"The Sooner" Bizarro Oklahoma 1970's guitar!?

[Deke Dickerson]

I'm sure a lot of you saw that guy selling tons and tons of bizarre unbuilt Mosrite stuff on ebay the last year or so, from Semie's Oklahoma period in the mid-1970's. This is the only photo I've ever seen of an assembled and finished "Sooner" guitar. Does anybody know any more details about these? Were they actual Mosrites or something that Semie was building for somebody else under the "Sooner" name?

I never snagged any of those parts on ebay last year. I probably should have at least got a body and a neck. I heard they were all kind of warped and messed up. Details, anybody?

Also, is this any relation to "The Axe" also from the 70's? I saw an "Axe" in person and the headstock just said "The Axe", I dont' have a photo of it though...

Deke

[bumblebeetwist]

Took a while for one to show up, but sooner than later, eh?
Looks like a neat instrument, and the disassembled photos illustrate how quickly they hogged out the wood before the parts were thrown on, zip-zoom! Olivias usually provide tons of great photos accompanying their listings and these are truly illuminating.

http://www.ebay.com/itm/EXTREMELY-RARE- ... 1e7fde171c

[dorkrockrecords]

That's one of the laminated body versions, you can tell from the edges where the veneer is peeling off. Most of The Sooners were made this way, by laminating either veneer or formica to a wood blank.

Mine (pictured in the first post and again below) is a rarer solid wood construction version with a two-piece bookmatched body of what appears to be sapele.

[MWaldorf]

Wow! What's the scoop on the pickups - they don't look familiar.

[dorkrockrecords]

I think they're leftover Rosac Mel-O-Bar pickups, or at least slapped together using the same metal surrounds.

[Bob Shade]

The pickup surrounds look like the Mosrite Dobro variety to me. Adam, what is a Rosac pickup? I was unaware Rosac made pickups?? I would not be surprised.

Has anybody looked up the definition of a Sooner? It is pretty funny Semie would name a guitar after it. Here is a blurb from Wikipedia:

" Sooners would hide in ditches at night and suddenly appear to stake their claim after the land run started, hours ahead of legal settlers"

What a crazy guitar and name to go with it!!

Bill Gruggett told me that Semie found a guy who wanted to finance a new guitar for Semie to build. He fronted some funds to Semie but either the funds ran out before the guitars were completed or something to that effect.

At any rate the guy ended up with a bunch of mostly uncompleted parts and Seime split the scene. I heard Semie never really wanted to do the project, but took it between other gigs.

That's all I know about the Sooner history.


Bob

[dorkrockrecords]

The Dobro pickup surrounds usually found on the Mosrite Californian or the Mosrite-made Acoustic Black Widow have rounded dogears.



The pickup surrounds found on the Sooner or the Rosac-made Smith Mel-O-Bar don't.



I wish I had examples of both kicking around so I could do a side-by-side comparison.

[eltuce]

What's the neck profile like on those?

[Bob Shade]

Hey Adam, I never looked too closely at those Melobar models with those thinner pickups that closely. I have a Melobar with the Mosrite pickups on it. Nice detective work as usual.

I will ask Ed about those and see if he remembers anything.

I wonder if the Dobro ears on the rings were ground down for the Melobars??

Bob

[dorkrockrecords]

What's the neck profile like on those?

Square.