I wanted one of these back in 1980 when I was 16. I remember that they were $1,200, but they might as well have been $1,200,000 as far as I was concerned.
Many years later I had the $$$ to buy one, and this one is a beauty. Koa, with Bill Lawrence pickups.
Look at all the knobs and switches!!!
Awesome Mockingbird! I love my mockingbird. It’s not as nice as this one, but it’s a well loved, and well worn Platinum Series that I’ve had since I was a teenager.
The Mockingbird is the coolest guitar shape ever, in my opinion. I have 3 more, although they’re all modern Asian models.
I believe Guitar World voted it as the coolest guitar ever, once upon a time. I agree.
Love the koa wood!!
Yeah! Koa is my favourite, and what I wanted when I was a kid.
It’s so awesome it defies gravity and hangs sideways!
Seriously, I don’t know why Lemmy decided to rotate the image when it posted.
It’s so awesome it defies gravity and hangs sideways!
No, no my friend. It mocks gravity.
Beautiful piece
Thanks.
That thing is ridiculous, and I love it. What do all of the knobs and switches do?
The big three knobs near the bridge are volume, boost and tone. The big switch between them is the pickup selector. The three little switches in a row are coil taps and phase reversal. The other toggle switch is the boost on/off. The chicken-head switch is a notch filter.
The boost is a little custom circuit-board inside the body with a 9V battery running it. It’s not bad, but really of limited use…and still cool as hell. The notch filter is actually very cool and very useful.
All told, the amount of tones you can get out of this thing is really astounding. As a live gigging instrument, the control setup is probably a bit unwieldy, as you often don’t have time to fiddle with multiple knobs and switches. But who’s gonna take this beast to gig, anyways?
The Bill Lawrence pickups are original and the body still has factory markings inside the pickup cavities that say something like, “BL”. These pickups were custom, but not all that unusual in Mockingbirds from that era.
“what kind of sound can you get out of it?” “Yes.”
B-E-A-Utiful! And it has all the knobs!!
Wow! I’m not big on the shape, but man I love that wood and the control options. So cool!
Amazing. But you could take an eye out with that thing!
