LaBaye 2X4

Finish:metalic candy apple red
Body style:the answer's in the question here,like an oversized 2X4
Bridge: a tun-o matic style rocker bridge with white plasic or bone saddles
Tuners:originally Kluson deluxe,mine has Gibsons on it
Neck :is thin like a rosewood strat neck ,regular frets,I think the fretboard is ebony.it's too dark an tight grained for rosewood,the neck is hard maple
Case:yes it has a really well made hardshell case that looks like a fancy rifle case,try carrying this puppy onto an airplane these days,without getting stopped! LOL
Year:1967 in Neodesha,Kansas USA,they were distributed by the LaBaye co. of Green Bay Wisconsin
Frets:22
Controls:2 volume,2 tone,Les Paul style 3 way switch
Pickups:originally 2 Sensi-Tone single coils,mine has aDiMarzio humbucker in the lead position ATM
Woods:soft maple body with hard maple neck and ebony fingerboard

This guitar had a very thin telecaster type sound when puchased since then it's had humbuckers (a Gibson and a Dimarzio), a Dano lipstick tube,and even a steel guitar pickup imn the bridge position the neck pickup remains original,and I wish the guitar shop hadn't thrown the stock pickup away,this is the ultimate slide guitar becuse there's no body to get in you way in the upper registers.overall it was a qulity made instrument somewhere between a Fender and a Gibson Les Paul as far as quality goes.I like it a lot but it's "retired" because there were only about 45 made and that's just too rare to be taking out playing,stock I would say i you played C&W or clean sounding stuff it would be a 10 but I play blues and it was too thin for that unmodified so i'm giving it a 7

Well folks as near as I can tell it was ok,but by the time i got it it had seen the road,looked like it had been a mainstay in countless R&B bands in Pittsburgh,The headstock was covered in cheap glue-on glitter,The Klusons were shot,the nut was wore out,and the the bigsby was missing the spring,and it wouldn't stay in tune for shit,but you could see it was once a fine guitar(that's why I bought it)it has a hard maple neck with a fretboard that appears to be ebony,the body is soft maple,I think the knobs(which go up to 12,and the 3 way toggle switch have been on there since 67 and still work fine and the "bigsby" is way better than a real Bigsby IMO,very well made I would have to give it a 10 based on the factthat I own another Holman-Wodell product,a Wurlizer Gemini that I bought NOS and I by-passed a Stratocaster to get it,it took me a while to figure ouy why it wouldn't stay in tune,but I finally nailed that down by comparing it to the Wulritzer which is almost identical in the hardware dept.nad stays in tune better than any guitar I ever owned.The only real difference in construction (other than body shape was that the Wurlitzer has a 6 on a side headstock like a Strat and the LaBaye has a 3 and 3 configuration,the Wurlizer has a sring tree for the hi E and B strings,while the LaBaye has a U-bolt that straedles all 6,that was it! The damn U-bolt was catching on the strings!Fortunately the kind folks at Holman-Woodell had thought to make the U-bolt adjustable so I loosend it up to the point where it just kept enough tension on the nut to keep the strings from buzzing,then you could do all that Hendrix dive bombing I love to do and it stayed right on!!(too bad I had already replaced the Klusons before discovering this)I always wonderd why that U-bolt was so sophistcated,being drilled on the 2 sides with 2 long fine threaded machine screws running up thru it from the back of the headstock.

I literally beat the piss out o this thing for a good 20 years and the most I ever hat to do to it was fix the wiring on the output jack a couple times,this was a proessional instrument in it's day and I'm sure it would hold up for gigging,I always carry more than 1 because of the different sounds you get from various guitarsI bought this axe in the fall of'73 and it was my main axe till the 90's I replaced the strap buttons with locimg ones but that didn't mean the originals were bad,the holes in straps wear out and a guitar like this requires a strap even sitting down

Don't make me laugh! Holman -Woodell was only in business from 1965-68 even their history remaind vague a sketchy

I have played everything from my first Teisco Del Rey Harmonys,Kays, Danos,Kents,Strats,both Jap copies and pre-CBS models.Supros,Guilds,I even have some no'namnik Soviet guitar,and I'll stack my Holam-Woodell guitars up against anything out there(except the Sensi-Tone pickups could be fatter sounding)Actually I was 18 yrs old when I bought it and it was the colest thig I ever seen,hanging in that pawn shop window,plus it was one hell of a lot better than my Teisco in construction,I couldn't afford a Gibson or Fender at the time,I think it was going for a little over a hundred bucks and when I pointed all the stuff that needed fixed out to the salesman ,he ended up coming down to 50 bucks,that was only 10 more bucks than i paid for the Teisco new!
I wish it still had all it's original parts,I would still have a "hotrod"pickup on itbut it woul be nice to have that Sensi-Tone laying around in case I decided to sell it
Yeah I would like to share this:
With all the retro-copys of everythig else off the wall out there,Why the hell has none of the Chinese or Koreans cloned these babys(or the Wurltzer Gemini for thet matter) This is one of the "Holy Grails" of off the wall guitars!