ShortScale.org

westtexasred wrote:I guess they only made these for a short time(67-69?).



This is from Mike Wright's Guitar Stories Vol 1:

""The idea for a Kustom guitar began in 1966, when Ross and some other local guitarists got
together a design for an electric guitar.At that time there was a guitar manufacturing factory just starting up in Neodesha Kansas.
According to Ross, he approached the Neodesha factory with the Kustom design and they agreed
to produce them, with Kustom marketing the guitars under the Kustom name.

According to Ross,this plant did indeed produce some of the guitars he'd designed, but instead of delivering them to
Kustom, the guitars were sold to Wurlitzer and bore the Wurlitzer logo. Wurlitzer did, in fact,
market solid-body electric guitars manufactured by the Neodesha factory, although whether or not
the styles most frequently found are the ones designed by Bud Ross and friends is uncertain.
Needless to say, Ross was bummed out and he forgot about guitars. Until, that is, one day in
1967 when one Doyle Reeding came knocking at his door.

Reeding had been a local woodworking teacher who quit teaching to work over in Neodesha at the guitar factory. for one
reason or another, Reeding and the guitar factory had parted company. reeding had some ideas
for a guitar and wanted to make them for Ross. At about this time the Neodesha facotry went out
of business, but the chronology here has become a little fuzzy with the passing of time.

In any case, Reeding moved to Chanute in the fall of '67 and he and Ross set up the guitar making
factory. Another woodworking teacher was hired, Wesley Valorie, and the three (well, mostly
Reeding and Valorie) set about designing and making Kustom guitars.

Kustom guitars, with a design completely different from the Wurlitzer model, debuted in the summer of 1968. they were
semi-hollow bodies made of four pieces of wood. Two were glued together and hollowed out,
making a front, another two a back, and then glued together to complete the guitar. the thin fast
necks were bolted on and had a curved truss rod design. Pickups were DeArmonds, vibratos by
Bigsby. Input for the design was provided by none other than country guitar wizard Roy Clark,
who several years previously had listened to Ross' amplifiers and who later became a Kustom
amp endorser.

It's easy to see why someone would think that either Rickenbacker or Moseley had
something to do with these guitars. The body, with its single cats-eye sound hole, has a very Rick
look to it, and the neck, skinny two piece maple with zero fret, could easily seem like a Mosrite.
Even the knobs look Ricky. However, these were the original (wherever they got their inspiration)
and hail from Kansas."

pumpkin wrote:
Where's the Gold Top?