SOVIET TONIKA ELECTRIC GUITAR 1969 [Ultra Rare] Tonika was the first electric guitar made in USSR, and it was the first experiment of Soviet luthiers... In end of the 1969, when this guitar was made, not too many Soviet citizens were allowed to go abroad, and probably not one of the Tonika creators had any experience in electric guitar building. There probably were a couple of Fenders and Gibsons to copy, but its hard to believe any of ordinary Russian workers had a chance to work at some place where normal electric guitar were made to gather some experience... The only possibility was to visit other Socialist countries - DDR, Czechoslovakia, Poland or Bulgaria to see how cheesy Jolanas, Musimas and Defils are being made... It could give Russians some impression of how the process is organized, but not how to build a qualityelectric guitar... What theyve made is an unplayable super-heavy guitar with sick body shape, thickest neck youll ever find and sound suitable for anything but music...Made at Sverdlovsk, Rostov na Donu and Ordjonikidze, USSR 1969... Controls - volume and tone, plus a four-position varitone type switch... Three positions were regular pickups switching (bridge, bridge+neck, neck) and in the last position all the pickups were switched off... Output jack - DIN5 five-pin... Soviet guitar constructors were setting a new standard for all the guitar industry - five-pin jacks... The most popular explaination to this is that they were predicting the MIDI... It was very uncomfortable since you could either use only Soviet equipment (all guitars, effects and amplifiers had DIN5 sockets) or modify your Les Paul. Have you ever seen Les Paul with five-pin out? DIN-5 allowed several good things: stereo and mono outputs and phantom power for onboard preamp and effects... While Tonika made no use of this, later Soviet models, like Stella or Solo-II featured all the possible electronic tricks and all the pins on their jacks were wired...ENJOY,valor
Posted on: Sun, 01 Jun 2014 15:47:13 +0000
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