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.
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