My Fake Mosrite

32. Mazeti Mosrite Ventures Copy

ANOTHER relative cheapie, but I make no excuses for buying this stunning guitar. I’d long had a fascination for the oddball instruments produced by the American company foudned by Semie Mosley – it probably started the first time I saw Johnny Ramone playing one as The Ramones stormed through something like 38 songs in just over an hour at Cambridge Corn Exchange in around 1978.
My interest in them was later cemented by seeing the wonderful Mike Keller playing slide on a Mosrite with Doyle Bramhall’s band at the Austin City Limits Festival in Austin, Texas in 2004. Mike’s a very fine player, who I first saw playing at Antone’s in Austin in the late 90s – I still have the excellent “Keller Brothers Live at Antones” album somewhere. He went on to play in the Fabulous Thunderbirds. Google him. If you like that kind of lowdown and dirty Texas blues, you’ll love his stuff.

As I recall it, the Mazeti cost me £120 brand new from another dealer on eBay. When I won the auction (it was the second one I’d bid on and I was beaten first time around) I couldn’t quite believe the bargain I’d got. When it arrived, the extent of the bargain became even more apparent. This was a GREAT guitar – a bit on the weighty side, maybe, but quirky, beautfully made, a real looker and fitted with a pair of viciously hot, but incredibly toneful soapbars. The Bigsby trem was a bonus – to this day, it’s the only guitar I’ve ever owned with a Bigsby. (Fun to play; not so much fun to restring!)
It’s one of only a handful of guitars I’ve owned that I never, ever, bothered to modify in any way – yes, it really was that perfect.

Yes, I regret parting with it – not least because I’ve never seen another one – on eBay or otherwise. I’d probably still have it, but for the fact I had a chance in 2015, to buy a gorgeous, pristine 1972 Deluxe Reverb for an unmissable price. The Mazeti was one of three guitars I decided to sell to raise the money to buy the amp.
Quite a lot of you all know what happened six weeks after I got the amp, so I won’t tell the whole sad story again… 😦