Rickresource Rickenbacker Forum

I was going through the garage looking for gloves when I came upon this guitar... I had no idea we had another guitar in the house! I found out that it was my fathers first guitar from oh-so-many years ago, I think he got it in the late 60's - early 70's maybe, I never really bothered asking.

Anyhow, when I took it off the shelf, it had 3 strings on it and they were a combination of black and green! The frets were pretty much the same!



Fast forward to earlier today. I received my package of strings (webstrings.com, ever use em?) so I got to work. Using my undeserved sense of confidence brought on by the Dan Erlewine book, I got to work on it.



I started by polishing the green frets, very happy to find out that there actually was metal under all that green! It's got an adjustable bridge which I find is cool, 2 screws on either side adjusts the height of the bridge. I brought the treble strings up a touch, but nothing more. Surprisingly, after stringing up, the truss rod did not need adjustment, it was dead flat with no dead stops anywhere!



I encountered a problem with the low E string. While tuning it to pitch, the peg would jump out once I got higher than a B. I noticed that the bridge was way to worn out. someone may be able to do something about it, but I had a better idea...



I took the low E off and tuned the guitar to open G! I'm loving it!

I actually recorded a little something, note that

a. I'm not well versed in open G
b. I barely ever play slide

That said, the guitar sounds good! the short scale makes it good for my style of playing!

http://www.soundclick.com/bands/page_so ... ID=6525769

And that's my story for the day!

Pretty cool!

Doesn't the Erlewine book tell how to repair that bridge pin problem? I thought I'd read a blurb about that somewhere in the book.

paologregorio wrote:Pretty cool!

Doesn't the Erlewine book tell how to repair that bridge pin problem? I thought I'd read a blurb about that somewhere in the book.

It might be in there, but I really only skimmed through it!

Very nice, Nick. Looks to still be a solid instrument after all these years and in the garage to boot. Nice slide work!

I ordered a couple sets of bass strings from webstrings.com and they look like nice strings. I haven't needed to change yet so no opinion on tone and feel.

NIck: I believe Univox stopped making guitars in 1978, so this acoustic has got to be no less than 30 years old. Aria supplied Univox with the earliest models being imported from Japan. Nice find.

I remember the Univox era. I must be your father's age! Sounds like the makings of Keb Mo music there! Nice find.

T

I showed it to my father and he didn't recognize it. He thought it was his other acoustic that I play often which is why he was kind put off by the open G tuning. Finally he saw the HUGE scrape around the headstock where the finish was taken off and then he saw the Univox logo.... THEN he got excited! Never saw him smile so hard for so long! He went off on a huge nostalgic story of how he got it, when he got it, how much it cost ($89CAN) and how he used it for years before buying a new one and basically fogetting about this one! He seemed awful happy to see it again!

He said his father bought it for him in late 69/Early 70 after he pawned his first guitar for a toy rocket! Either way, it's a pretty good sounding guitar. great acoustic blues tone!

Erlewine's shop is just up the street from my house. I'll drop it off for you!

Nice!

That's an early Univox "Dove" Acoustic. The first series of Acoustics they made- there were also 12 string versions around.

I'm a recovering Univox-aholic. Particularily the Hi-Flier (mosrite copy) models. I'm not sure if it's just because their guitars were horrible copies, so much so that they have their own unique charm, but they are actually awesome players and sound great. The fact that they are so cheap (compared to Rics) makes it easy to acquire a huge collection of them. I think at one point I had like 23 of them, I believe.

More info on Univox's- http://www.univox.org

Cheers,
-Collin