SUZUKI MOCKINGBIRD Vintage Electric Guitar – mij – lawsuit era – w/HSC – BC Rich copy

 

Hello, you are bidding on one of my favorite guitars, a super-rare Suzuki Mockingbird-copy lawsuit-era Electric Guitar.  It comes with a hard shell guitar case w/ a key.

I’ve owned this guitar for a long time.  I purchased this guitar used in September 1989.  I remembered this date because I had started a new job then.  When I bought this guitar, it didn’t have a HSC, so I bought a used HSC shortly afterwards.  This is a Japanese-made Suzuki electric guitar.  Suzuki got on the bandwagon in the late 1970s & early 1980s and started copying USA-made guitars, following in the footsteps of Ibanez, Aria, Tokai and a few other Japanese guitar makers.  Sometimes these Japanese guitar makers made better quality guitars than Fender & Gibson, etc., when their quality started decreasing.  Many of these lawsuit guitars are prized collectible guitars.  I bought this guitar because it was a Suzuki and because of its shape, its feel and its clear finish on the natural mahogany wood.

 It has a brass nut, 22 frets, smooth neck, nice frets, feel, balance and I wanted a cool looking, quality guitar with toggle switches for extra tones.

Japanese-made Suzukis are definitely keepers and one rarely sees them for sale.  Suzuki made acoustic guitars for a long time and some acoustic players say they sound like Martins.   Suzuki later began producing electric guitars.  They made quality-made guitars and some were very ornate.

 Japanese-made Suzukis were made for a long time and then suddenly they were bought-out around 1995.  About 10-15 years later, Suzuki electric guitars reappeared, but they were being made in China of all places using cheaper components and have a lack of workmanship and  had the look and feel as being cheaply made.  Japanese-made Suzuki guitars have an inlay in the headstock, whereas the Chinese-made Les Paul & Strat copies have a decal.  This is the easy way to tell if it is Japanese-made or Chinese-made electric guitar.

 Japanese-made electric Suzukis came in the popular models, mainly Strat & Les Pauls, sometimes very ornate, (Gibson –copy) Flying V’s, Explorers, 335s, (BC Rich-copy) Mockingbirds & Eagles.

 "Back in the day" after BC Rich introduced their line of neck-thru guitars, I dreamed of their Mockingbird model, but I never could afford one in the late 70s.  I thought that the “father” (Bernardo Chavez Rico) was an innovative guitar designer who wanted a super-quality guitar that offered neck-thru guitars with a lot of electronic options like toggle switches, etc.  When the father left his business to his son, I thought that the son had let quality slip dramatically by introducing cheaply-made alternatives and by shifting production to other third world countries.  I still dreamed of buying a Mockingbird with added electronics.  I moved from the Midwest to Anchorage, Alaska in 1981 and this one guitar shop owner, a master luthier from Czechoslovakia owned an American-made Fender shop and he raved about Suzuki guitars, with the Strat, Les Paul & Mockingbird copies being his favorites.

 I ended up buying this Mockingbird copy in 1989.  It wasn’t the neck-thru and it wasn’t a bolt on, but a better set-neck guitar.  It was a string-thru, it had a better brass nut and it had my desired toggle switches.  I liked the clear coat finish on the mahogany wood.

 The following Suzuki info was taken from the internet:

Some Suzuki History...

This is a blog dedicated to older Suzuki Guitars.

(For a look at cataloged pictures collected so far, please go to Suzuki-Guitars.com)

Suzuki Guitars have been around since the early 1900's and have attracted a growing interest by players and collectors alike. The company may be known by the generic label "Suzuki", but there are actually three different Japanese companies that have manufactured guitars under the name of Suzuki to the present time - Kiso Suzuki, Nagoya Suzuki, M Suzuki (Manji Suzuki)/Suzuki (modern company) but Kiso and Nagoya have a common ancestry.

Masakichi Suzuki started making violins in 1887 and became well-known in a short time - because of a combination of good timing and quality.

He made guitars starting in the early 1900's, and early models are pretty rare.

After the 2nd World War, his original company was split into two - Kiso Suzuki Violin Company, run by one of his sons, and the Nagoya Suzuki Violin Company, run by another son. Both companies made guitars, as well as other stringed instruments for awhile.

Kiso-Suzuki manufactured guitars in the region of Kiso-Fukushima, Nagano prefecture.

Nagoya Suzuki manufactured guitars in the region of Nagoya Japan.

They manufactured about the same number of models as Kiso, and many of their model numbers are the same. But each had different brands and labels, but both are well-liked by owners of their guitars.

Some background...

Masakichi Suzuki (1859-1944 )was Japan's first violin producer. His father was a samurai moonlighter who also made shamisens in Nagoya. Masakichi succeeded his father's craft business that soon failed. In the push for westernization in Meiji, he naturally became interested in shamisen's western counterpart: violin. In the 1880s, he started to manually produce and sell violins. He founded the Suzuki Violin Factory in 1900. By 1910, his factory was producing 65,800 violins per year. Nagoya became the manufacturing center of string musical instruments.

There was 'one' Suzuki company before the 2nd World War. After the war, a entity created by the US and allies called GHQ (for General Headquarters) dismantled some parts of 'Imperial' Japan and some companies were closed or restructured. In Suzuki's case, the company was separated into - the Suzuki Violin Company, changing to the Kiso Suzuki Violin Company and the Suzuki Violin Manufacturing Company came to be called the Nagoya Suzuki Violin Company.

Kiso Suzuki went bankrupt in 1987 and the machines and materials were sold to ESP.
Nagoya Suzuki stopped making guitars in 1989.

Many guitar players own more than one guitar, yet a common story it seems is that the Suzuki guitar is the one played most often, or that stays with them when all others are sold.

 This is a quality Japanese-made guitar, who took pride in their workmanship.  This guitar isn’t made in Korea, Taiwan, Vietnam, Indonesia or the crap that China exports.

 I have owned this guitar for over 27 years since September 1989.  It’s a gorgeous guitar and a real nice playing guitar.  I can play fast chord changes and leads easily due to the very nice neck & rosewood fingerboard.  All of the frets are nice. 

 There are some nicks in the finish and it came this way when I originally bought it.

 Shipping to anywhere in the USA is $85.oo.  This is being shipped from Alaska and will be sent via USPS Priority Mail, so you should get it in about a week or less.  If you live in a different country, please inquire beforehand and shipping would probably be double or more.

 Thank you for looking.  This would be a great guitar to own and play.

Kick Out The Jams!!!