The Electra Forums

I believe you are correct that this is the first Electra. I have one as well. It is a copy of a Hagstrom II. Japanese makers began copying their competition in the mid 1960s. Competition meant European guitars. EKO violin bodies were early copies (and THEY were copies of Hofners!). Ricky and Mosrite copies were around by 1966 or '67. Hagstrom had been pretty successful throughout the '60s. I recall renting a bass for a band in 1967 and the music store rentals were Hagstroms. These were the low-end guitars that the Japanese were trying to replace, so it's natural that they'd copy them. It wasn't until the Gibson LP Custom "Black Beauty" reissue was unveiled at NAMM in 1968 that they got the notion that they could copy Gibsons and Fenders, and started to do so. The neck is a Framus copy in terms of structure. These show up on both Kawais and Teiscos of this period (Kawai bought Teisco in Jan. '67). My example has a solid mahogany body. It COULD have been made by Matsumoku, but who knows? Also, it was not uncommon for Japanese manufacturers to source parts from someone else. So it is possible that there was one company making this neck and those similar ones on Kawais and Teiscos. Then, again, it seems to have taken Japanese manufacturers about 10 minutes to copy each other when someone got a good idea! These are capable of being set up pretty well. Even those pickups aren't as bad as you might think. I'm pretty sure that SLM didn't set out to copy Hagstrom; it probably just wanted a budget guitar and picked this one out of the lineup. This is a very nice piece!