Panama Lane barn, P Street Mosrite factory & 63 Sidejack

[ElTwang]

EDITED by the Administrator: This topic was split form the original topic of Ed Elliot's custom made clones.

Do I understand this correct: Panama Lane refers to a certain number of Mosrites made in a building in that street in (city, year)? How come they are extra special? Only a few pieces made or ?

[dubtrub]

Do I understand this correct: Panama Lane refers to a certain number of Mosrites made in a building in that street in (city, year)? How come they are extra special? Only a few pieces made or ?

Panama Lane is a country road just outside metropolitan Bakersfield, California. Around 1959-60 Semie was renting a tin sided barn from a farmer on Panama Lane. At this location he along with his apprentice/helper Bill Gruggett, were building guitars one at a time. There Semie came up with a guitar shape that eventually evolved into the Mosrite Mark1/Ventures model.

These original pre 'Mark 1' design guitars were made with the name 'Joe Maphis model' on them. The first one's were the 'mistake plate' guitars discussed in this thread. These guitars were a little more elaborate and had the plastic binding around the body, plus most all of the parts were hand made. Now they are more commonly referred to as the 'side jack' models. It was one of these guitars that Nokie Edwards acquired after being introduced to Semie through Gene Moles. Of course after Nokie acquired one of these guitars and took it back and showed it to the rest of the Ventures, well, the rest of the story is history.

From the Panama Lane barn to the huge P Street factory in the middle of Bakersfield, Mosrite guitars became a million dollar operation. Most Mosrite guitars commonly encountered from the 60's era are production assembly line guitars. Obviously the pre production '63 and earlier are most valuable and in great demand simply because they were hand made one at a time by Semie and not all that many were made.

[ElTwang]

Excellent info, Danny. That made the whole story/picture even more clear. Anyone got any pics of the buildings from around that time? Why did the binding had to go, I wonder? Due to big time production?

[Dennisthe Menace]

Excellent info, Danny. That made the whole story/picture even more clear. Anyone got any pics of the buildings from around that time? Why did the binding had to go, I wonder? Due to big time production?

LOL!! "Been there...Done that...What's Next?"
No one seems to have any pix of the old "P" Street Building or the other location.
Danny had told me that the building is long gone, leveled to make room for a huge Parking Garage....??
The Binding went bye-bye along with the convex shaping on the bodies. It was not cost efficient, to much
time spending on making the bodies. Also for '64, they had moved the output jack to the pickguard, thus
the sidejack disappeared for the same reasons, not to mention the Bolt-On Neck. All of these feature
changes were results of cutting back the costs

[dubtrub]

I have been able to locate a couple of photo's of 'part' of the P Street factory. These have been scanned and copied from the Japanese Vintage Mosrite book. They were taken around 1990, long after the factory had folded. The first photo is a view looking North. The only part of the building showing that is the Mosrite factory is the one story building. The actual factory building was ground level with a huge basement. The larger building in the background was built years later.



This photo is of the parking lot depicting the South side of the building where loading/unloading was done.



This is a photo from Desert Surfer's collection that he took inside Artie's Front Porch Music store here in Bakersfield. The photo hanging on the wall depicts a truck backed up to the loading ramp.

[Dennisthe Menace]

Man, I wish there was a way to blow up that pic from Desert Surfer.....there's 3 lines of letters on the building, and I swear I think I'm making the 2nd line to read "M mosrite"....

[dubtrub]

Man, I wish there was a way to blow up that pic from Desert Surfer.....there's 3 lines of letters on the building, and I swear I think I'm making the 2nd line to read "M mosrite"....

You are right Dennis, since this photo is of the actual Mosrite factory during it's glory. It's been a while since I visited Artie, so I'll try to get by his shop in a few days and see what all I can 'dig' up.

[Dennisthe Menace]

Danny, that would be fantastic!! Maybe Artie's got some old Mosrite (Building) Pix stashed away
in one of his desk drawers that he might of forgotten about??? That would be very interesting!!

[ElTwang]

Hey, sorry for the thread hijack, Ed!

[EFElliott]

Hey guys, That factory Photo hanging on Artie's wall is the Booneville,Arkansas shop, a little bitty old Wal-Mart building, if you look close on one side of the sign there's a Ventures model and on the other there's a JM65 double neck. The building photo in the japanesse Mosrite book is 1424 "P'' st., the shop I worked in was across the tracks, 1500 "P"st, I have a just a couple of photos from there,I'll try to find them and get them scanded, one is Semie on his 43rd Birthday holding up a cake that me and my wife made for him,he's sitting at the desk in the front office and through the plate glass window you can see the back door of the Civic Auditorium across the street, I drew a Ventures guitar on the cake in frosting, the other is me playing Larry Collins original double neck, I got to do repair some work on it.
Boy, that Red, White and Blue Joe Maphis bass hanging on Artie's wall sure brings back some old memorys. In 1974 when I was 17 I painted and put it together out of parts I had at my Shop in Taft,Ca for my girl friend's 16 birthday present, after we got married I sold it at my guitar store( I never figuered out why she got mad at me about that)