The Electra Forums

I've never seen one.

Are you kidding?

I don't have one, but they're everywhere. Try pretty much any music store or pawn shop. Or club. Or garage.

Or online, of course.

Let us know what you think once you see one.

Matthew

I can tell sarcasm even when I read it! This is the electra forum right? Personally I've never seen an Electra strat besides the Phoenix.

I wasn't being sarcastic. I read your post as asking about Strats in general, not specifically about Electra-strats. Sorry for the confusion!

Matthew

Ahh no prob

http://www.rivercityamps.com/electra/2275s.php

yeah, don't see them real often on the bay.....

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My Electra Pages
I have too many projects!

They're not real common. I have one, it's ok. I can imagine with a really good setup it could be nice. I'm jsut not into strats so I'm not motivated...

Interesting information on the Strat. Here's what I have to offer:

I bought one on Ebay last Feb. Or so I thought. You can still see one pic of the headstock. It's item 120080376156.

I do not believe this thing is an Electra. The other pics were not clear enough to really tell and I took a flier on it. Largely because of that pic of the headstock that you see there. It looks like a vintage quality guitar in that pic. Also, the case looked nice and I figured I could at least use that for the price (and assuming I can re-sell the guitar for what it really is to recoup some of my $$). And that's about what it turned out to be. I told the seller how unhappy I was but he would not budge. So I was stuck. I see from looking at his current guitar auctions that he is now giving MUCH better pictures. I'd like to think I had something to do with that.

But, in my opinion, this guy is a crook. I wouldn't deal with him again.

The guitar looks to me to be a fairly new cheapo Strat copy body with maybe a somewhat older somekinda neck bolted on and a fake Electra logo which appears to be "painted" on. It's weird. This may be some kind of counterfeit guitar that they are putting out from China or somewhere. I believe I saw him selling another one just like it after I got mine. Plus he told me he had sold another one previously which wasn't as nice and sent the guy this one by mistake -- and had to jump through hoops to get it back. Do we really believe this guy is finding vintage Electra Strats in quantity?

Freakin' crook. Avoid him like the plague.

Anybody want to buy an "Electra" Strat? Cheap?

No case. I'm keeping that. At least that IS nice.

pictures? You sure it's not a PCM Electra strat?

Would be nice if you were right and at least it's SOME kind of Electra.

I only have the auction pics and they probably aren't much help, but here they are (if I can remember how to do this). At least you can see how nice the case is.









I was so disgusted when I got it that I really haven't looked at it very much again. Letting some time go by. I can tell you that he said a new Fender pickguard was put on it and I did pull that off and the pups do not look vintage at all, nor does any of the wiring. Nor does the body interior.

I'm pretty sure it's just some kind of fake. The logo feels like some kind of "rubberized" paint.

It's weird.

The way I'm looking at it, if I consider I paid $100 for the case + $20 shipping, then I'm out ~$115 on the guitar. That might be on the high side for the case, but it's a very nice case and I wouldn't feel ripped off paying that for it. I can either re-sell the guitar to cut my loss or I suppose I could keep it and make it a Strat project with some decent pups. The neck's not bad although my recollection is that the frets weren't particularly sweet. I'm not getting it out now to look at 'em again but if the frets are decent (or I re-fret) I suppose it could be a player. I don't have a Strat, so who knows. Let me know what you think (if you think you can tell anything).

I just hate dealing with crooks on ebay. This guy wouldn't budge an inch and wouldn't hear of any kind of adjustment at all. He just kept insisting it was what he said. What really bugs me about the crook is that he claims to be knowledgable and deal in quality stuff for musicians, yada yada. If he really were, he'd know in a second that this thing's not vintage. And if he were a decent seller, he'd certainly take the thing back and re-sell it. I offered to pay the shipping back to him.

He said he didn't trust ME to return the guitar back to him in the same condition, etc. He said I had "tampered" with it because I pulled the pickguard off. Can you believe it? You can't make this stuff up.

Check out his feedback and you'll see I'm not the Lone Ranger on what kind of guy he is.

My take on it is that he knows he was selling a fake and once he got my money, that was the end of it. He's a bum.

But, I wouldn't mind it if I wuz wrong and this thing is somehow some kind of Electra. I've been wrong before. I have a couple of ex-wives running around somewhere and they cost me a LOT more $$ than this crook did!!.

I've seen those before, I'd bet it was a Pacific Coast Electra. Can't see anyone making an Electra fake when you could just slap on a Fender decal. It's very likely some kind of Electra. Consider that the case is probably worth 80 bucks and it starts to look like a decent deal

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"Quote me as saying I was mis-quoted." - Groucho Marx

It looks 100% Electra to me. Early? Yes. PCM? Maybe, Maybe not.

It could be a 2275b:



The difference in pickguard color and fretboard material is uninportant in my opinion, and were details that could easily have varied over the years.

I see no reason not to call this a genuine Electra 2275 Avenger.

Now, with the thing in hand, how good an instrument is it? That's another question, early Electras were made by all different makers, good and bad. I wouldn't be surprised if in some cases the same model were made by different makers in different years.

To my mind the most important quality issues are whether the neck is warped, which occasionally happens (but not so much with japanese guitars as later with the Korean ones) Then, whether the neck joint fits such that the guitar can be set up and playable. If so, it should be able to have a good playing action if it is set up well. Some guitars can only get so good, and then there is some problem. Whether this guitar is one of those remains to be seen. I have an Electra Avenger that is very good indeed.

I would not feel so bad about your purchase. I think it's a genuine Electra. As such, even if it turns out to be a klunker you can't play and don't want, guess what? COllectors will buy it for a fair price on ebay, cause guess what? As was mentioned, Electra strats aren't exactly common.

As far as the PCM issue- it isn't one of the PCM Electra Strats with the 'thorn' headstock:



Which is probably good. The PCM question remains unanswered though.

HEre's another speculation to add fuel to the fire:

What if early on, SLM and PCM simply ordered guitars with the Electra logo from the same suppliers (Arai and Hoshino)? In that case, there were no distinct 'PCM Electra models'. When the so-called 'lawsuit period' ended, SLM quit ordering from the distributors and went straight to the factories, Matsumoku and Terada, for their models. PCM then went to Kasuga and in the early 80's started ordering the thorn-headstock models we know and hate- which appear to be very early Korean models an wound up being very similar to Cort models.

That means the PCM electras I've been calling 'early electras' were actually late. And the assumption likewise that the round-E Electra logo is early 70's has its exception too. SLM replaced the Round-E logo with the peace sign logo (there was also a diagonal Gibson-style logo that I -suspect- was from Fujigen) But PCM kept right on using that same logo for its own exclusive Kasuga-built guitars, some of which were excellent, and many of which were copies, even into the 80's. Remember, it was Hondo who really first blatently sold strat copies in the 80's and they were Kasuga-made too.

We got way off the topic of your strat, but bee of good cheer. It looks like good quality to me, wait until you get it and replace the strings and set it up. Do you set up guitars? Even a beginner can set up a strat well enough to tell if it's going to be a good player.

Keep us posted!

Thanks for the encouragement guys. I do have the guitar and have had it for a couple of months or more. I'll take it out and look it over and get back to you.

I must say that the headstock picture is what sold me. The headstock and the top of the neck looked vintage to my eye. I did think that if it was real, it was a 2275b. Obviously, there wasn't much else it could have been unless it had been repainted. It does look a lot like the one you pictured, which is what I was going by, of course. At least it did in the auction pics.

I'll get it out when I get some time and get into it some more.

It's too bad the Japanese guitars didn't have pot codes and such so that they could be dated / approximated.

Your point about a fake Electra is a good one. On the other hand, if you rip someone off for the price of a Fender you could have some serious trouble on your hands. He had listed this guitar and case at least once before with no takers (and I think at least twice before), so he knew this was not going to go for that much above the opening bid of $200. Given the inclusion of the nice case, he knew the buyer would likely not make THAT much of a fuss even if unhappy with the guitar.

Which is about how it came out in the end.

Well, seems you were right on the money. I'm keeping you posted, as per your request.

If you check out my recent post -

http://www.rivercityamps.com/electrafor ... ght=#18049

I can now tell you that I've been exchanging emails with the seller of that "Fender Electra" and he did know about the black headstock and white lettering from his own personal knowledge. Turns out that he got the guitar from a friend who'd owned it for 7 or 8 years and who stripped off the black paint and white lettering this past summer, adding the Fender decals at that time.

He said he knew about my post here and had seen my auction pics of my guitar. He said his guitar's headstock looked exactly like mine before the alteration to a Fender logo.

He told me some other things about his that have pretty much convinced me that mine is indeed a real original Electra 2275b. I'd have to say that it's a very early model. It does not have the quality of the Matsumoku Electras that I'm so familiar with. I also own several Uncle Mattie Vantages, so I'm quite familiar with the Matsumoku quality during the Golden Age.

So I guess I'm satisfied -- not to mention happy that I didn't get ripped off. I guess I owe my seller a big apology cuz I really let him have it back then. I was sure he had ripped me off. We didn't even exchange feedback because I wasn't giving him any good feedback and he wasn't about to leave me any good feedback first.

Live and learn, huh?



P.S.: I finally had the guitar out today -- for the first time since my last post here -- and the thing is a pretty interesting player. Has some funky sounds to it and quite playable. Still, I think I won't be keeping it. I'd rather get it to someone who'll appreciate it more and use the cash toward something else for my collection, which is already much larger than it should be. I mean, who really needs three (3) X-270's???? Which I've had for 2+ years now w/o really playing any of them.

But I am making progress on working my way thru the collection. I finally recently got out the other of my two (2) Vantage VP-795s -- the nearly mint one with the Seymour Duncan pups -







I hadn't really played this one much after I got it in my ebay spree nearly three years ago. My how time flies! The other one is a walnut color job and a bit less pristine but a wonderful player. I've played that one a lot but it recently developed a problem with the bridge pup, so I got this one out for an airing and now I can't put it down. It's just a beautiful and wonderful guitar. It's nearly mint and sounds so sweet and plays so great. It's an '81 vintage and Uncle Mattie was sure making some beautiful guitars in those days. Fer sure.

I know this is a little off topic, but your vantage looks alot like the higher end 'Skylark' Models you see once in a while. Sweet.