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Valco Vintage Guitarsby Dawn Vogel
Several brand names are associated with Valco vintage guitars, including Supro, National, Oahu, and Airline. The best known Valco guitars are those from the 1960s, when the company began manufacturing electric guitars made from fiberglass. Fiberglass was an exciting material at the time, since it could be made in any color of the rainbow, allowing the guitars to actually be unnatural colors, rather than being painted to look that way. Valco called this fiberglass “Res-O-Glas,” and described it as “Space Age Polyester Glass.” The terms may cause some amusement now that we have entered the twenty-first century, but in the 1960s, this substance was considered very hi-tech. The Valco guitars of the 1960s looked like solid body electric guitars, though the bodies were actually made in two pieces. These guitars also introduced the “Gumby” headstock—so named for its resemblance to the Gumby character of television fame. Guitars from both the Supro and National lines were manufactured from “Res-O-Glas,” and a wide variety of shapes and colors were available to the public. Some of the names of the vintage Valco electric guitars in the Supro brand included the Ozark, the Martinique, the Bermuda, and the Belmont, while the National brand included the Newport and the Glenwood 99. Some of these models had been manufactured from wood prior to the 1960s, and saw a revival when Valco began making guitars from fiberglass. Valco also experimented with an acoustic guitar made from fiberglass, the Supro Folk Star. Unfortunately, while fiberglass works fine for the body of an electric guitar that uses external amplification, fiberglass makes a pretty lousy acoustic guitar, as it does not allow for the internal amplification that is such a vital part of acoustic guitars. This guitar was widely marketed to country and folk singers, but remained in production for only a few years, due to the decline of the guitar market and the liquidation of Valco Guitar, as the company had come to be known. Although the fiberglass Valco vintage guitars were only manufactured from 1962 to 1967, they are popular among vintage guitar collectors. While Supro amplifiers may be better known, owing partially to their use by both Jimmy Page and Jimmy Hendrix, these innovative vintage guitars are an important part of the history of the electric guitar. ------------------------------------------------ |
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