mosriteforum.com

Howdy, Jim: Long time no see. I have been away from this forum for a while. Good to see you again.

I still remember vividly the day we met at Sam Ash's in Dowers Grove quite a few years back. I was testing one of their used 63 Vibroverb with one of The Ventures tunes, you came over and we chatted a bit. Time really flies....

Hope everything is fine with you. Merry Christmas to you and your family.

Thanks, Dennis. Glad to be back and good to see you again here.

Hello Desert Surfer,

Yes, 'remember the day. Also the times we met at the DuPage Guitar shows.

Thank you for opening this thread and your kind words.

I still prowl around here from time to time. I've revisited many old topics and threads and find I learn a lot! So why not resurrect this one. I missed out first time around.
I first heard about Mosrite in a bar in the mid seventies. It was after watching Rick Derringer do two sets, me and my buddy decided to stick around and happened to meet an interesting guy who was also there to see the show. He was guitar playing musician Eric Brann. He played lead guitar in a band called Iron Butterfly. We spoke about music and he was talking about how he had disciplined himself to learn modal theory, and how it had opened doors in his playing and abilities. He also spoke highly of his favorite guitar; the Mosrite Ventures model. He claimed that the necks were super sleek and fast, so much so you had to adjust to them. But once you got the feel, they were amazing. He was informative and had a great positive attitude about music, and frankly, I found him to be inspirational. Positive vibe kind of guy.
Months later, I encounter my first Mosrite hanging in a little guitar shop, Beach Music, now long ago gone, in Lauderdale by the Sea. As a college kid at the time, it was out of my price range, but I've never forgotten picking it up and strumming chords on it and relating to what Eric Brann had told me.
So that's my story, FWIW.

Nice story! Thanks for sharing.

Very nice!

I'm a bass player, never played a Mosrite bass but after doing a little hunting I found one on line that caught my eye. Bought it just a week ago, already gigged it last weekend and loved it immediately! Wish I'd discovered Mosrite a long time ago.

I came at this phenomenon quite by accident. I owned a guitar in the 60's, and actually played a few Ventures' tunes, but life wasn't easy, and music wasn't a luxury I could afford, so I parked my guitar, and got me a career! About 45 years later, I had taken up guitar building as a hobby, and I was enjoying a warm winter in Yuma. One day, my wife told me that Nokie Edwards was doing a charity concert at "Crazy Earl's", a local bar. It sounded like fun, so we went. I walked in, and heard Nokie playing his personal version of a Mosrite, called a HitchHiker...

At the break, I walked up to him, introduced myself, and said, "I want one of those!", pointing to his guitar... I now own two of them, one custom ordered, and one that he played on tour in Japan in 2008. They are easily the best playing instruments I have ever enjoyed, and I have built some good ones that celebrity guitarists are slowly discovering... (Who knows, if my jingle runs out before I do, maybe I can sell a few more!) LoL

Mosrites are unique on the world, and some of their clones have been worthy of our attention as well! As they say, imitation is a form of flattery.

In April of 1990, I was 15 years old. I went to see my favorite band at the time, Drivin N Cryin, at the Valdosta State College basketball gym in Valdosta, GA. I was in heaven, the show was fantastic. I noticed Kevn Kinney was playing a guitar I'd never seen before. This was pre-internet, so I don't really even remember how I found out what it was but somehow I found out it was a Mosrite Ventures model. I fell in love and just HAD to have one. The search was on! I scoured every newspaper I could find, looking for someone selling a Mosrite. No luck of course. Called guitar shops, pawn shops, nothing. Then one day not long after the DNC concert, one of my bandmates wanted me to ride with him to Opp, AL to visit his friend who ran a guitar shop. I wasn't even thinking about the Mosrite that day, I just tagged along because I was asked to. As if it was meant to be, we walked into his friend's guitar shop and there it was, a black Mosrite that looked just like Kevn Kinney's red one. I couldn't believe it. The price tag was $999.00. I was 15. How the heck could I buy this thing? I was very discouraged. BUT since my bandmate knew the owner of the shop, he asked what was the best price he could do on the Mosrite. The answer was $500. The shop owner must've seen how overwhelmed I was, because he made me an offer: He told he'd take it off the display wall and put it in the back. He gave me until the end of summer to come up with the $500. I went home and mowed anyone's lawn who would let me for the whole summer and I got that $500, drove to Opp, and picked up my new guitar! It's still my main guitar to this day...