Atlansia, famous manufacturer of... guitar stands..?

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Voidoid56

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Here's a little curiosity:

I've been picking up these Greco-branded wooden guitar stands at online auctions in Japan during the past 18 or so months. The logo is fun of course, but they also look a bit more like furniture than the standard black steel-tube stands. And being on wheels, they're easier to move out of the way when the robot vacuum cleaner nesting under the stairs needs to do its thing. :)



The final one arrived a few weeks ago, and unlike the others, it had a manufacturer's sticker, and I was surprised to find that it was made made by Atlansia. A Matsumotu address, phone and fax. No email or URL so I assume that the stands are at least pre-internet.



Now Atlansia is one of those names that keep cropping up in vintage MIJ contexts, rarely on actual instruments but they're often mentioned as manufacturers of wood parts, mainly necks, for other manufacturers. I've only seen anecdotal evidence for this, but I haven't really researched it.
The company seems to be have been founded in the early 80's by Hayashi Nobuaki, aka "H. Noble". He'll be 80 next year and is an industry veteran, to say the least, having started out with Matsumoku when they were still Singer Japan's cabinet maker. He eventually became Matsu's head designer, and a lot of Aria original designs, incl the famed SB basses, have "Designed and approved by H. Noble" on the headstocks.
According to their website, they mostly make necks and bodies for US parts suppliers today. But they also have a substantial range of fiercly innovative boutique instruments, especially basses, on offer.

Home - Atlansia Guitars

What I find interesting and kind of fun is the fact that when Kanda Shokai wanted Greco-branded guitar stands, they contacted this seriously qualified luthiery shop. Which apparently gladly accepted the order. It would seem to me that there must have been specialized furniture manufacturers around to ask, but no, they kept it within the Matsumoto guitar-making family. It must have been a rather unique local business environment.
Also, they kind of kept up the proud tradition of making excellent copies of the West's finest. These are your basic Ikea-style flat-pack products, complete with the same hex key screw and other fittings. Very familiar to a Swede like me. :)

Now, I wonder if they made them with a Tokai logo..? :)
 
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Those are cool, and interesting story. Thanks for sharing that.
 
Sigmania said:
I found this of guitar makers in Nagano & Hamamatsu:

Japan manufacturer's directory:

Atlansia (N. Hayashi) => late 70's - date => Nagano
Chushin Gakki => 1960 - 1980 => Nagano
Dyna Gakki => 1970 - => Nagano
Fujigen => 1969 to date => 3 plants in Matsumoto Nagano ,
Matsumoku => 1970's - 1987 => Matsumoto, Nagano
Tokai Gakki => 1968* to date => Hamamatsu *1947


Japan "non manufacturer" guitar production companies :

(some have been manufacturers for a portion of their long histories)

Hoshino Gakki Ten => Ibanez => 1929 - date => Nagano , Quindao (2005)
Matsumoto Musical Instruments Association (or Union) => to late 1970's (member co's and manufacturers included Kyowa Shokai, Chushin Gakki, Fukuhara Gakki, Nakai Gakki ) Nagano"


https://www.guitarforums.com/showthread.php?t=45956


http://www.tokaiforum.com/viewtopic.php?f=11&t=26429&p=198167#p198167
 
A bit late to the party, I know.....:) Alas the links do not work anymore but I'd sure love to have a quality guitar stand made by Atlansia! I'm sure they were asked due to their reputation of extraordinary design ideas. In the 80s their products were regulars in the western guitar/bass magazine world with some of the most unusual, photogenic, futuristic and extraordinary basses ever made.

But if Greco had asked some woodworking/furniture company that would've been fitting as well because historically the furniture industry played a role in early mass production of Japanese solid body electrics too. :)
 
Hm, odd. Must be some artefact of the forum's new look, the pics are still on Imgur. You can actually reach the pics by pasting the url's (without the img tags) directly into your browser.
It seems this new forum system uses another formatting for url's. This works, right?

 
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Yep. I can see that. But if you click on it, it goes to imgur then nothing. Black screen.

If I cut and paste your links from above it jus takes me to a google search of imgur.

There seem to be problems with some links. I let the Tech folks know.

There was an issue with a post you made on a Goldstar with the - symbol that I linked. The images were gone in my post and there were dead links.

See here:

The Mystery Of The - Hyphen, Dash, or Minus Sign

You may want to chime in and let them know what you are seeing as well?
 
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You may want to chime in and let them know what you are seeing as well?

Clicking the links takes me to a blank page with "about:blank#blocked" in the address field.
Weird. I can't be the only Imgur user here, can I?? And all pics are certainly still in my account.

But, I noticed that this new system allows you to post directly from your hard drive with no image hosting service involved. Now, that's progress! :)
 
I use imgur. I post the Bb code and seems to work fine.

Exactly what I've been doing. Weird.

And even weirder: I went back to a post about an all-black Silver Star I made, and it had the same problem. I found that I could manually take the Imgur url's and paste them into the new posting system and get the pics back that way. After doing it three times, I called it a day, thinking: "someone must know a better way of doing this"... and found that the rest of the pics in the post had magically reappeared..? No idea what's going on here.
 
Yeah, it's weird.

I also remember a bunch of pics you posted in the Silver Star gallery thread that were not visible and just showed as "image".

Now they are big red Xs.

QU7rEBX.png


Silver Star Gallery
 
Ok, so here's the deal:

If I hit Edit on a post I've made, I need to repost one pic by pasting the Imgur link into the new system, then hit Save, and the rest of pics in post show up as well.
It makes it a lot easier, sure, but then again, I need to find every image I've ever posted and do this. Which, frankly, I don't have time for. Could you ask the support/tech ppl if there is anything they can do about it?
 
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