Details about the Buick

Now that I have one of these guitars in my hands, let us explore some of the finer points that are relevant to guitar players.

First and foremost, the guitar is a solidbody, obviously. It's the standard 1.75" thick, and the body wood is Mahogany (quite possibly Honduran or some other tropical variety). Its neck is maple and rosewood. The body is a lot smaller than the photos make it look. It's actually quite compact.

I'm not usually a fan of gloss finish on necks (they tend to slow me down), but this one doesn't seem to have that effect. The headstock runs straight with the neck, unlike the slight tilt-back of later specimens. String trees hold the first four strings in place. Note the matte black washer on the 2nd string tuning machine. This points to either some sort of mod in its life or a jumbled assembly with spare parts.

Vintage Schaller tuning machines, labeled "Made in W. Germany". A Cold War relic! This was probably one of the most exciting things to find on this guitar.

From what I've been able to gather, the Motherbuckers were wound to a DC resistance of at least 4.3K-ohms per coil, which puts the three together at somewhere around 13K. This is fairly hot, especially for its time, though the sound it produces is still very clear and rich in harmonics--very little mud, if any. The output drops like a marble in the sink when coils are switched out of phase due to their proximity, though the sounds produced could still be usable in some context.

The neck screws are unplated brass, I can tell from the tarnishing. But is this neckplate brass or gold? Who knows? Just another finger pointing towards "thrown together"--it is a prototype after all. That control cavity plate is chrome. The wiring inside is kinda rat's nest looking, but, again, prototype.

These frets still have plenty of life in them. The action is extremely low, which makes this guitar unbelievably easy to play.  The 5th-string-offset inlays were JBP's signature touch at the time.

All in all it's a fantastic instrument, built like a tank and unprecedentedly elegant. The perfect new wave guitar, which is what it was made for after all. The only complaint I really have is the fact that the single pickup doesn't give you the same timbral range you can get with a guitar with 2 or 3 pickups spaced from body to neck. But it's a detail I'm more than willing to overlook to focus on the fact that I have this thing at all. 11/10, would bust down the doors of some current guitar company and demand they put it back in production.

The Buick Prototype is Mine.

 The readership of this blog is near zero, I know, and that's okay. I still need some sort of place to consolidate all my thoughts through this hyperfixation of mine. That means I'm going to share some exciting news with all... three of you.

So, I've talked about Bob Mothersbaugh's Buick models being in the possession of author Jade Dellinger. But there was one detail I intentionally left out. Those two were not the only two he had. No... there was one more.

Yes, my friends, there was a white one in his collection as well. It was the prototype version, displayed at NAMM in 1982 and lying low for decades hence. I conveniently left out any mention of it because I wanted to keep a particular detail a secret. Mr. Dellinger was considering selling it and simply keeping Bob's.

Now, an opportunity like this presents itself at the very most once in a lifetime. I had a replica Mercury I was going to work on, but the chance to own a genuine USA-made J.B. Player was something I could not possibly pass up. Jade gave me a price. I accepted and got the money together. I was ready by the early October.

And on the 28th, it arrived.

I've gotta say, it's better than I could ever have dreamed. Dana Zacuto was a master. It sounds like new wave--the Motherbucker is powerful but still bright and harmonically rich, like a beefy, MSG-seasoned Strat. The neck, as Eric Lamb said, is supremely comfortable and fast-feeling. The action is incredibly low, on par with some Michael Kelly guitars I've played. This is truly a player's guitar. It's effortless. Easily my greatest treasure.

I'll get to specifics in the next post, but in the meantime I'd like to thank Jade Dellinger one more time. You've made my year.

I've been so enthused about owning this thing I made this:

Photos from Associate & Player Eric Lamb

 Eric Lamb was mentioned in one of my first blog posts. Since then I've managed to get in contact with him and receive some very rare photos. 

The first two are of Eric performing with his band Chops. The third is a promo shot for S-Crew, an underground LA punk group that Eric was also part of. In all of these, he's brandishing a Buick. His words: 

"The best thing these guitars had besides their design was the neck on them. Dana tried to copy an original '60s Strat neck when he had those being made.... Mighty Mite did a lot but Dana later started having the guitars assembled overseas and then set up and fine tuned at his factory in Westlake."

I've been told as well that there may be video of S-Crew performing live, with the Buick in action. If that can be found, I'll be first to tell you. Big thanks to Eric Lamb for sharing all these things!

Some New Views of Jan Kuehnemund's Mercury

 I recently found the film Hardbodies on a movie streaming site. I have nothing to really say about the film, because the whole time I was skipping through looking for shots of Vixen performing. This paid off. I have two new pictures of Jan Kuehnemund's Mercury!

Please forgive the video window elements; I had to pause to grab the frame and the bar doesn't fade like on YouTube.

So, this reveals some new information about the instrument that couldn't be so clearly seen in The 1985 ad posted before. It's possible that these are two completely different guitars (Steve Bartek of Oingo Boingo, after all, said he received two as well), but let's go over what we can infer:

Firstly, I believed the pickups installed to be early Lace humbuckers. I can see now I was wrong--for both guitars, these  are most likely Mighty Mite 1800 "Super Stud" humbuckers. The bobbins on Jan's guitar are transparent, so you can see the wire coiled around, which from a distance (or in low resolution) can look like gold foils or the aforementioned Laces.

Second, the color. In the 1985 ad, her guitar is pretty clearly Pelham blue. Here, there's a bit of a blue bias in the lighting and the guitar still appears to be a sort of amethyst color, or maybe royal or electric purple. Steve Bartek has said that JBP had a phase where all their guitars were painted in what he called "nail polish colors".

Third, while the guitar in the ad has a Kahler tremolo, this specimen appears to have a standard S-type tremolo system. Based on the visible geometry in the second photo I am guessing this was a Mighty Mite ST111-B

Fourth, the controls. On the guitar in the ad there are two knobs, most likely master volume and tone, plus a toggle selector switch. The one in the film has three knobs. I'm inclined to guess that this guitar had a blend control. Dana Zacuto was known for being an experimenter, after all.

This guitar can obviously be seen in other scenes of the movie, but this was where it was most clear. Sadly Jan Kuehnemund is no longer with us to answer questions and I don't even know where I would begin to find people who might know something. If you have a tip, please tell me.