ilovefuzz.com

Harmony Bobcats are great! I used to have one. Haven't played a new one. They may be "better made", but I'm sure they don't feel the same.

That EVA clone is much rarer than a Maestro. Probably not as generally appealing, but a nice score for a ring mod collector.

apparently there are new (and assumedly pricey) Silvertones coming as well. if they’re going to bring back funky guitars from the city i grew up in, couldn’t they do one of those uber-chonker Kay jumbos? or bring back the Supros with the fiberglass tops. those were great guitars and now the reissues of some models are, again, as costly as original National/Valco builds.

Those Chicago days were truly the Golden Age of Budget Guitars.

and i was too young and totally missed it. none of the good/cool Silvertones or Nationals were made beyond the late 50s->mid-60s and were rare as hen’s teeth because they didn’t sell a lot of them.

if i could go anywhere in any era to buy guitars other than 1968-70 when less loved Gibsons like the ES-125/150 were going for $100 if you could sell one—i bought my ES-335 for $250 in 1975 when still nobody wanted them
other than blues dudes—it would be the 60s to stock up on goofy-looking guitars like Nationals, guitars with patterned vinyl coverings, and crackpot specs like the Wandré necks. Germany i think did better with patterned vinyl; Italian guitars try to epitomize the peculiarities and tend to fall down in the pickup department. but i could probably make a crappy one playable.

those baby thinline ES guitars that you could hardly give away in the late 60s/early 70s now go for $1500 and up.