NGD! Help me I.D. this vintage... Teisco?

[Stratelejazzuar]

I was thrift store browsing with my girlfriend the other week, and this "as-is"-labeled little guy was leaning in a corner. $40 CAD (so like... $5 USD? lol )
The main issue was that the bridge is missing. I figured that for $40, it was worth a chance on the pickups alone (goldfoils), and if the whole thing was just a write off, it'd make for decent living room decor.

My girlfriend and I searched around online for about a half-hour each to try to figure out what exactly it was. She figures it's a Sears-something. I figure Teisco-something. We found a few very similar but there are no markings showing on the outside of this thing.

It was all scratchy plugged in, but the pickups work. The strings were resting on the pole pieces, so I jammed a string winder into place to do some better testing. All seems to work, but the pots are a little squishy feeling.







Whatever is in place of the nut looks like a snapped off chopstick. I have an old acoustic nut from a snapped off headstock that I'll replace it with. For the bridge, I don't really want to spend any money on an original, and a repro from China would cost half of what I paid, so I think I'm going to go the DIY route and just grind/file/cut/shape something out of a piece of aluminum.
For a trem bar, I was thinking of having my brother cut a piece of stainless steel, and then just do a nut/bolt attachment.

I'm tempted to use the pickups for a project guitar, tho....

[SansRegret]

I think its a Canora, missing the headstock emblem. A plywood Cheapo made in Japan 60s/70s. I picked one up an antique store last summer; same pickguard, switches, trem. Mine also missing the bridge and nut.

[UlricvonCatalyst]

She figures it's a Sears-something. I figure Teisco-something.

I think its a Canora

I think you're all right/wrong. Any brand name or model number attached to these (probably Teisco) guitars is pretty irrelevant as they were generally thrown together with scant regard to consistency as far as pickups, switches, neck-body pairing, etc was concerned, and logos were often applied by whoever imported them.

Those knobs are about the only thing that is fairly consistent across the many Teiscos I've handled over the years, but the dot and slot pickups and that terrible tremolo system are a regularly recurring nightmare too. By all means reuse the pickups on a better-made, easier to set-up guitar, but don't let the gold foil fool you into thinking they have much in common with the gold foil pickups prized by Ry Cooder and others - they're usually pretty muddy-sounding at best and ridiculously microphonic at worst. Add a fuzzbox and play to their weaknesses!

I don't mean any of this to be disparaging, by the way; I too snap up every one of these I come across if the price is right, but where they're incomplete I have no qualms at all about parting them out. These are the sow's ears of the guitar world, but hey, they're vintage sow's ears!

You could take a leaf out of sonic Youth's book and use a drumstick for a bridge. Plenty of scope for height adjustment if you're handy with a plane or saw.

[spacecadet]

This post is almost eerily similar to a blog post I made a few years ago about a guitar I bought in pieces from a guy here. I actually did what I could to restore mine; new pickguard, new screws and springs so the electronics could at least be attached, and an attempt at rewiring (ultimately this is what did me in), plus I did buy a repro metal Teisco badge after sort of verifying the guitar's lineage. What I found is that it actually may or may not have been a Teisco, but it *could* have been, whatever it was ultimately called. Teiscos of that particular era were manufactured by Kawai, who also manufactured guitars for various US department stores to be sold under different brand names (including Silvertone, which is what mine was probably really branded). My guess is that most of the western models like this that you find are probably Kawai guitars that would have been labeled Teisco in Japan but were actually commissioned by and sold under different department store house brand names in the US.

Both of the guitars above have some differences to mine but also some very close similarities, including the pickups, switches, the body shape and contours, headstock that's almost a direct Fender copy and *also* sunburst, and the way the sunburst itself looks. I think that last thing is almost an identifying feature in itself, like how someone who's particularly knowledgeable can almost instantly identify and date a Fender guitar just by the look of its sunburst. Kawai-made guitars seem similar in that way; the sunburst is very distinctive.

Anyway, so my vote goes to actually made by Kawai (who also made Teisco) and labeled whatever, but probably sold at Sears, Montgomery Ward or JC Penney in the US/Canada.

[Stratelejazzuar]

Thanks for the input so far

[Scoot]

Mm mm gold foils