I have not posted any new blogs lately. Been busy with ho hum repairs but nothing to blog about.
Until yesterday. A friend brought me his electric guitar to have a look at. We play in a church band weekly, and as we walked to our cars, he got this out of his car and opened the case in the dark and said "Here ya go" All I could see was a very strange shape, like a Vox Phantom with a neck, having a slotted headstock. What I found when I got home
was something my eyes had never seen!
A bit of research and image search on line, and I found out just what it is.
It's a 1967 Domino Californian Rebel Model # 80E2.
Ok, but who made Domino? It looked like Teisco to me, but I never paid attention to the cheaper stuff from Japan, when there was Fender!
I was pretty close! Kawai purchased Teisco in 1967, and probably the remainder of their raw materials. They made this 1967 Domino. These products were imported and distributed by Maurice Lipsky Music Co. in NYC.
By 1967, the biggest electric guitar boom of the 60's was slacking, so not many of this model were brought over from Japan. This is very rare.
I got her on the bench and plugged into an amp and it was quiet till I tapped on the volume control. Then it sprang to life.
I figured it just needed to have the controls cleaned. In order to get the panel off to view the controls, the bridge, bridge bushings, and tailpiece had to be removed.
I got her apart, and used WD40 to clean the volume and tone controls. With stuff this old, I was not going to use contact cleaner. Sometimes, that will just cement up the inside of the control. With something this rare, I did not want to replace any parts. That would devalue the net worth of it.
The WD40 worked! Next, I only had to tighten the slide switches and three way switch. The ground wire did come off the control panel, requiring one solder connection to be renewed.
The bolt on neck seemed loose. I filled the neck screw holes and remounted the neck.
The controls are too cool. Normally, there would be a three way selector switch to select between the two pickups, but not this baby! It has two slide switches to select each pickup on or off. The three way switch selects three distinct tones for each pickup. My guess is cut coil, series/parallel, and maybe phase?
The bridge comes with a mute lever, just like the Fender Jaguars! The vibrato assembly also borrows from the Jag and Jazzmaster.
There we have it! Today, It gets new strings and set up! I got a funny feeling these pickups are gonna sound sweet!
PS: Later in the day! Got the strings on, and things copacetic with the wangle of the dangle, and I was wrong about the three way switch; The middle position selects a larger value tone capacitor. The other two positions give series/parallel. All the positions and selections sound great! Rock on Domino
