Sekova Fender Copy

As far as I know, this is a Japanese-made guitar, with a vaguely Russo-Spanish sounding name, but there's nothing in the way of identifying markings, except for the nameplate on the headstock. It's a little red electric guitar, shaped sort of like a Fender Mustang or Duo-Sonic, with one single-coil pickup at the neck and a silver pickgaurd that's shaped kind of like the state of Texas. It has a volume knob and a tone knob (broken on mine), a tune-o-matic style bridge, and a Hagstrom-style Tremar tremolo (which is why I bought it - complete, working Tremar, with arm and set screw and everything, which I quickly swapped with the stripped Tremar in my Hagstrom III). The neck is finished with the same red as the body is. It's a very cute guitar - not bizarre or anything, but just little and cheap-looking.

I didn't really expect much from it, to be honest. I was buying it for parts, and if I happened to get a punk-rock guitar in the process, that was fine by me. But actually, it sounds really, really good! It might be because the tone is broken in a bassier position, or it might just sound this way, but it's got this godawful, roaring, muddy sound, like high-school kid's first muscle car. Or a lobster boat. It has almost no sustain whatsoever, and the neck's so little you can't really play single-note lines very well anyway - it's mostly good for pounding out power chords & yelling.

I don't play without distortion very often, but clean this has that sort of dead 60's garage-y sound - which isn't surprising, I guess -- it sounds bst with the gain on the amp turned most of the way up, and a MXR distortion+ pedal with the gain about halfway. I also have this big purple plug-in tube overdrive pedal that makes it sound really, REALLY huge & ugly and aggressive and stupid and vacant and awful and noisy and blissful.

The Tremar didn't really work on this guitar, because it kept hitting the edge of the pickup when you'd try to use it.

Pretty much everything needed to be adjusted to make it playable. The action is unbelievably high, even with the bridge all the way down -- I might have to stick a shim in between the neck and the heel to bring the strings down a little bit -- I've already cranked the truss rod up as tight as I dare -- and the intonation wasn't even close to right. Some of the strings were almost a half-tone off from open to the 12th fret, and even adjusted as far as they'll go, a couple of them are still a littl bit off. But the neck is so flat and narrow you can't really do bends or anything, and being short-scale, the frets are really too close together to play up high anyway, so I sort of got it as close as I could in the upper register , but mainly concentrated on getting it to sound right around the 7th fret, which is where I do most of my playing. The jack had a wire hanging out of it when I bought it, but I couldn't find anyplace to solderit, so I tucked it into the body and plugged it in anyway, and it worked, so I don't know what the story is there -- some sort of groundwire, maybe? I don't know. I didn't really care if it ever got to perfect, and I've had a lot of luck with it so far, so I'm happy. But it's not a very well-put-together guitar.

I guess since it's an almost 40-year-old guitar, it must be pretty tough...the pickguard has a crack in it, but that looks like it's from where someone tried to fix it themselves by like only undoing a few of the screws and prying up one end of it, rather than taking the whole thing off. It actually makes it really easy to get into the electronics now, because it's in two pieces. The tone pot broke off inside, so the knob spins and spins without doing anything, but otherwise, it seems pretty sturdy. You have to really beat on it to get a good sound out of it, so maybe it would fall apart, but I don't think so. I bet the electronics would die on you if you took it on tour and didn't bring along a backup, but physically I think it could handle anything you asked of it. It's going to sound horrible no matter what anyway, so who really cares?

It wasn't put together very well to begin with, so I can't imagine anyone a the factory would be very helpful if you called them. But they probably make cell phones at that factory now anyway.

You should totally check this guitar out if you see one. Everyone I've talked to knows about Sekova pedals & Les Paul copies, but no one has ever seen one like this, and NO ONE seems to know anything about the Tremar (but it has one! Honest to God it does!!!!). It's a really cute guitar that sounds like junk, because it is junk. It makes you sound like you don't know how to play, even if you've been playing for years, and I think that's a great thing. We all need to look and sound foolish when we play. It looks great with little mod dresses & barrettes. It's the perfect guitar for girls who don't know how to sing. It's perfect for people who think loud is better than good. It's perfect for people who write songs about their cats and stupid boys. It would sound great in a band that uses a Danelectro baritone guitar as a bass. It would sound great in a band that didn'thave a bass player. It'll always match your lipstick on stage. It's neat and cool and cheap and it will make you a super-star!!