The Ventures and Mosrite

[LOSTVENTURE]

Some of this might have been covered before, but would anyone want to guess what would have been different if the Ventures/Mosrite deal had lasted another five years? I'm looking at this more from the Mosrite angle and thinking that Semie would have been a very rich guy by 1970.
Don

[connie_mack]

or if buck owens had kept playing a mosrite?

[Edward Lopez]

Some of this might have been covered before, but would anyone want to guess what would have been different if the Ventures/Mosrite deal had lasted another five years? I'm looking at this more from the Mosrite angle and thinking that Semie would have been a very rich guy by 1970.
Don

You have to consider that what makes it in the music industry are mostly songs containing vocals. The Ventures were successful because they provided budding musicians a copy system. With The Ventures you could learn to play the Top 40 hits without the necessity of a voice. Eventually, after learning to play using The Ventures as a tool, you'd form a group which by necessity included a singer. Almost every successful group started off as a copy group until original songs replaced the groups' copies.

What I wonder is what would have happened to the music industry if The Ventures had never happened. The Beatles were also responsible for many bands forming but it was the "surfing" sound that gave budding musicians something to just play for fun. I'm very grateful to Semie for making what in my opinion is the perfect guitar shape (The Ventures Model) otherwise we might not have heard of Iron Butterfly, The Knickerbockers, and all the successful hitmakers that are shown at one time or another playing Mosrites. I could never own a Fender or a Gibson. I did own an Aria Black 'N' Gold, a J.K. Lado, because they didn't resemble a Fender or a Gibson.

While we may know the public side of The Ventures/Mosrite failure, it's the private conversations and meetings that would make for interesting reading. Semie, no doubt, had many irons in the fire and when one fire went out (The Ventures) it was because he was stoking the others.

Amazingly, the Fenders, Gibsons, etc., had and still have the staying power Semie may have been dreaming of. He had the product.

[Veenture]

Very interesting reading guys!
If Semie had sold his business (to Sears I think) at the height of Mosrite's success Semie and possibly the Ventures too could have become multimillionaires. (Semie refused the 11 million dollar takeover bid, if I'm not mistaken). Had the Ventures deal continued in a stable way for a couple more years even, we would've seen plenty more Mosrite amps in all sizes and shapes I would imagine...
(Semie was a passionate guitar builder...he should've hired in a good financial advisor!)

[Sarah93003]

I usually refrain from these sort of "what if's". Being a student of business I know there are models and patterns that occur. It takes a certain kind of person to have the "vision" to create something new. Semie was that type of person. It is extremely rare that the creator is also very adept at managing a business through all of it's growth phases. In my humble opinion the fall of Mosrite can be traced to it's root cause in poor management practice. I'm not an expert of all things Mosrite but it seems to me the product was fine, although a bit over priced.

Startup companies reach several plateaus as the grow. Through each phase, the management system must adapt and change to the new challenges they face. Often it takes a different CEO at the helm to successfully navigate each transition or series of transitions.

The best scenario, I think, would have been if Semie would have sold Mosrite for the $11M to Sears and let them manage the brand and he could have focused on "Gospel Guitars" as a brand and developed that to a size that was within his management expertise. He could have continued that trend and amassed a fortune.

I also am glad that it did not happen that way because I think Sears would have taken the Mosrite brand the same route as Teisco, Airline, etc. and we would not enjoy the Mosrite mystique we have today.

As they say, "all things for a reason".

[MWaldorf]

Wasn't there a big dip in guitar sales in 1968-1969? I remember reading something about that, something about the end of the garage music craze and the corresponding glut of used guitars on the market. On top of that, the Ventures were past their peak years on the charts by then, so I'm not sure how much of a draw their names on guitars would have continued to be.

Fortunately, over the years Semie created a number of interesting new designs, so even if he never achieved mass success, we get to enjoy the fruits of the decades of development.

[jfine]

I've often wondered how things would have gone if Semie had taken the Ventures' manager up on his offer to buy Mosrite (a million dollars was, I believe, the offer), plus a guarantee of a million dollars a year for at least five years to run the factory. (The information comes from the "Walk Don't Run" book.) Fender had just sold to CBS for $14 million, and I guess Semie was holding out for more money. Musical styles were starting to change in the mid-'60's, and the blues-based lead guitar styles of players like Mike Bloomfield and Eric Clapton aren't all that easy to do on the thin narrow speed-fretted Mosrite neck. I think Semie might have come around earlier than '73 if the survival of his company had depended on producing necks that suit string-bending styles--the '73-'74 necks are a lot more comfortable than the tiny '60's ones, for me anyway! Don Wilson might have gotten the wider neck he was after Semie to make, and they might not have had their falling-out. We can "what-if" till the cows come home--a bass-player friend of mine had a great line--"'If' came in ninth in an eight-horse race at Hialeah in 1942."...

[Dennisthe Menace]

Woe!!! I'm reading all of these 'different angles' that 'might of been'......
I'm more curious about what Bob Dillion had mentioned in his post......
"While we may know the public side of The Ventures/Mosrite failure,"

And Bob, this is not directed at you, but everyone reading this on the Forum,
Does any one person really KNOW what the actual failure was? I have heard so many different stories
on this, and a lot of them are very twisted, from when he bought out the Dobro Guitar Company, to giving
away guitars to churches, etc....which might of contributed to the problem, but these were not the problem.

So, does any one really know what the reason was for the public side of the Ventures/Mosrite failure???

[LOSTVENTURE]

The account that Semie gave in "American Guitars (by Tom Wheeler)" was that the failure of the Award amplifiers put the Ventures in financial straights and that things went down hill from there. I do remember several other versions but I don't remember who told the stories or where I read them. Since I was in college at the time I had to much going on to follow the action as it took place. It must have been primarily behind the scenes or one of my fellow Ventures fans would have said something. Anyone else?
Don

[TimR]

That's what I heard -the amps were what did him in. The amps were the Ventures idea, but they got Semie's permission to put the Mosrite name on. The only thing he ever really had to do with them was the "Fuzzrite" circuit. The 1st amps sent out for the Ventures approval were great. So everyone was excited and said, "Let's go....!" The rest of the production amps were crap. Then the house of cards began to fall...................