Columbus guitar
Mike Wormald
columbus.
I was wondering if anyone had any information on these guitars or the
company.
I have looked all over the web and can find very little.
Your help would be gratefully recieved,
Thanks,
Mike.
Ricky
the company, didn't even think they were still going!
Ricky
"Mike Wormald" <mw...@liv.ac.uk> wrote in message
news:an9nsc$rm1$1...@news.liv.ac.uk...
Brian Hoggard
Hi,
When I worked in a guitar shop we saw quite a few Columbus Les Paul copies
coming through the second hand side of things. They were ok but cheaply
built in comparison to Epis and, of course, the real thing. The tuners were
the worst thing as I recall with them going loose, otherwise they could be
set up well and had pretty high output humbuckers on them.
Sorry I don't know the origins though. Probably produced by one of the
factories in the far east with the name, shipping and distribution handled
by a parent company (but who...?).
If you find out please let us know!
Cheers,
Brian.
steve_cobham
IIRC Columbus LP copies were around as far back as the late 1970s at
least.
That could have been long enough ago for them to have been
Japanese-made.
Contrary to popular opinion, not everything Japanese and guitar-shaped
has always been good, in spite of the SG series being around at the
same time.
This sort of points out a need for some sort of history of
guitar-making throughout the Orient.
The obvious expansion of guitar manufacture from Japan, then to
Taiwan, Korea and China should be a matter of record, but is it?
Surely not difficult to collate.
Steve - who isn't volunteering........ ;-)
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Brian Hoggard
>
> IIRC Columbus LP copies were around as far back as the late 1970s at
> least.
>
> That could have been long enough ago for them to have been
> Japanese-made.
>
> Contrary to popular opinion, not everything Japanese and guitar-shaped
> has always been good, in spite of the SG series being around at the
> same time.
Hi Steve,
I agree entirely. I'm sure most of us who've been playing for a while have
played really bad early copies of US made guitar which hailed from Japan.
Didn't take them long to work out that the way to convert us was to make
things to a consistently higher standard (on average) for less money though
did it? And even the 'bad' ones weren't really *that* bad.
> This sort of points out a need for some sort of history of
> guitar-making throughout the Orient.
>
> The obvious expansion of guitar manufacture from Japan, then to
> Taiwan, Korea and China should be a matter of record, but is it?
>
> Surely not difficult to collate.
>
> Steve - who isn't volunteering........ ;-)
Yeah I'd really like to see that kind of thing done. And I'm not
volunteering either! When I used to run the website www.musocafe.co.uk I
did an interview with Jim Donahue from Ibanez (still on that site) who has
been their chief R&D guy for a lot of years. He's really interesting
because he remembers all the funny named short-lived companies that imported
and exported all the earlier copy guitars. Ibanez were responsible for a
fair portion of that themselves I gather. I'm sure some of the history (at
least Ibanez's part in it) will be resolved by his book with Michael Wright
which should be out soon-ish. Some of it is still on the website too
though - take a look!
Cheers!
Brian.
Sleepy Fingers Jones
>
>IIRC Columbus LP copies were around as far back as the late 1970s at
>least.
>
I can remember seeing Columbus LP's hanging on the wall in our local
music shop (in Potters Bar) in 1970, next to Vox 'teardrop' guitars.
I can't say I have ever seen a Columbus semi 6 string, although I did
know a guy who had a Columbus semi acoustic bass in around 1972-3.
I hate to disappoint the original poster but they were dreadful,
although (being Gibson copies) it was possible to get the action
fairly flat on some of them. To make them sound like anything you had
to replace the tuners, bridge and pickups.
What kills me is that a Columbus LP in those days retailed at about
£80 (that would be £636 now). I bought a Squier Strat a couple of
years ago for £120 and by comparison the build (and sound) quality of
the Squier is out of this world.
Pete (I learned to play on shitty guitars!)
padraig
<persisten...@yahoo.com> wrote:
>
>I can't say I have ever seen a Columbus semi 6 string, although I did
>know a guy who had a Columbus semi acoustic bass in around 1972-3.
>
>I hate to disappoint the original poster but they were dreadful,
>although (being Gibson copies) it was possible to get the action
>fairly flat on some of them. To make them sound like anything you had
>to replace the tuners, bridge and pickups.
>
>What kills me is that a Columbus LP in those days retailed at about
>£80 (that would be £636 now). I bought a Squier Strat a couple of
>years ago for £120 and by comparison the build (and sound) quality of
>the Squier is out of this world.
>
>Pete (I learned to play on shitty guitars!)
I'm reasonably confident that my second ever guitar, which I got
perhaps around 1981-ish, was a Columbus 335 style semi-acoustic with
an emphatically _ORANGE_ sunburst finish. It was a bit of a dog but I
loved it dearly and I had summon all of my powers of rationality to
avoid buying the red one on Ebay last week [ ORIGINAL POSTER - was
that the one you got, Mike?].
The one I had had made its way to the most outlying parts of rural
Northern Ireland and when I got it fifteenth-hand it had become
associated with a rumour that its neck was 'steel' or perhaps more
phonetically accurate "stale". I'd be interested to know if this was
actually the case - as a surly adolescent it never occured to me to
deploy a magnet to find out whether this was true or not.
I re-injected mine into the guitar market in Leeds around about 1986
by which time it had acquired the metal bit from a torch bulb to
replace a missing bridge piece. I might have replaced the tuners by
then too.
Perhaps in the way of low quality guitars with high action and
impossible intonation, I don't remember it sounding [acoustically] too
bad up around the 'campfire chords' area of the neck - approximately
in the compressed and tight tonal area. I think it was actually unsafe
to venture any further up the neck than the fifth fret - but it didn't
have any manual when I got it so I don't know if there was an actual
warning or not... ;-)
I probably would have tried to get the red one on Ebay if it had been
in the _ORANGE_ finish. I'll have a look around for a picture of the
one I had.
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Julian at Home
"Sleepy Fingers Jones" <persisten...@yahoo.com> wrote in message
news:hh9kpukh21jfrgfos...@4ax.com...
> On Tue, 01 Oct 2002 20:18:06 +0100, Steve Cobham wrote:
>
>
> >
> >IIRC Columbus LP copies were around as far back as the late 1970s at
> >least.
> >
>
> I can remember seeing Columbus LP's hanging on the wall in our local
> music shop (in Potters Bar) in 1970, next to Vox 'teardrop' guitars.
>
> I can't say I have ever seen a Columbus semi 6 string, although I did
> know a guy who had a Columbus semi acoustic bass in around 1972-3.
>
I had one of them - deep cherry sunburst. Lent it out, never saw it again
:-(
Cheers
Julian
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Mike Whitaker
> What kills me is that a Columbus LP in those days retailed at about
> £80 (that would be £636 now). I bought a Squier Strat a couple of
> years ago for £120 and by comparison the build (and sound) quality of
> the Squier is out of this world.
I was just commenting the same to my guitar teacher last week - he and I both
started out on a Hondo Strat, and we both agreed that if it hadn't been the
PoS it was, but more like the new Squier's in quality, neither of us would
ever have picked up a Les Paul!
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icarusi
news:anctlv$pcs$1...@helle.btinternet.com...
> I agree entirely. I'm sure most of us who've been playing for
a while have
> played really bad early copies of US made guitar which hailed
from Japan.
> Didn't take them long to work out that the way to convert us
was to make
> things to a consistently higher standard (on average) for less
money though
> did it? And even the 'bad' ones weren't really *that* bad.
The Yamaha SG85 which I brought to Manchester last week IIRC was
one of the first Japanese guitars to be promoted as competition
to a US guitar in materials and finish.
Icarusi
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Steve Fairhead
news:hh9kpukh21jfrgfos...@4ax.com...
> know a guy who had a Columbus semi acoustic bass in around 1972-3.
I bought a semi-acoustic, roughly modeled on the 335 but with a fully hollow
body (IIRC), in early '73. I'm pretty sure it was a Columbus. In any case I
didn't get on with it; took it back and swapped it for a cream Columbus Tele
which, once properly setup, was my main guitar for a couple of years and
quite decent. Crap pickups, though.
Steve
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Sleepy Fingers Jones
<st...@deleteme-fivetrees.com> wrote:
>"Sleepy Fingers Jones" <persisten...@yahoo.com> wrote in message
>news:hh9kpukh21jfrgfos...@4ax.com...
>> I can't say I have ever seen a Columbus semi 6 string, although I did
>> know a guy who had a Columbus semi acoustic bass in around 1972-3.
>
>I bought a semi-acoustic, roughly modeled on the 335 but with a fully hollow
>body (IIRC), in early '73. I'm pretty sure it was a Columbus. In any case I
>didn't get on with it; took it back and swapped it for a cream Columbus Tele
>which, once properly setup, was my main guitar for a couple of years and
>quite decent. Crap pickups, though.
>
>Steve
Oh, Boy, crap pick ups...
I had an Aria Pro II les Paul copy (which I paid something outrageous
like £250 for in 1975). It looked, played and felt like an LP.
But the pickups were soooo weak. I don't think it was until Squier and
Tokai got to grips with the market that anyone put proper pup in their
copies. Epiphones aren't as loud as Gibson's even now but at least
they *sound* right.
Pete
Ricky
the company, didn't even think they were still going!
Ricky
"Mike Whitaker" <mi...@altrion.org> wrote in message
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Steve Dix
ISTR that Andy Partridge still uses his Aria Pro II Les Paul copy. I
don't know if he ever replaced the pickups thought.
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