The Electra Forums

Ok....Here we go again. I am a collector of Electra guitars, I have a 335 Maple Pro, an Outlaw, a Strat, a Tele and three X340 Lp's, but what I bought on Ebay the other day is blowing my mind.

I bought a Electra Les Paul Custom that is an exact copy of a Gibson Les Paul Custom (except it has a rosewood frett board). Here are the specks: No Serial or Model number, The font of the logo on the headstock is the same font on my Tele and can be seen on The electra page under 2270c Telecaster, however I cannot find this Lp guitar on that page. It has a set neck with Gibson bell shaped tuners, and these are really nice sealed machine tuners, Gibson mustache headstock (exact copy) with a gibson style truss rod cover, the head stock has a gibson custom look, which is a big pearl inlay dimond on black backround. Full tripple Binding on head stock and and body front and back (body only) 3 way toggle control, Big insanly perfect block pearl frett markers, exactly like a Gibson LP custom.
The guitar is absolutly beautiful! The neck is a fat Gibson feeling neck. The neck joint also is an identical match to a gibson. The color is red wine on gold, Mahogony body with a rosewood cap or some other wood that has a open grain. I think the neck is maple but I can't really see the grain. The pickups seem to be super magnaflux pickups under a gold cover, they have the square poles, so i'm guessing on this one. I opened up one of the pickups and they were a little different than the standard magnaflux, insted of the coils sharing one bar magnet, each coil has it's own magnet. I'm going to say this with some reservation because of all the hype around this subject; This must be a Lawsiut model, it's a copy of a Gibson, even the bridge and post pieces are the same size as a Gibson and will interchange with a Gibson LP. Anyway, as soon as I get motavated I'll post some pic's.

Has anyone out there seen a Guitar like this one, I'm calling it a "Electra Les Paul Custom". It's one fine example of Japanese craftmanship.

It sounds like a 76 Omega. The Omegas were the set-neck LP copies, and in their first year (76) they still had the Gibson-style fan headstock, before switching to the wave headstock in 77.

I'm thinking that if you look at the Omegas (X210, X220, X230, X240) you'll find one that's close to your guitar. Remember that hardware and details changed over the years and in many cases we only have picture of one year, so individuals may have different details. The neck and body materials, however should be the same. Any matches?

It would be great to see pictures of your guitar, it sounds like a beauty. The Omegas were btw the first Electra guitar designed by Tom Presley, before he designed the MPC, Phoenixes, and others. I'm especially eager to see details of a 76, especially that headstock logo (round-E style) and any serial number, especially the first few digits (any letters in there?).

76 was an interesting transition year, as SLM was beginning to move from distributors like Arai and Hoshino and dealing directly with the factories. My 76 Studio Zephyr, although bolt-neck, has many interesting details which point to it being an early Matsumoku, most likely distributed by Hoshino. I'm guessing yours may have many of the same. If so, it provides an interesting link between the earlier models that give us vital clues about who made what.

I find that among Electra LP's the ones with Round-E logos are invariably better than the ones with Gibson-style italic logos, even though the latter often have nicer binding and trim. My guess is that the Round-E LP's were Matt and the Italic-logo LP's were Fujigen. Pics of your guitar might help add pieces to that puzzle.

It's not an Omega. It does not have the carved back and it does not have coil splitter switches. It has a straight back with tripple binding. It's not on the Electra page. I've never seen one like this. Some of the parts are found on other Electras such as the headstock, the tunning heads, the Diamond design on the headstock, the bell shaped truss rod cover, the logo etc.. But not in this configuration. If you give me your email I will send you some pic's. my email is jhfox@cox.net

Well as an update I just reinstalled the Bridge pickup after getting it repaired and wax potted, this is the first time I have heard the original pickup....oh my God!! The Bridge pickup is unreal, It's hot, bright and super clear. I am so jazzed I'm in total disbelief about this, all I can say is WOW! The neck pickup is still being repaired and I will update after I install it.

PS. For some reason the lead wires had come off of both pickups so that's what the repair was.

Fantastic!

And now you know firsthand the rest of the 'lawsuit' story- you can understand why Gibson and Fender, faced with escalating costs and quality problems in their home plants decided that instead of suing the japanese makers, instead they'd license them to make authorized models, since the quality was so high in some cases.