The Electra Forums

Hello all,
I am a new member and I have stumbled across an x110vw for $99 plus about $20 for shipping. First off, is that a good price? And second, what styles of music is it best suited too?
Thanks all. Nice forum here.

Ooh, grab it. That's a great price!

The X110 is a really cool axe, the single pickup is deceiving, actually it has great tonal range. An MMK45 pickup is designed to produce a far wider range of tones than the mostly-midrange humbuckers in most guitars. As a result, you really can dial the tone down and get a nice warm round sound, not just a dulled one. This plus the coil tap which allows the MMK45 treble coil to sing like a single coil. Forget what you know about most coil tapped humbuckers, this one actually sounds good.

Style? Nearly anything. Granted, at the time the X110 came out we were thinking high-gain distorted metal sounds- it was the 80's after all. A single pickup guitar was a way of saying 'we don't need no stinking anything besides lead guitar'. But the X110 turned that on its head by having way more tonal range than that.

So... what style is appropriate to a guitar with a humbucker that many people say sounds better than a Gibson, yet can handle twangy rhythm tones as well? Just about anything, yep.

You can't beat the price- I guarantee it (I'll buy it from you for that if you don't like it- but you will :)

Like all Electra Phoenixes it has a superb maple neck and this one also has a maple fingerboard, with wonderful action. Can I gush any more about this guitar? Sure.

A guitar like this will challenge you to get the tone you want with your fingers- the guitar will help, but you have to do it consciously. If you want a rich bass tone, you're going to have to compensate for the lack of a neck pickup by plucking way up by the fingerboard- but do this and it'll be great. And when you get tone this great on a single-pickup guitar, nobody is going to say 'aw, he jsut flipped one of those twenty switches to make it sound like that'. Instead they'll say 'he played the whole night on a guitar with only one pickup, and yet made it sound like all these different sounds.'.

That's the beauty of the X110, to me. I bring one along occasionally when I wanna appear to be max humble, but carrying a secret weapon. Personally I play jazz on mine, it does a clear clean singing tone so well. But turn up the gain and it breaks up wonderfully into a wonderful roar when distorted, too.

Oh, and... the vintage white color is great, because unlike some colors of the period (lipstick red), it's not immediately abhorrent to anyone over 35. I mean... musicians and audiences are conservative, and one nice thing about vintage white (really a nice cream) is that it;s equally at home with young or old- unlike some other colors (metallic rose) it's not immediately abhorrent to anyone under 22, either. Chalk up another point for versatility.

Thanks for the reply. It sounds almost too good to be true. I think I may pick it up. Would you really be willing to buy it if I don't get along with it? That would be cool. At least I'd have a failsafe. I noticed in another post you said you may have found a replacement bridge for these. Which bridge will fit? I would like to replace it because I am not really digging the gold hardware.

Yeah, I actually would.

I'm not certain on the hardware yet. Whatever you do, for sure keep the original with it.

...mate, just grab it! I'd love it but am half a world away which sort of limits my options a bit!!

'too good to be true'...

what you won't get is the prestige of certain names on the headstock. that matters more for some people than for others.

In my experience, if you look around a little you find things like this in every area- for instance, in old cars we could compare the Dodge Dart- way ahead of its time in so many ways, in some ways embedded in the styles of the time and doomed by them, and for the modern enthusiast you have excellent value and real-world performance for not a lot of bucks.

I could make a similar case for early 70's BMW motorcycles as well, certainly if you compare them to British and Italian motorcycles of the time. Their market value today is far far better than the others in terms of cost vs. practical value, and they constitute kind of a sleeper for those who want something vintage that performs well without spending a lot for glamour.

With all of these there is always a low point in value- think of cars. A car has to go for a while as the lowest and most despised of junk before it becomes old enough to be interesting as 'vintage'. Electra guitars, the ones of the 80's certainly, like the Electra Phoenix we're talking about, is in that bottom trough. Eventually- in ten years? Sooner? People will start realizing these things are vintage and that will open their eyes to seeing that they are also high quality.

It's true that us talking about it helps make it happen sooner. By spreading the word on how good Electra guitars are, we bring closer the day when the prices do rise. I'm not sure that's a good thing, but it's how it is. To my mind the risk is hte opposite: in these bad times it's way too easy for a pirate to take them apart for a slightly greater profit as parts, and original instruments are lost. Most Electra models are not so rare that there's any real danger of them being extinct, but I still hate seeing it happen. For me at the bottom line, I'm a musician, and I love and respect the fact that these are good isntruments made to make good music.

Frankly I'm not in a hurry to see prices go up. Electras are what they are, they vary in quality, and they tend to get judged by their individual virtue, as they ought. Their great value is not that a rare few will become exotic collectors' items, but rather that a huge number of them have empowered individual musicians, especially those learning to be great, by being great players- it's what they've always done, and why Electra was a very successful brand in consumer music stores in the midwest US.

btw, here's an example of the X110VW we're talking about:

...and while the 110 may be the basic bones model with only the lead p'up, I've heard nothing but good and great things about all of these single p'up Matsumokus, the Westone Spectrum, Vantage Avenger and APII, to name but a few! I'm actively hunting down an Avenger 310 (wish me luck!) as these guitars were built to be sweated on, bled on and enjoyed!

Well, it was a few bucks more than I though it would be. $119 + shipping. Should still be a good deal though, I hope. I'll let you know when I get it. Should be early next week. I'll post pics too.

Still a good price. Let us know how it is!

Here is a pic from the music go round site of the X110 I bought. Should have it by early next week.

I can never get used to those tiny dot markers.....

Run Busch Guitar Studio [local used music store run for and by musicians, with a healthy sideline of ripping off people who don't know any better ]
has had one of those hanging up for... 10+ years now? I traded some stuff there when I was a kid for my first 'uncle matt' [aria pro II RS] and it was hanging up with a $250 tag then.... I just popped in last week.. it's STILL THERE!!!

...for the same price?!