£40 from Covent Garden, mid 1999. Even though my band had split, I already had more guitars than I could ever need, and this one looked weird and potentially unplayable, I still couldn't resist it.

With only one reference to Horugel guitars on the Internet and no image, this was a tough one to work out. Early researches turned up a German piano manufacturer called Horugel; I assume they turned to opportunistic guitar-making to cash in on the world-wide demand for rocknroll instruments in the early 60s, like the accordoin makers in Italy and Sweden. The original tuners were rubbish. I replaced them with kluson-alikes.

After these pics were taken I had to remove the bridge pickup after much tinkering, to allow the bridge to be set a playable level, and drill two new holes to position the bridge on the scratchplate. This makes an eccentric looking guitar look even odder, but it plays well. Loud too.

As it was almost unplayable before it has a pristine neck with no fret-wear whatsoever. The metal gives it a crunchy sound. It also has a cool and crazy 'solo' switch, and the sustain is great! I hardly even knew what sustain was before, but now I know cuz I can hear it.

The Horugel brandname aside, I think this is actually more likely to be Japanese than German, but I'm not really sure. It has a distinctive coffin-shaped neck-plate. I've seen some vaguely similar ones on Ebay with the Sekova brand, but I can't find any info on those either. I know the piano company Horugel was taken over by Samick of Korea, who make cheap copy guitars, but this is a red herring as it didn't happen 'til the 1980s.