Jolana appreciation thread

[Kinx]

I figured that many members of this forum are familiar with Jolana Tornado guitars, however I feel that those quirky beasts from behind the iron curtain deserve far more attention

I just got a quite rare Star VIII - it was a purely imuplse buy, but I'm actually very impressed by the way it sounds. Some of it's features (bottom straplock can be unscrewed and reveals a small screwdriver inside - see the third picture, easy access truss-rod, tone control with treble cut and bass cut...)







When I started to play guitar (early 90s), Jolanas were basically given away to kids like me - being promptly replaced by generic strat copies produced somewhere in far east most of the time. Since then, some of them became quite valuable, at least in CZ - local collectors are driving the prices up to ridiculous level on some instruments - first series Grazioso for 2500 euro is a common sight (I suspect Harrison and Page connection is the reason to some degree), but even Tornados and Alexandras (Jolana's answer to Gibson 330) in decent shape reached 400 euro mark.

I did two clips of the mentioned Star VIII - first one is actually a shootout of my beloved '72 JM and this rare beast, second one features all three pickups of Star VIII

https://youtu.be/TtK_ABjQzY8

https://youtu.be/TcGYnIvBhNw

[mgeek]

Oooh that's nice!

I've been keeping an eye out for a Jolana Star X, but never seen one for sale. Do they turn up much there?

[Kinx]

Oooh that's nice!

I've been keeping an eye out for a Jolana Star X, but never seen one for sale. Do they turn up much there?

well not very much. I've seen only few for sale in last 10 years - but I suppose that there should be plenty of them in the former USSR. They were exported into these countries a lot back in the day and there's always plenty of Star IXs for sale in Ukraine or Russia. Buying Jolana's in Czech Republic for reasonable ammount of money is getting pretty difficult, but looking at Poland or Ukraine ad servers, chances seem to be more "realistic" over there.

anyway, Star X is super cool and also on my list I love the built in fuzz and inverted strat-style jack plate. To me the Jolana production was at it's peak quality-wise during this time (late 60s, early 70s), sadly it went just downhill afterwards (to some exceptions, D-Bass is pretty decent Rickenbacker copy)

[Ceylon]

Every so often I go back to looking at eBay for Jolana Toronados. It has what I can only describe as a Soviet art deco-thing with an added cartoony vibe (don't ask me to explain) going on and I would love to pick one up. I have no clue how Jolanas play or sound, but as, say, a couch guitar it'd be great, and in either case a real looker to keep around.

Here's one on Reverb where you can just imagine that the controls are pretty much the same as on a Jaguar, but then on a 330-type body and with those awesome big silvery push button-switches. Man does that ever look cool!

If I could have gotten on this before they climbed to 400+€, that'd have been great

[Zork]

I've got a beat up Jolana Galaxis. It's yellow and a very mean machine.

[smjenkins]

Check out this one: https://reverb.com/item/11426729-jolana ... -very-rare

Love those giant switches and the crazy bridge. The head stock even looks a little bit like Cross's design.

[antisymmetric]

Great thread, Jolanas are on my wishlist. Your Star Vlll is very cool sounding and looking.

[Kinx]

Check out this one: https://reverb.com/item/11426729-jolana ... -very-rare

Love those giant switches and the crazy bridge. The head stock even looks a little bit like Cross's design.

this is Alfa - an evolutionary step after my Star VIII, however it used to be much more common. These switches actually came from old Czechoslovak vacuum cleaner - since there was only one manufacturer at the time in the socialist system, there were only few manufacturers in the country at the time (we were under socialist regime for more than 40 years) were scarse and many shared parts were used at the time (some switches were also used on radios, some trem springs came from Skoda 1000 seats and so on).

[BoringPostcards]

The clips you posted are good. You play well and the Jolana actually sounds really good. I’d rock one of those for sure!