This is my Univox. The only guitar to survive an instrument theft from my Ford Econoline that was parked outside of the YMCA I was working at in Youngstown, Ohio one summer. It was gotten on trade that I would have regretted if it weren’t for this guitar being part of it. I traded a very nice blonde Deluxe Telecaster from the 70s for this Univox, a Teisco Del Ray (red tulip-shaped guitar) and a musty old beat up
vintage Vox practice amp.
The Teisco was stolen from the van along with a Gibson Melody Maker that was given to me when I was 16 by Ray Halliday of San Francisco alt-country band The Buckets, who was then managing Ed’s Redeeming Qualities. It’s sad to have anything stolen, but that MM really was a keepsake. I have this strange feeling I’ll find it again but the truth is it probably ended up under an overpass somewhere in the rain. Sold for crack… who knows.
I think the thief knew the Gibson name (who doesn’t right?) and figured if they were going to run with two guitars they’d take the lighter of the other two, which the Teisco certainly was. Or, maybe they looked at the case for this monster and thought it was some giant screwdriver and not really a guitar after all. The case for the Univox is not only silver, it really does look like it holds a giant screwdriver or some futuristic Flash Gordon type of heavy artillery.
I didn’t appreciate this anomaly until years later when I moved to New York and played with the band Newborn Naturals. The guitar fit our Television-like 2 guitar interplay and buttoned up punk rock aesthetic very well. Alex Feldesman, who was the other half of the guitar duo, played a white Fender Stratocaster, and always got an amazing tone out of it that cut through the murk of even the deadest of rooms. This Guitar fit nicely. It sang when you wanted it to and scratched and clawed when you wanted it to. It didn’t wash together like a Gibson and it didn’t come too clean either, or bright.
The tone and it’s beauty to me seems to stem from the fact that anything you get out of this guitar you have to make happen. Kind of like an acoustic, but not really. Even acoustics are more forgiving in terms of sustain and bends (making the whammy bar on this particularly welcome). I always liked guitars that made you FEEL like you were playing them, and in my collection this one is the king.
I never played another quite like it. That slight struggle to get the best out of this guitar is so consistent that once you’ve locked in to it you’re locked into a moment by moment relationship with this thing. No matter where you’re taking it, it always has a say. So even when I look at this guitar I sense it’s looking back with the eyes of an outlaw and a tricksters grin. A very fun person to have at your hip. Perhaps it’s chip on it’s shoulder grew one day when it caught itself in the mirror. Kind of like the way a kid wears a t-shirt to school that might get him picked on just to drum up some social interaction. The look of this guitar has some strange effect on it’s attitude. It is, after all, a funky looking thing. Not heavy metal, not punk, not quite surf, not quite funk, but all of the above.
This guitar likes to play Ike Turner, 50s rock n roll, selections from Marquee Moon, Steve Cropper licks, distorted octaves, Keith Richards g-tuning-era stuff, and more. It’s a brawler. Dead end kid. A top hat with a knife.
I think it might have decided on it’s own no one was going to take it that day. Probably didn’t even have to put up a fight. It just looked at that crack-head thief the same way it looks at me when I’m thinking of playing - “don’t bother me unless you really mean it”.
You don’t want to take this guy for granted.
