Beschreibung:

The Beatles The Beatles: George Harrison's personally owned and played Futurama electric guitar, used on the famous Hamburg tours, circa 1958, serial number 1126 impressed to rear of headstock, the twin cutaway, contoured two-piece maple body with two-tone sunburst finish, top-mounted jackplug socket, large white plastic scratchplate with Resonet logo to upper bout, three pickups with one master volume control and one tone control and three selector switches, six-saddle bridge and tremolo, one-piece maple neck with rosewood skunk stripe, fingerboard with black dot markers, headstock with three-a-side machineheads, in original Selmer rectangular case with fish skin-effect covering and remnants of three transit labels, several illegibly/indistinctly inscribed, dark crimson plush lining to interior, accompanied by two copies of Beat Instrumental magazine from November and December 1964 in which the guitar was offered as a competition prize, guitar 38½in (97.8cm) long Fußnoten "IT'S A GREAT GUITAR" - George Harrison "I started learning to play the guitar when I was thirteen on an old Spanish model, which my dad picked up for fifty bob. It's funny how little things can change your whole life..." - George Harrison 'Just chuck the word "guitars" into any conversation with George Harrison and you can prepare yourself for a really detailed discussion...' So wrote Tony Webster in his interview with George Harrison for Beat Instrumental magazine in November 1964. George continued: "I bought my first electric job, a big Hofner President, but I soon got fed up with it and did a straight swop for a Hofner Club 40. I thought it was the most fantastic guitar ever, but a short time later solids became all the rage and I bought a Futurama..." The Futurama was manufactured by the Drevokov company in Czechoslovakia, originally with the model name of Grazioso, which appeared on the headstock. George's guitar, however, had no such name but just Resonet on the scratchplate, being the name of an electric piano maker taken over by the manufacturer and apparently meaning 'music played in a graceful, smooth manner.' In 1958/59, Selmer began importing the guitar into the UK, in addition to their Hofner range, and re-branded the guitar the Futurama, as Selmer's marketing men thought this was a much catchier name and more appealing to their target audience. Like many other aspiring teenage guitarists at the time, George would have seen Buddy Holly's Fender Stratocaster on the cover of the 1958 Chirping Crickets album and had dreams of owning one. (Buddy himself had also appeared at Liverpool's Philharmonic Hall in March 1958.) However, a post-war ban on imports of American instruments made the Strat generally unavailable and so the Futurama, loosely styled on the Strat, made an affordable, reasonable quality alternative. On 20th November 1959, having recently started as an apprentice electrician at Blackler's department store, George went to Hessy's music shop in Liverpool and took out a hire-purchase agreement on this Futurama, a copy of which is illustrated in Beatles Gear. George recounts how Paul accpmpanied him on this visit to Hessy's in The Beatles Anthology: ''Paul came with me when I bought the Futurama. It was on the wall with all the other guitars, and Paul plugged it into the amp but he couldn't get any sound out of it, so he turned the sound right up. The guitar had three rocker switches, and I just hit one and there was an almighty 'boom' through the amplifier, and all the other guitars fell off the wall.'' Arthur Kelly, George's best friend, quoted in All These Years, Volume 1: Tune In, remembers seeing the Futurama for the first time at the Casbah Club: "George produced his new guitar out of the case. It was the closest he could get to the Strat, simply amazing..." George is on record as later admitting that the Futurama was "a dog" to play because of the high 'action' i.e. the strings were an uncomfortable distance from the fingerboard, bu