These are objectively awful instruments. They were so bad (and hard to get), that it was a common practice to make your own. For these purposes, the public phone booths were frequently vandalized as the pnones contained mics, that could be turned into pickups. Yet, much of the punk and rock stuff of the former USSR has been and, in some cases, are still made with them. E.g. Villu Tamme, legendary Estonian punk still plays a Musima Lead Star and it’s a key part of his sound.
Musima Lead Star is a musical instrument, Ural "guitars" were not. I played and owned several ones during eighties. The moment I could finally afford Musima Lead Star and finally get a sound I had in my head, was one of happiest moments of my life.
Musima means Musik marktneukirchen, a place with a long tradition of instrument manufacture. The Martin family emigrated from there to America and the rest is history..
I see Villu Tamme, mentioned here, of all places. His bansds concept album Külmale maale has its 40 year anniversary. It is about the atrocities of the soviet union, deportations, Beria, kgb, etc.
I can attest to that, as I had a few in my hands - brought in as a curiosity by a friend or largely gathering dust in some school.
That being said those made in Czechoslovakia were the least bad out of all eastern block instruments.
The same infrastructure and most likely also people went on to make instruments for other manufacturers - notably Epiphone.
These models are sought after by collectors, if only because so few were made. Some say they were better made, but I only held one in my life for a brief moment and at the time wasn't aware of its rarity.
It's hard to compare as broadly speaking guitars have become much better in every aspect over the years.
> It was unreasonably heavy and made of cheap wood, with a neck like a carved baseball bat.
Guitar necks need to withstand the tension of the strings, and any Russian-educated engineer tasked by the politburo with making a guitar out of fiberboard[^2], will plug tension plus safety margins into the secant formula[^1] and immediately realize that some steel rods from Magnitogorsk for reinforcement are in order, and promptly discover that they only have 1/2'' ones. Oh well.
[^2]: Not that there's anything wrong with fiberboard for guitars; see Danelectro. In fact, if you own a laser cutter and want to make something cool with it, an electric guitar is a great project.
Remish was truly amazing.Even if you were not into music or guitars you must have known him if you were born in Azerbaijan.
He was a guitar hero. R.I.P.
> The guitars were nearly impossible to play, with frets that could cut your hand and intonation that created sounds half and whole steps away from the intended tone
I'm curious about those intonation problems because a couple of years ago I wanted an inexpensive but decent acoustic guitar, and bought a Fender CC-140SCE acoustic guitar direct from Fender's online store.
It had frets that could cut your hand and a note that was off by a whole step. It also came with the truss rod way out of adjustment leading to lots of buzzing. I was able to get rid of most of the buzz by adjusting the truss rod, but I didn't want to deal with the rest of the problems and sent it back.
Only after it was on the FedEx truck on its way back to M̵o̵u̵n̵t̵ ̵D̵o̵o̵m̵Fender did I realize that I couldn't think of a way that the intonation error I saw was even theoretically possible. I wish I had realized that before sending it back so that I could have figured it out.
Maybe someone here has an idea?
Here's what I observed. This only happened on the first string. The others were fine.
To make this easier for people who don't know anything about music (because this is really a physics mystery, not a music mystery) I'm going to use numbers for the notes instead of names.
Let's call the note played when you pluck a guitar string without pressing any of the frets note 0. When you pluck while pressing the string down just behind the first fret, that is note 1. Frets are counted from the neck end of the guitar, and "behind" a fret means on the neck side. Second fret gives note 2, and so on.
Note n+1 is higher frequency than note n. The frequency ratio of adjacent notes is supposed to be 2^(1/12).
Playing up the fretboard, starting with plucking without pressing any frets should give this sequence of notes: 0, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20.
What actually happened was that note 13 was missing. It was replaced with 15. The sequence from 12 through 16 went 12, 15, 14, 15, 16.
A bad fret can easily case a wrong note, but there are limits. The way frets work is when you push the string down behind the fret, it changes the length of the vibrating portion. With no frets pressed the string vibrates between a support on the neck (called the "nut") and a support on other end (called the "saddle").
If you press down behind a fret, that pushes the string down enough that the portion between your finger and the saddle is suspended between the saddle and the metal of the fret. That's shorter than nut to saddle, so has a higher frequency.
The saddle is higher than the nut and the frets so that the string slopes up as you get closer to the saddle. Consider playing note 12 on mine. The string is then suspended between fret 12 and the saddle. It is sloped up enough from there the its up and down excursions from vibrating don't hit anything.
Now we play note 13, but what actually plays is 15. There is a straightforward way for that to happen: fret 15 can be slightly too tall. It is not tall enough to interfere when playing 0-12, but playing fret 13 pulls the string down farther than playing fret 12 does, and that is enough to reach fret 15 and so the string ends up actually suspended between 15 and the saddle instead of 13 and the saddle.
Can that explain what I observed? Nope! Because if 13 pulls down the string enough to run into 15, 14 will do also do so because 14 pulls down the string more than 13. The sequence would then be 12, 15, 15, 15, 16 not 12, 15, 14, 15, 16. It should not be possible to have fret n+1 play a lower note than fret n.
These are objectively awful instruments. They were so bad (and hard to get), that it was a common practice to make your own. For these purposes, the public phone booths were frequently vandalized as the pnones contained mics, that could be turned into pickups. Yet, much of the punk and rock stuff of the former USSR has been and, in some cases, are still made with them. E.g. Villu Tamme, legendary Estonian punk still plays a Musima Lead Star and it’s a key part of his sound.
Musima Lead Star is a musical instrument, Ural "guitars" were not. I played and owned several ones during eighties. The moment I could finally afford Musima Lead Star and finally get a sound I had in my head, was one of happiest moments of my life.
Musima means Musik marktneukirchen, a place with a long tradition of instrument manufacture. The Martin family emigrated from there to America and the rest is history..
I see Villu Tamme, mentioned here, of all places. His bansds concept album Külmale maale has its 40 year anniversary. It is about the atrocities of the soviet union, deportations, Beria, kgb, etc.
I know the author! Ben's a great guy. A real treat seeing this on HN. He does really gnarly Caucasus-inspired ambient electronica:
https://www.youtube.com/benwheelermusic/videos
https://mountainsoftongues.bandcamp.com/
https://invertedspectrumrecords.bandcamp.com/album/bneleti
https://crashsymbols.bandcamp.com/album/lurji-talgha
https://sayatnovaproject.bandcamp.com/album/kazbek-field-rec...
> The guitars were nearly impossible to play
I can attest to that, as I had a few in my hands - brought in as a curiosity by a friend or largely gathering dust in some school.
That being said those made in Czechoslovakia were the least bad out of all eastern block instruments.
The same infrastructure and most likely also people went on to make instruments for other manufacturers - notably Epiphone.
These models are sought after by collectors, if only because so few were made. Some say they were better made, but I only held one in my life for a brief moment and at the time wasn't aware of its rarity.
It's hard to compare as broadly speaking guitars have become much better in every aspect over the years.
Jesus those things are big!
> It was unreasonably heavy and made of cheap wood, with a neck like a carved baseball bat.
Guitar necks need to withstand the tension of the strings, and any Russian-educated engineer tasked by the politburo with making a guitar out of fiberboard[^2], will plug tension plus safety margins into the secant formula[^1] and immediately realize that some steel rods from Magnitogorsk for reinforcement are in order, and promptly discover that they only have 1/2'' ones. Oh well.
[^1]: http://www.engineeringcorecourses.com/solidmechanics2/C5-buc...
[^2]: Not that there's anything wrong with fiberboard for guitars; see Danelectro. In fact, if you own a laser cutter and want to make something cool with it, an electric guitar is a great project.
A lot of those Soviet guitars didn't have truss rods. Maybe none of them did. Some of them look cool but the quality is terrible.
Thank you for this. Sent me down a real rabbithole. I've been looking up Eastern Bloc electric guitars and it's fascinating.
According to what I saw the Soviet ones are apparently barely playable, but look very distinctive.
Soviet synthesisers are pretty fascinating too. There are few demos of the Polivoks/Polyvox online. It would work really well in industrial music.
Rocker switches are an interesting design choice. The DPDT on-off switches we use today are ok but those big button beauty's are gorgeous.
Remish was truly amazing.Even if you were not into music or guitars you must have known him if you were born in Azerbaijan. He was a guitar hero. R.I.P.
That's a very cool find, thanks!
cool stuff!
> The guitars were nearly impossible to play, with frets that could cut your hand and intonation that created sounds half and whole steps away from the intended tone
I'm curious about those intonation problems because a couple of years ago I wanted an inexpensive but decent acoustic guitar, and bought a Fender CC-140SCE acoustic guitar direct from Fender's online store.
It had frets that could cut your hand and a note that was off by a whole step. It also came with the truss rod way out of adjustment leading to lots of buzzing. I was able to get rid of most of the buzz by adjusting the truss rod, but I didn't want to deal with the rest of the problems and sent it back.
Only after it was on the FedEx truck on its way back to M̵o̵u̵n̵t̵ ̵D̵o̵o̵m̵Fender did I realize that I couldn't think of a way that the intonation error I saw was even theoretically possible. I wish I had realized that before sending it back so that I could have figured it out.
Maybe someone here has an idea?
Here's what I observed. This only happened on the first string. The others were fine.
To make this easier for people who don't know anything about music (because this is really a physics mystery, not a music mystery) I'm going to use numbers for the notes instead of names.
Let's call the note played when you pluck a guitar string without pressing any of the frets note 0. When you pluck while pressing the string down just behind the first fret, that is note 1. Frets are counted from the neck end of the guitar, and "behind" a fret means on the neck side. Second fret gives note 2, and so on.
Note n+1 is higher frequency than note n. The frequency ratio of adjacent notes is supposed to be 2^(1/12).
Playing up the fretboard, starting with plucking without pressing any frets should give this sequence of notes: 0, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20.
What actually happened was that note 13 was missing. It was replaced with 15. The sequence from 12 through 16 went 12, 15, 14, 15, 16.
A bad fret can easily case a wrong note, but there are limits. The way frets work is when you push the string down behind the fret, it changes the length of the vibrating portion. With no frets pressed the string vibrates between a support on the neck (called the "nut") and a support on other end (called the "saddle").
If you press down behind a fret, that pushes the string down enough that the portion between your finger and the saddle is suspended between the saddle and the metal of the fret. That's shorter than nut to saddle, so has a higher frequency.
The saddle is higher than the nut and the frets so that the string slopes up as you get closer to the saddle. Consider playing note 12 on mine. The string is then suspended between fret 12 and the saddle. It is sloped up enough from there the its up and down excursions from vibrating don't hit anything.
Now we play note 13, but what actually plays is 15. There is a straightforward way for that to happen: fret 15 can be slightly too tall. It is not tall enough to interfere when playing 0-12, but playing fret 13 pulls the string down farther than playing fret 12 does, and that is enough to reach fret 15 and so the string ends up actually suspended between 15 and the saddle instead of 13 and the saddle.
Can that explain what I observed? Nope! Because if 13 pulls down the string enough to run into 15, 14 will do also do so because 14 pulls down the string more than 13. The sequence would then be 12, 15, 15, 15, 16 not 12, 15, 14, 15, 16. It should not be possible to have fret n+1 play a lower note than fret n.