Interesting History

Usually someone else posts the interesting Reverb articles before I do, but I have not seen this one here. Perhaps the fear that we cannot discuss a trade embargo from several decades ago without getting into current events is (justifiably) inhibiting folks?

"Following the end of World War II, the British Board of Trade controlled imports to try to improve the UK’s balance of payments...among the restricted manufactured goods were musical items, namely gramophone records, harmonicas and their parts, musical boxes and their movements, stringed instruments (including guitars), wind instruments (not including organs), and some organ parts."

Article discusses some of the brands that were available or imported, the effort some folks went to get American guitars and name drops Guild (in the same breath as Martin and Gibson) a couple of times.

https://reverb.com/news/the-british-guitar-embargo-when-brits-were-banned-from-buying-american

That was a great read!

walrus

That’s one of the reasons the Liverpool bands were at the forefront. Being a seaport, they had easy access to sailors to bring back American guitars.

Interesting, thanks for the link Fro!

In all those early photos of the various UK beat bands they're playing instruments made by Framus, Hofner, Burns and others -- nary an American maker among them.

wileypickett said:

In all those early photos of the various UK beat bands they're playing instruments made by Framus, Hofner, Burns and others -- nary an American maker among them.

Click to expand...

Always figured it was because the American guitars didn't have metric scale lengths.

adorshki said:

Always figured it was because the American guitars didn't have metric scale lengths.

Click to expand...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Frd53vbCHLg

Ralph