Mosrite Celebrity with Vibramute!

[Veenture]

The F holes have true binding and not the plastic ones that came in the later Celebrities.

I always thought any guitar binding was always plastic. Fill me in Sarah, what's the material for true binding?

[MWaldorf]

congrats Sarah, that's a cool looking guitar.
Mel

[ElTwang]

Nice find, Sarah. Congrats!

Also I'm starting to get real curious about that Mosrite Celebrity website of yours .

[Dennisthe Menace]

Nice find, Sarah. Congrats!

Also I'm starting to get real curious about that Mosrite Celebrity website of yours .

Yeah.....come on and do it....pull the trigger ...............................

[Sarah93003]

The F holes have true binding and not the plastic ones that came in the later Celebrities.

I always thought any guitar binding was always plastic. Fill me in Sarah, what's the material for true binding?

Paul, I guess I didn't say that correctly. Semie evidently used regular binding in the beginning when making the Celebrity. At some point he switched to an injection molded plastic F hole and glued them in place. An easy way to tell is to put your pinky down inside the F hole and feel for a lip. The F hole is taller than the thickness of the wood on the top of the guitar. With your pinky you'll feel it going below the guitar top. Another tell tale sign is that the binding will have a seem whereas the injection molded part does not. From a production aspect it was a smart move I would think.

Now, I don't know when this change occurred and I'd like to figure that out. It could be that all of the Celebrities with the larger F holes have regular binding and all of the ones with the smaller F holes have the injection molded part. I will have to study this!

This photo shows the injection molded F hole pieces.


Here we have and F hole with the sprue attached, and F hole with it removed, with both next to one in the guitar.




Here is a finished F hole in a Celebrity

[Sarah93003]

Nice find, Sarah. Congrats!

Also I'm starting to get real curious about that Mosrite Celebrity website of yours .

Yeah.....come on and do it....pull the trigger ...............................

Okay folks. The website is finished! Whew, what a project this turned out to be. I was waiting for the arrival of this Celebrity with the Vibramute because it has variations that I did not have any other photos of. Namely the Vibramute itself. Now I know the neck pocket is totally different as is the binding on the F hole. I've photographed these last night and will incorporate them on the appropriate pages. Tonight I will take one more pass through the entire website to check for formatting issues, etc. with the plan to go live tomorrow!

This website has grown far larger than I anticipated. In the beginning I thought it would be about 5 pages long and now it is 32 pages long. And the pages are very long as you will see. Most of the pages will scroll down at least 5-10 screen shots and some even longer than that. I haven't done a final tally but I think there are over 2,500 photos on this site now. For anyone searching for Mosrite Celebrities it will be a haven!

I am hoping that ya'll can take a look at it and let me know if there are corrections needed, or information I am missing, etc. I will greatly appreciate that!

[Sarah93003]

More on this guitar. Here are more photographs to illustrate a few things about it.

Interestingly this photographs a bit better than it is in real life. The cracks don't show up very well but they are there and a little bit deeper than I would like.



Here you can see the gouges in the back of the neck. They go through the finish to the wood but does not damage the mahogany. It's way to rough for my liking while playing the neck and will have to be dealt with.




The flamey back looks really cool in the photo which actually enhances it. The grain is not so visible to the naked eye.

[Sarah93003]

Here we have the neck and neck pocket area. The tortoise shell plate is very cool!



This looks like it took a fair bit of work to create the neck heel and make it perfect.



This guitar has a layer of binding between the neck heel and the bout. This is not on later Celebrities. In fact, this is the first Celebrity I've seen with this feature as well as the tortoise plate under the strap pins on both ends.



Hopefully you can see the red lettering. There are a couple of letters and then under the shim that is glued into the pocket I can tell there are more letters. My curiosity will likely get the best of me and I'll take the shim up to see what the letters are and then reglue the shim back in place.

[oipunkguy]

very cool sarah! the finish on the back of the neck could be touched up, although, I wouldn't want to work on a piece so rare myself. but an experienced finisher should be able to handle this. did you say the neck was made of mahogany???

[Sarah93003]

very cool sarah! the finish on the back of the neck could be touched up, although, I wouldn't want to work on a piece so rare myself. but an experienced finisher should be able to handle this. did you say the neck was made of mahogany???

Yep, Mahogany! The earliest Mosrite literature that I have is supposed to be 1965. It debuts "New" models including the Celebrity, having a one piece Mahogany neck. This is the first example of a Mahogany neck Celbrity I've encountered. I think Bob Shade has an even earlier example with a set neck. Yes, a set neck! I nedd to confirm that with him and see if it also has a mahogany neck.