Here's a little number from the weird and wonderful years of the Great Japanese Electric Guitar Craze of the 1960's. And it's a good one.
And sure, it's weird in some ways, being kind a mashup of Fender Jaguar and Strat features with a bit of Gretsch thrown in for good measure. But above all, it's actually a wonderful guitar. Not "quirky and fun" or "good for slide" or something. It's just a well-made, practical and great-sounding instrument from a good number of years before the same could be said for most MIJ's. The slim neck might be a dealbreaker for some, but if not: get yer own!
So, an Elk Wildcat (no model number!), manufactured in the original Elk factory in Tokyo in 1965 (which eventually burned down, later Elks are Matsumoku builds). I guess it could be most easily described as a Fender Jaguar copy with a non-contoured and double-bound Strat body, simplified switching and a Gretch-style round vinyl pad on the back.
The neck is a maple-walnut (?)-maple lengthwise laminate with a very good-looking dark rosewood fretboard with some dark chocolate striping. it has the number 0026 embossed below the last fret. If this means that it's the 26th guitar Elk made. the 26th Wildcat or something else is unknown, their serial system hasn't been deciphered as far as I know.
The scale length is 24,75 in, á la Gibson, slightly longer than the 24 inches on Fender short-scale guitars. It has a zero fret, which is actually a really good choice for a guitar with a vibrato. The strings rest on it, basically without the nut actually touching them, so there is very little friction in the system whatsoever. Sort of the opposite of a locking nut, but it works great. The only problem in this old guitar is that the strings have worn pretty deep grooves into the zero fret over the years. It makes the strings ping when I bend, and filing it low enough to remove the grooves would likely play havoc with the action, so it needs replacement. The rest of the frets are fine though, and relatively substantial, not the puny darning needles you see on some MIJ guitars of the era.
The neck profile is pretty small (41,5 mm across the nut, and not widening by much), but quite comfortable just the same, due to it having a classic 60's Fender shape: a an oval C with rolled-in edges. Apparently, the people behind the Elk brand began by deconstructing and reverse-engineering a then-new Fender Jaguar, and going by the neck shape on this one, it's easy to believe. I'm not big on small necks (
), but this one just works for me.
Open six-on-a strip tuners, serviceable but somewhat worn. I would replace them on a touring guitar but they work fine for my modest reliability requirements. The truss nut is accessible from the butt-end of the neck, á la vintage Fender, and it adjusts with no problems.
The body is a two-piece pancake, apparently of dense mahogany. Which brings us to the vinyl pad on the back. It covers a foam pad that that fills out a circular hole in the bottom piece of the pancake, apparently simply there for weight-relief. The guitar weighs in a just under 3.3 kg as it is, so probably a good idea.
The pickups are extremely well-made copies of Fender Jaguar units, resistance coming in at just under 6 kOhms. And they actually sound amazing. In fact, they're among the nicest, most beautiful sounding Fender-style singlecoils I've heard. Mind you, I have no experience of original Jaguars whatsoever, but these pickups have that open, jangly and pretty Johnny Marr/Tom Verlaine sound in spades. The bridge pickups is clear and bright with no ice-picking and the guitar just sings with both pickups active. The switching is simply by a toggle, with none of the complexity of the original Jaguar circuit, which is absolutely fine by me.
The electronics (B250 k pots, PIO cap) are suspended in a unique, thick and very nice single-ply pickguard with black edging. Miraculously, they all worked perfectly straight out of the shipping box. The original control knobs are in very good condition but a bit too thin and slippery to be completely practical.
The vibrato seems to be a straight copy of a Jaguar/Jazzmaster unit, as is the bridge (which I've manage to mount the wrong way around, btw.- which doesn't seem to matter). There was no trem arm with it, and a japanese Jag/JM arm seem to be a tiny bit too large to lock snugly into place, so I have to do some modding there.
Oh, and the finish turned out to be nitro. Which surprised me at first... until I realised that poly most probably wasn't available at the time. I far as I know, Fender began using poly around 1970 or so. Kind of a nice touch anyway.
All in all, a very nice guitar. Bought on a whim, it turned out to be the nicest surprise of the year. There are two more Elk Fender-style guitars from the same era, the Deluxe Jaguar copy, and the Cutlass (gotta love the names!), a riff on the Telcaster. I'll be on the look out for those during 2024, definitely.
For a well-researched and well-written history of Elk guitars, check the below post from the Offset Guitars forum. The author is Craig Campbell, a Tokyo-based US enthusiast who is in the enviable position of being able to interview the ppl involved in their own language.
Elk Guitars- A history
And sure, it's weird in some ways, being kind a mashup of Fender Jaguar and Strat features with a bit of Gretsch thrown in for good measure. But above all, it's actually a wonderful guitar. Not "quirky and fun" or "good for slide" or something. It's just a well-made, practical and great-sounding instrument from a good number of years before the same could be said for most MIJ's. The slim neck might be a dealbreaker for some, but if not: get yer own!
So, an Elk Wildcat (no model number!), manufactured in the original Elk factory in Tokyo in 1965 (which eventually burned down, later Elks are Matsumoku builds). I guess it could be most easily described as a Fender Jaguar copy with a non-contoured and double-bound Strat body, simplified switching and a Gretch-style round vinyl pad on the back.
The neck is a maple-walnut (?)-maple lengthwise laminate with a very good-looking dark rosewood fretboard with some dark chocolate striping. it has the number 0026 embossed below the last fret. If this means that it's the 26th guitar Elk made. the 26th Wildcat or something else is unknown, their serial system hasn't been deciphered as far as I know.
The scale length is 24,75 in, á la Gibson, slightly longer than the 24 inches on Fender short-scale guitars. It has a zero fret, which is actually a really good choice for a guitar with a vibrato. The strings rest on it, basically without the nut actually touching them, so there is very little friction in the system whatsoever. Sort of the opposite of a locking nut, but it works great. The only problem in this old guitar is that the strings have worn pretty deep grooves into the zero fret over the years. It makes the strings ping when I bend, and filing it low enough to remove the grooves would likely play havoc with the action, so it needs replacement. The rest of the frets are fine though, and relatively substantial, not the puny darning needles you see on some MIJ guitars of the era.
The neck profile is pretty small (41,5 mm across the nut, and not widening by much), but quite comfortable just the same, due to it having a classic 60's Fender shape: a an oval C with rolled-in edges. Apparently, the people behind the Elk brand began by deconstructing and reverse-engineering a then-new Fender Jaguar, and going by the neck shape on this one, it's easy to believe. I'm not big on small necks (
), but this one just works for me.Open six-on-a strip tuners, serviceable but somewhat worn. I would replace them on a touring guitar but they work fine for my modest reliability requirements. The truss nut is accessible from the butt-end of the neck, á la vintage Fender, and it adjusts with no problems.
The body is a two-piece pancake, apparently of dense mahogany. Which brings us to the vinyl pad on the back. It covers a foam pad that that fills out a circular hole in the bottom piece of the pancake, apparently simply there for weight-relief. The guitar weighs in a just under 3.3 kg as it is, so probably a good idea.
The pickups are extremely well-made copies of Fender Jaguar units, resistance coming in at just under 6 kOhms. And they actually sound amazing. In fact, they're among the nicest, most beautiful sounding Fender-style singlecoils I've heard. Mind you, I have no experience of original Jaguars whatsoever, but these pickups have that open, jangly and pretty Johnny Marr/Tom Verlaine sound in spades. The bridge pickups is clear and bright with no ice-picking and the guitar just sings with both pickups active. The switching is simply by a toggle, with none of the complexity of the original Jaguar circuit, which is absolutely fine by me.
The electronics (B250 k pots, PIO cap) are suspended in a unique, thick and very nice single-ply pickguard with black edging. Miraculously, they all worked perfectly straight out of the shipping box. The original control knobs are in very good condition but a bit too thin and slippery to be completely practical.
The vibrato seems to be a straight copy of a Jaguar/Jazzmaster unit, as is the bridge (which I've manage to mount the wrong way around, btw.- which doesn't seem to matter). There was no trem arm with it, and a japanese Jag/JM arm seem to be a tiny bit too large to lock snugly into place, so I have to do some modding there.
Oh, and the finish turned out to be nitro. Which surprised me at first... until I realised that poly most probably wasn't available at the time. I far as I know, Fender began using poly around 1970 or so. Kind of a nice touch anyway.
All in all, a very nice guitar. Bought on a whim, it turned out to be the nicest surprise of the year. There are two more Elk Fender-style guitars from the same era, the Deluxe Jaguar copy, and the Cutlass (gotta love the names!), a riff on the Telcaster. I'll be on the look out for those during 2024, definitely.
For a well-researched and well-written history of Elk guitars, check the below post from the Offset Guitars forum. The author is Craig Campbell, a Tokyo-based US enthusiast who is in the enviable position of being able to interview the ppl involved in their own language.
Elk Guitars- A history
