The Electra Forums

hello everyone,

i made a post a few months ago indicating that i had a line on an intriguing electra es-335 copy. i ended up purchasing it for a cool $75, from a guy in town who thought that it just wasn't 'gretsch' enough for him.

anyway, this guitar quickly became my favourite axe to play on. it has a wonderful chunky (mahogany?) neck, and two spectacular single coil pickups. it turns out that the guitar is actually fully hollow, so it is not really an es-335 copy...perhaps it bears more likeness to an epiphone casino?

now, i know that many people consider the pcm electra's to be of a rather low level of quality, however, this guitar is absolutely top notch. it plays as well as some $2000 range gibsons that i have previously played at various guitar stores. the action was rather high when i first received it, but after having a local music store fix up the nut, this thing has been flawless. the only thing on it that i would consider replacing are the tuning heads, but they are decent enough and seem to hold the tuning fairly well.

interestingly, when i went to go try out a couple old amplifiers at some collector's house, the guy was absolutely positive that this was in fact an old ibanez guitar from the late 60's/early 70's, and said that he had previously owned a few guitars with the same pickups. i have also seen a couple old ibanez guitars on the net with this pickup design...so perhaps some of the early pcm electra guitars were actually purchased from the ibanez factory?

anyway, here are a few shots of the guitar itself:

front of guitar:



the electra with an old silvertone/teisco vox phantom copy:



headstock:



back:



(mahogany?) neck: