Major Mosrite Find

[TerryTNM]

Bob Regan, hotshot picker and 1/2 of the Canadian Sweethearts team of Bob Regan and Lucille Starr of the 50's and 60's had at least two custom Mosrite's, one of which is the doubleneck that surfaced about a year ago that was at Andy Moseley's house in dire need of restoration which I posted photo's of a while back. In my search for photo documentation to proceed with the restoration I spent months scouring the Internet for a picture of what it looked like when it was first built. To shorten the story, I learned that Bob had a son, Robert Fredrickson, that was living in the San Fernando Valley not far from me. With the help of him and his mom, Lucille Starr, they came up with 2 great pictures of the single neck. Robert also inherited the beautiful triple neck guitar you see here when his father died. This is the last custom guitar Semie built at his Granada Hill shop before he left for Bakersfield. As with most if not all of Semie's custom guitars it went through updates if Semie ever got his hands on them. This guitar went through a major transformation sometime in the mid sixties. When I saw it leave from Semie's shop in Granada Hills in 1959 it had a red sunburst and black pickguards and three different necks with Bob Regan inlaid in the fingerboards.

Robert was kind enough to to bring 2 great photos of the doubleneck and this incredible tripleneck guitar in excellent condition to my shop yesterday. Deke Dickerson was also in attendance to oggle this incredible one of a kind Semie masterpiece. Robert promised to bring this guitar and 3 Nudie suits of Bob's to Deke's Geek Festival next year.

[101Volts]

What a picture! Thanks a lot for sharing, The guitar is marvelous to look at even now!

Austin

[Strat-o-rama]

Very cool beast. Thanks for posting, Terry. Gibson humbuckers on the middle neck, I guess?

[stl80]

Very nice.
Jim

[Veenture]

Amazing story and find, thanks Terry.
I keep on looking at it and find myself trying to 'read' Semie's thoughts while he was working on this Custom order

[TerryTNM]

Very cool beast. Thanks for posting, Terry. Gibson humbuckers on the middle neck, I guess?

That's right. Robert is now interested in re-installing some originals back in this position. I think Deke is on that.

To add, Deke and I think that just possibly this triple neck may be Bob's second or replacement tripleneck! There are just no signs of filled holes or other alterations (besides the humbuckers) indicating that it was altered from a previous iteration. One big indication is that cove route in the cutouts and around the pickguard were not something Semie did in the 50's. This is more in the style of the Ventures type construction. Deke noticed that the body glue-up with the different wood types down the center is very similar to a doubleneck that he owns from the mid-sixties. Perhaps the original was damaged beyond repair, stolen or who-knows. Perhaps it will show up in Andy Moseley's attic someday too.

I'll post some more pictures later. Deke has some picture too.

Terry

[TerryTNM]

Here are a few more pics.

First is Bob Regan's son Robert Frederikson, who is a fine guitar player himself and once played with the Buffalo Springfield band, seeing his dad's doublneck for the first time in 40 years.

Thanks Robert for showing us the tripleneck.



Note the 'thumb wheel adjuster' by the tremolo spring????

[Deke Dickerson]

Thanks Terry for posting the pictures! One of the first times I ever met Terry (around '95 or so) he mentioned Bob Regan and his tripleneck guitar. It's taken us this long to track it down and see it. Turns out Bob Jr. lives only a few miles from us! Of course, like many of Semie's endorsers from that era, the guitar that we saw was not the guitar that Terry remembers from the late 50's, but an updated triple beast I'm guessing from '63 or '64 that got updated parts from Semie as time went along. It sure was interesting to see!

I've put out the feelers with Bob Shade and Garrett, but if anybody here on the list has a pair of '64-'65 era pickups they want to sell Bob Jr., he wants to get some Mosrite pickups back on the standard neck where the Gibson humbuckers are now. These are the pickups with the logo on them but not the copyright symbol.

Thanks again Terry for making the final push to discover this thing! Amazing that it was under our noses the whole time.

Almost better than the tripleneck were the pics of Bob Regan's doubleneck from the 50's, which Terry and I had never seen clear shots of before. Now Terry can restore the doubleneck back to it's original condition!

Deke

[101Volts]

Wow, Check out the last two pics. Semie carved the back too and... That includes the parts where the necks are attached (Neck plates) I've never seen that before, I wouldn't have thought of trying it either. Did Semie do that on other guitars too? I'm wondering why he did it.

Austin

[Sarah93003]

Woah! What an amazing find. I would love to here that played!