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IonoGlobe electric guitar by Tony Cochran Guitars
The most unique feature of this electric guitar is the fully wired metal ball right by the neck. Farber Endison played this guitar in the late 50’s for a band called The Bubble Tops. Their specialty was car oriented Rock-a-billy music before anyone wanted to hear it. When Farber’s Uncle, Gropper T. Endison, was on safari in what is now known as Namibia, he had nearly been hit by a baseball size metal ball that fell from he sky. (This stuff still happens there. Google it.) He gave it to Farber claiming he could no longer bear the noises it made in his head. Farber’s brother, Clayton, a hypothetical electrical genius, wired it to the guitar and told Farber that it would enhance the almost inaudible, and probably imagined, sounds emanating from the orb. It was probably not true. What we do know is that soon after, Farber grew out his hair, quit wearing shoes, and would only play the guitar in a cave found in the mountains behind his parents’ house. He was found dead in 1965, deep in the cave with the guitar in his lap. There was a partially eaten sandwich and the diagram for five never before heard chords. To this day Clayton will not release them to the public.
Source: TonyCochranGuitars.com
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Angel 199 - Tony Cochran Guitars
This electric guitar was supposedly purchased in Rio de Janeiro, under odd circumstances, around April or May of 1965. I love it but can’t wait to get rid of it. The guy who bought it said there had been a horrible train wreck down there and the old woman who found it in the aftermath, crated and intact, couldn’t wait to get rid of it either. He sold it to me because HE couldn’t wait to get rid of it. He didn’t have the crate anymore, but said it had a broken seal from a Lithuanian monastery. There is a medallion of St. Michael below the bridge and the number 199 on a tag above the bridge pickup. It’s not clear why. I have no instructions on how to operate the wild circuitry, but it’s pretty. The guitar plays nice, but you don’t want it sitting out if you are by yourself. Play it when other people are with you or you’ll be the next one who can’t wait to get rid of it.
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Arkanacaster Guitar
by Tony Cochran Guitars
This electric guitar was the property of Country Western star Diamond Ted Raymond of Deadtree, Arkansas. He fitted it with what he called “a harmonic deceptor”, a crude, but effective planking system that humanized bent notes. Diamond Ted specialized in a particularly nasty breed of Honky Tonk called Flinch Wailing. After it was outlawed by the state and condemned in the Catholic Telegraph, Diamond Ted went underground with his performances until his death in 1961. He passed out drunk while eating peanut butter with his hands, and squirrels ate his fingers off. He bled to death. Rumor has it … he wanted his guitar buried with him, but his lousy brother stole it from the funeral home. The deceptor doesn’t seem to work anymore, but it’s still a handsome piece.
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Smashmouth Bass guitar
This electric bass guitar was played by Philip Endicot, who worked for General Radio back in the late 40’s - early 50’s. He scavenged parts there like a fat man in a bologna factory. His real passion was a 5 piece jazz band he belonged to called “Reform School”. This was one of the first jazz groups to go electric in Concord. He would use the pilfered parts on his bass in a quest to find “smashmouth boom”. Caught stealing red handed at G.R. in ‘58, he was sent to jail where he died in a fight over cigarettes, non-filtered Pall Malls to be exact. His brother inherited the bass and stuck it in his attic until 1998 when I bought it at his garage sale. It has the ultra rare contactor, a cool dark tone reed, and the infamous type 740 capacitance test bridge that G.R. was supposedly developing for a guy named Leo in Fullerton. (Never proven.)
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Rick Springfield owns & features his 3 Tony Cochran Guitars on his new CD
Songs For The End Of The World
Rick Springfield has 4 different covers, 3 with Tony Cochran Guitars and 1 with his raygun, for his new CD released October 9, 2012. Credit to Tony Cochran Guitars is on the home page of Rick’s website http://www.rickspringfield.com/s4eow/s4eow.html and inside each CD. The Separatorcaster and Coppercaster electric guitars are on 3 CD covers and the Alumicaster appears in promos. Rick says he is playing the guitars on stage and any TV he does for promo of the new CD. Tony Cochran Guitars loves working with Rick and has always been a great fan of his music. We know Songs For The End Of The World is a great hit! Grab them fast!!!
More pictures of Rick and details / pics for each of the guitars can be found on www.TonyCochranGuitars.com site at the following links:
Separatorcaster: http://www.tonycochranguitars.com/separatorcaster.html
Coppercaster: http://www.tonycochranguitars.com/coppercaster.html
Alumicaster: http://www.tonycochranguitars.com/alumicaster.html
Video of Rick Springfiled playing Tony Cochran Guitars at:
http://www.tonycochranguitars.com/videos.html
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Photo with 27 notes
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Shondracaster Electric Guitar
Here’s an odd electric guitar. The Spiritualist Heron Trippe built 3 Shondra platters in 1961. He named them after his wife, Shondra. They were designed to channel never before heard music into the physical world. No one was sure if he was scamming or sincere, but he claimed to have met with varying degrees of success. The one fastened to an accordian was destroyed in a bench fire at his workshop. Another is in a museum in Prague, screwed to a microphone. No one knows how it got there. This is the 3rd, attached to an electric guitar fashioned by Trippe in an effort to pick up “freak ghost chords”. Trippe died in 1963 and left no instructions on how to use it. Anyone for freak ghost chords?
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Tony Cochran Guitars created the Kamikazecaster guitar, commissioned by Dracula’s Cabaret in Gold Coast Australia for Dave Kume, aka Kamikaze D, lead guitarist. Dracula’s Cabaret is Australia’s longest running and most successful dinner theater … or circus! The new show, Transfusion, “features fast paced vampire variety that combines acerbic comedy, wicked burlesque, bizarre human circus and off the dial madness.” Check out the video of the wild guitar solo on the Kamikazecaster by Kamikaze D … even in an aerial act!
VIDEO at www.facebook.com/TonyCochranGuitars
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Boston Model L guitar
This guitar was the centerpiece of Sid Howell’s traveling circus side show, The Dark Maze. People would pay a quarter to get a chance to find the exit, thereby getting their money back. Adding to the confusion of twisted halls, dead end passages, and claustrophobic ceiling heights was an interesting noise. Larry Boston would play an almost ceaseless din of wails, screeches, and moan-like arpeggios on a guitar he modified for these performances. He named the guitar after himself. The neck plate was purloined from an old cigarette machine. Some say an old tape of one of these impromptu concerts inspired Eddie Van Halen’s Eruption back in the ’80s. I doubt it.
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Yes Tony Cochran Guitars are awesomely playable! Here’s the Pepperjackcaster with the hammer down in France.
Pried from the cold, gray fingers of Jack “Wild Cat” Thompson. He was found dead and naked at the seedy motel just North of Bakersfield, California in 1958. Master of the dirty Honkey Tonk, he spent his life chasing cheap women and drinking cheaper wine. Rumor has it, the device at the bottom was what he called a “Seductorator”. He said it loosened women’s inhibitions: wouldn’t say where he got it.
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