Hi all, long time reader, occasional poster... Long post, sorry if I bore anyone! I just picked up this guitar from a local pawn shop:



The headstock appears to say "Camac".



Of particular interest is that whatever its origin, it has a pretty low serial number of 000238, which appears to be rubber stamped onto the wood and clear coated.



I did some internet research and I am down to two opinions:
1) it was made a long time ago (in the 70s) in France by the Camac harp company (had a brief foray into electric guitars, didn't do well and stopped production) and
2) this is some variation from a Japanese maker...

I would greatly appreciate anyone's insight into this guitar. And because I know this forum LOVES data, I've taken lots of pics to assist in your detective work!. I've also included a poll to try and make it a little fun (and you can change your mind later too).

An overview: this is a double humbucker guitar; the HBs have individually adjustable pole pieces and solid black plastic pickup surrounds.





Has neck thru construction with a 25 1/2 inch scale! If you can identify the wood from the pictures, please chime in!



It has Schaller tuners and is well constructed and well shielded.





Even the control cover is shielded!



This is a close up of the writing scratched into the foil:



The two mini switches cut the coils on the HBs (which have no numbers or identifying markings I could find).

Standard Les Paul style three way pickup selector switch. Controls are a bit crowded and they are front pickup volume, selector switch, bridge pickup volume, master tone.



The bridge is not magnetic, so I am guessing that it is chromed brass. The saddles ARE magnetic though (they looked like graphite to me at first).

Forgive me for my ignorance, but I wasn't sure the correct way to use my radius gauges from Stew Mac, so I put pics up showing me measuring on the first and last fret as well as the fret board itself. Seems as if a compound board, as it most closely matches the 7 1/4 at the first fret and 9 1/2 at the 24th (yep, two full octaves). Sorry for the poor pics, was doing a balancing act and couldn't focus very well.







It has has a lot of action over the years, lots of dimples and road wear. Most serious is a slight crack on the fret board between the nut and the first fret and what appears to be a crack in the finish only on the first string side of the neck.





The neck is good and straight, though.



The nut has been non-professionally replaced, I'm thinking perhaps the original was damaged in the spill that caused the finish crack.





I took a close up of one of the pots in hopes someone smarter than me might be able to "crack the code".



Finally, it came in an old Gibson case.



Well, there you have it. I hope you don't mind a long post. I thought it would be fun to find out if I found a hidden gem or just a run of the mill, well made, but inconsequential guitar. I like it, and it's unique at least to me. Not too often I've seen Fender scale double humbucker neck-thru guitars.

Thanks in advance!

This guitar made me rock hard. You probably rock hard with it as well.

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1984 Squier Contemporary Stratocaster
1986 Peavey Envoy 110
1967 Kingston Acoustic

See if you can find some other numbers on your pots. The numbers in your picture do not correspond to any date codes I know of. The 137 number could indicate a CTS pot. The guitar looks to be a late 70s or early 80's manufacture. I've seen several similar designs from that time period. Most likely Japanese made for Camac. If it plays well clean it up and keep it. Kind of reminds me of an Alembic. Gretsch had a similar model about that time period called the Beast.

Looks Matsumoko(sp?) to me. That's some pretty wood. Probably has oem Dimarzio's.

I'm not really into these kind of 6 string guitars, though.

Thanks for the input,please keep it coming!

This guitar looks more like it was made by the Vantage Company of Japan, made by Matsumoka...google them, they certainly have the same characteristics of build in both style and quality.

T2

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What time is it? It's Fender Time.

The dinosaur, a minute, got enough interest to stay around for those fans. Could vote neither. Seems like you're having fun, enjoy

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you can save the world with your guitar one love song at a time it's just better, more fun, easier with a fender solid body electric guitar or electric bass guitar.

I would say that it is almost a given that the guitar is late 70s-early 80s,it has the same "3 wood species sandwich"neck through body style that Matsumoka and a lot of Japanese makers such as Ibanez,Aria etc. were making at the time.My guess would be DiMarzio pickups too as the DiMarzio super distortion pups were in their heyday at that time.If these mini-toggles are coil-tap or phase reverse switches and the pickups are in fact DiMarzios,you could very well have a screamer of a guitar that would sound great through a JCM 800 Marshall from the same era.Congrats on picking up such a unique find.

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'65 Strat,65 Mustang,65 Jaguar,4 more Strats,3 vintage Vox guitars,5 Vox amps,'69 Bassman with a '68 2-15 Bassman cab,36 guitars total-15asst'd amps total,2 vintage '60s Hammond organs & a myriad of effects-with a few rare vintage ones.

cool looking collection of wood and metal!

If they are not dimarzios, the pickups look very much like mighty mite screamers, save for the fact they don't have MIGHTY MITE MFG on the back. The screamers are essential the same as the dimarzio super distortion. If MM used the dimarzio design, maybe others did too? I have one in the bridge of one of my strats w/coil tap, and it rocks - if it was good enough for EVH, it is good enough for me.



All three pots look a little different - are they? If they are it would be unusual for a manufacturer to use totally different pots in a build, so some or all of them could be replacements.

The one you photographed could well be a CTS pot for the exact same reason tdanb2003 gave. The other four digits you can don't make sense with the CTS code - it would suggest 81st week of 1963 - but it could well be an Ernie Ball part number though (the solder being on top of the four CTS date digits).

Oh, and if the serials are sequential, this one on ebay was made 10 guitars after yours...http://www.ebay.de/itm/120892365801?nma=true&si=uHvMCh1R2qXQ4KNcWpgYvNrg%2F8A%3D&rt=nc&_trksid=p4340.l2557&orig_cvip=true

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Mater tua criceta fuit, et pater tuo redoluit bacarum sambucus

I'm often amazed at the number of 'face value pieces of junk' which constitute the go-to guitars for those making great music. Bottom line..".If it feels good...do it!"

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"Another day in paradise!"

p.s. I reckon made in Japan, Chushin factory, for Camac, a French harp company.

Chushin apparently spoke to Alembic in the 70s about lamination and through neck construction, so there might be a reason for the more-than-passing resembelance to an Alembic instrument.

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Mater tua criceta fuit, et pater tuo redoluit bacarum sambucus

Hi collinsml: hmm, interesting.

If you look through the models on this page then yours is quite similar to some of them, such as the Vantage VS Performer:

http://www.matsumoku.org/models/vantage/vantage.html

Similar - but not the same, in any respect. Body shapes, hardware, control layouts and such are all distinctly different.

I'm wondering whether what you've got is a homemade guitar from that era, which its builder based on designs similar to those in the link because that's what was trendy at the time?

The reasons I think it's homemade are a whole row of small details. The pegholes are badly placed, as you can see from the front and especially the back. The tuners are installed slightly crooked. The fingerboard radiusing is irregular - that's not a compound neck, it's just an inexpertly made one. The homespun trussrod cover. The string ferrules on the back are very irregularly installed - which to be sure is a tricky task to achieve well without factory equipment. The ferrules are the easier-to-install non-flush ones, which hints at someone having trouble with that sort of detail. The "moustache" at the top of the headstock is rather asymmetrical and speaks of someone cutting it out with a handheld piercing saw and files, rather than a factory jig. The rubber stamp serial number is a classic homebuilder touch, as is the optimistic six digit number.

And so on.

None of that is conclusive, and if someone comes up with an exact match for maker and model I shall turn out to be wrong and happily put my hands up. Still, that's my instinct.

And as always, the only important thing is how it sounds and feels. It's a musical instrument and if it works well as such then that's absolutely the only thing that counts. Rock it with pride!

Cheers - C

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Excellent bit of deductive reasoning there, Ceri and a good eye for it too. Of course that goes without saying....
I'd like to mention another item which may further point to a home fabrication theory. I can't shake the gut feeling that the "wing" wood is hemlock, a softwood conifer.

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Just think of how awesome a guitar player you could have been by now if you had only spent the last 10 years practicing instead of obsessing over pickups and roasted maple necks.

I agree with the softwood. Big, soft growthrings. The center stripe looks to be mahogany (of some sort), and maple or possibly birch. Some kind of blonde, tight grain hardwood. Neither of them are very pretty woods in my opinion but together they do make a dramatic stripe!

Peace,
Gridlok

Hmmmm, you guys have me wondering now! Mine looks a lot like this one that my web search turned up (hope it is ok to link this pic):



I found this at a site called "Brandoni Custom Guitars". I don't claim there is any link between my guitar and this one, though... I have found a few isolated instances of "Camac" 'round the web...

I just sent the fellow at Brandoni an email with a few pics to see if I can get any info, hoepfully he'll reply one way or the other. He's in the UK, apparently.

I really appreciate the input gang!