The Mosrite guitar ...early history

[Deke Dickerson]

Photo of the tripleneck guitar, circa the early 70's. Appears to be the original tripleneck body with new necks and hardware. This guitar was supposedly stolen while Semie was in New Mexico, so keep an eye out for it at your local antique mall!

Ed Elliot, if you're reading this, I was always confused by the Shafter address on this. Do you know when Semie lived there?

Deke

[TerryTNM]

I had Lorrie Collins guitar on the bench this week for a neck repair. You don't see or hear much about this guitar.
Larry's doubleneck gets all the ink. It is nearly 100% original with the exception of the added bridge height to compensate for the
quite drastically warped spruce top (although it doesn't show up that bad in this picture). This is the very guitar you see in all
those YouTube Collins Kids videos of the 50's. Still sporting the original inline 6 head design that first showed up on Joe Maphis'
in 1954 and again on brother Larry's a short time later. Both Joe's and Larry's were retrofitted with the "M" style head. To my knowledge this is the only
remaining in line 6 head cap. This was my personal favorite. You may have noticed that when I started making doublenecks again,
my first new guitar had the in line six head caps.

Deke came over to see it and inspected under the pickguard. He said that it originally had a Bigsby made pickguard and
wondered if Semie had removed it before making the new one. . . he had.

I was very honored to get to work on it.


EDITED by dubtrub: See Youtube video two post down of Lorrie playing this guitar.

[TerryTNM]

I was sent these photos from a man in Japan. I have never seen any earlier photos of Semie's work.
The head attachment is quite unique. I'm not sure what that's all about.
No information or time frame accompanied these photos that I could read. They appeared on a Japanese Mosrite forum with text in Japanese.




Japanese text translated by dorkrockrecords.

This is a photograph of the first guitar neck Semie Moseley made as a boy.
The head is inlaid with a cross, as well as his own name across the fretboard.
Semie always cherished this neck, and it was laid upon the altar at his funeral.
Of course, this neck is Loretta's pride and joy.

[TerryTNM]

Here is Larry Collins single neck he calls the "Larico" made at Semie's shop in Mission Hills about 1956/57. Larry says he and Semie made it together. How cool is that.


Larry just got it back a few months ago. It was on loan to friend of his for over 30 years!!! There is a lot of wear and tear on it for sure. Larry asked me to clean it up and make it playable again. It was missing the Gibson L-5 tailpiece, the bridge, the contour filler on the sleeve guard was all but gone and the head was nearly broken off. We're not trying to make it look new. This is 50+ years old and we want it to reflect that.

Couldn't figure out what the bridge looked like from the Youtube video. Larry didn't have any photos so I'm kinda winging it. I purchased a 'Bowtie' Bigsby bridge but didn't fit the footprint left on the guitar. Trying to fit something to it that will look the right age. If you have any ideas please. . . let me know.
Here is a Youtube video of the "Kids" showing the Larico. - Terry

[TerryTNM]

Thanks for the help in identifying the bridge. You guys have much better eye sight than I. It does appear to me to be very similar to the Carvin catalog bridge. The one on Stan Welch's is much to wide for Larry's application but it also looks to have the Carvin upper saddle. I lieu of an actual Carvin bridge the Bigsby saddle is quite similar, I'll just need to fabricate the lower part or maybe someone has a complete one they'd like to sell. It more than likely did have a plastic base under it as well. I can see an impression of a rounded base on one end.

Strat-O-Rama,
Here's a look at the back. Crudely hogged out with a Forstner bit. The back is then covered with an 1/8" aluminum plate covered with gray felt. . . not seen in the shot

[dubtrub]

You've seen the photo's of it hanging on the wall at Front Porch Music but you haven't seen it up close. It is actually a very nice guitar. I am fortunate enough to have it in my shop and get some good photo's and measurements from it. Surprisingly, it has a 24 7/8" scale neck but is narrower than a standard Ventures model. This had to be designed for the female musicians or someone with extremely small hands. I will give a better report of it as I get into it.







EDITED: The pot codes dates this guitar this guitar to 1963. It may have been a prototype.

[dubtrub]

Each one of the posts above are excerpts from the original topics covered elsewhere on this forum and condensed here for easy review. I will continue to add to this topic as new photo's emerge of Semie's early years pre-Ventures model.