you'll also see first hand the mystery guitar that Gavin wrote about all those years ago....

The recent picture of Ian shows him holding a modern reproduction given to him by Joe Elliott of Def Leppard. This picture from Bobzilla's touching and entertaining "Rock N Roll on the road" blog.

Sorry this such a long post but you don't come across this kind of stuff every day.

Davib ib Bartheloba wid a dold... Atchoo!

Guitarz - The Original Guitar Blog - now in its 10th year!