Supro Dual-Tone

From what I can tell, comparing photos, it's a 1959 Supro Dual-Tone. The usual white plastic coating, gold tone bits, bi-level pickguard, etc. It has features, I suppose, one of which is durability.

Sounds like ass. Seriously, ignore the "Ooooh, Bowie, Link Wray, old, indie cred" stuff and it has no sustain, sounds thin and flat and weak by any normal standard. I have a Hamer USA Studio, a Guild Bluesbird, and a Gibson 137 with Seth Lovers and have recorded a lot with a '69 Les Paul and this guitar sounds weak and lifeless through anything. It's not an electronic problem -- output is fine -- but it was made as a cheap student guitar, with a composite body, and it has no richness to the sound. The neck pickup DOES sound cool through a Muff.

After 50 years all bets are off as far as action, fit and finish.

I have to say that after being rode hard and put up wet (literally... it was peed on by the Black Lips during a particularly energetic gig) for 50 years, it's a trouper. Original strap buttons, knobs, tuners, nut, wiring, EVERYTHING have held up. Well, I had to drop a tiny bit of Krazy-Gloo??? in the nut slots as they were cut too deep from a half-century of playing. Still, it's noiseless and though it has some cracks and chips, looks all right. I can depend on it, yes.

I think they're all dead now.

Been playing too long. I like really heavy-duty guitars and play loud stupid pop songs with them, using loud tube amps. I'm not into boo-teeky stuff or vintage wankery... got this cheap from a friend because I liked its deco style. It looks cool and is kinda fun to play but unless you're using piles of fuzz the tone is along the lines of the First Act Wal-Mart things that no doubt will be super-collectible in 50 years and exude "mojo" and "play like buttah." I'm quite fond of this guitar for no good reason at all except it's a little TANK.

Mines a a great 1961, That unfortunatly someone striped the paint off a long time ago. Which im told isn't uncommon because they used fiberglass paint that sometimes chips and flakes off. It has Klusion butterfly tunners. The neck is a fat baseball style neck with a brazilian rosewood fretboard and white block markers. But no truss rod. It was made in USA by national. And is a soild body (mines 1 piece of wood which i think might be swamp ash but im not sure)
the awesome thing is that the tone controls with you turn them backwards all the way act as a gain boost to the pickups.

I love the sound of the bridge pickup, especailly with the tone knob turned back wards because it acts as a gain boost, and distorts nice and warm through my fender hot rod. Clean isn't that great.
I belive the duo tone was link wrays signature guitar, which batman etc was made with. It's also a great sounding blues slide guitar

The neck is straight, but the 3 weakpoints of this guitar, is that it has no Truss rod, you set the action by tightening the the rear back screw on the neck which adjusts the neck angle. And that the neck is only held on with 2 screws. So im sure a good bump, or if you droped it on stage, it might break off. And the angle of the head stock is flat giving you a poor break angle for your strings

It's lasted 46 years so far, and is well made as most americain vintage instraments are. I've giged the heck out of it.. but again the 2 screws really bother me

there long gone

it's an awesome indie rock guitar with lots of mojo and vibe. Id definatly buy another one if i broke or lost it.

very excellent features for a 50's guitar. two single coil, they look like humbuck puppies. mine is all orig as i suspect all others posted here are as they were built to outlive their 3rd and 4th owners. action is killer, very much like a mid-50's les paul. innotation is still near perfect, dang!, what a cool vibe axe!!!!!

okay here goes, neck pickup is sooooooo off the hook...just set it and forget it. slide, uh, trust me, this cool dude deserves a "10" here in the sound catagorie!!!!

everythin is in killer shape after almost 50 years, still orig. frets, no scratchy pots, very little checking, it is still a stage guitar.

this guit. will be around after you and me are long gone, it will still be being played hard and singing like a brand new birdie.

uh, whatcha talkin bou willis? did linc need 'em?

really great old 50's jet-age vibe/look to her. i can't believe i picked her up for $450.. usd just a few years ago!!! i still see them surface here and there on ebay for under a grand. buy one if you can find one!!!

1960 Supro Dual Tone. 20 frets. Single cutaway wood body with white pastic covering (semi-soft) in good shape after 43 years. Rosewood board, medium frets. A pretty fat but very playable neck. 2 humbucker looking but actually big single coil pickups. Tone & voume control for each. 3 way switch,-neck PU, bridge PU & bridge with a filter for very trebly tone. No, no setting for both pickups darn it. Thought about rewiring but don't want to mess with the original concept. Height adjustable wood bridge with cool stairstep tailpiece. Vintage type tuners with nice large "butterfly" plastic buttons- good shape & hold fine. Too cool double layer deco-ish pickguard.
Great looking guitar-think about car stylings from the late 50's. Nice light weght.

Sound is absolute killer for blues and is the ULTIMATE for slide. Guitar has natural distortion even on clean settings, & gets wicked on higher gain. It likes quite high gain settings just fine - surprisingly doesn't mud up. Some noise due to unpotted single coils but worth it for the tone. The neck pickup is FAT beyond belief- I use it on a modified GT 6 recto setting for slide & people can't believe the fat, thick rich tone full of overtones. Freight train slide!! The middle switch setting is great for cutting blues stuff or old rock- good cut, lots of rich overtones with some drive on it. (this was Link Wray's guitar). The Treble setting on bridge PU is a little thin for my taste & not clean enough for country stuff- if you like a really cutting sound this would work for you.
I use it through a GT 6 with custom patches into a Blues Junior, Vibrolux Reverb, Reverend Hellhound, or Mark II Boogie head into a 1 12 Celestion Boogie bottom and a 1 12 Bag End botom.
This guitar is a BLUES BEAST!!

This guitar actually plays real well. The neck has only 2 bolts. one of which turns out to be a set screw for neck angle. It is really a 1 bolt neck!! But is pretty stable with fine sustain as the neck fits tight into a concave groove in the body. The frets are good- no sharp ends or rattles anywhere- I've played for decades & it doesn't hold me back. Got it from Dave's Guitar shop & it is very clean for an old, originally cheap guitar. Bridge is held by string tension & easy to adjust for quite good intonation (set compensated saddle). No truss rod but this chubby neck ain't movin', especially after all these years. I use .010-.046's on it.

I use this thing live- it has been around for this long & everything is solid. I did put security strap buttons on it to go with strap locks (saved the originals of course). The original case is a chipboard - decent shape but not suited for road use.

N/A- No Supro Co. for a long time now.
Dave's Guitar Shop is very nice to deal with. I bought it from their website after a thorough hands on over the phone description. Good people there!

I have been playing since 1967. I have lots of fine guitars & 5 good tube amps of different sizes. I do guitar into GT-6 into good rich clean tube amp. I love this guitar for what it does, especially slide & heavy old rock & blues. It is not a verstile do-it-all guitar at all but has a real personality & plays great. I may pick up another at a fair price to stick under the bed just in case.

Apparently an early 60's model from what I've gathered. Made in U.S.A. by National. 20 frets (in great shape for their age), a sandwiched, fiberglass construction or 'Reso-Glass' according to Supro. Two pickups which appear to be big, covered humbuckers but I'm told they're coils. It's got a great-feeling, somewhat baseball bat-ish, fully bound neck (and headstock) with white rectangular inlays and the wider 'Gumby'-style headstock with non-stock Kluson Deluxe tuners. It has a floating bridge with no adjustment except height, and a very cool stair-stepped design tailpeice. Someone added dice knobs which I'd intended to remove at once, but somehow they've grown on me - this is an EXTREMELY cool-looking guitar with a sharp cutaway on the bass side and a lower, more rounded cutaway on the treble side. I wish I could include a picture, it's very unique. Black, with chrome hardware, probably some nickel plating, too. Oh, and it has a 3 way pickup selector which is neck/neck-bridge/bridge and two volume and two tones controls.

The fattest, thickest tone ever. It's a shame that a guitar that sounds this good wasn't more successful. Maybe due to this being a top-of-the-line Supro it plays better than most, but Ive seen others with these pickups, and I assume they at least sound good, too. Switch to the neck pickup and there is no fatter tone in all of Guitardom. You bet your ass its rich and full - it's dripping with vibe-o-lisciousness. The combo of neck/bridge adds a top-end bite and more high end detail while retaining the thick, full low-end and sounds great, too. The bridge setting is a bit shrill, but works pretty well in overdriven lead-style. It certainly can cut through a mix. It's got a lot of sounds in its arsenal, really, with the dual volume and tone pots and it's a pretty formidable beast when overdriven on any pickup setting, but ohhhh that neck pickup. I was into the White Stripes at the time I was looking for this guitar and while it can deliver all that stuff, it's a good all-around player for other styles, too.

Well, since it's 40 years old, it has some minor scuffs and a few cracks in the binding. The fiberglass body however, looks great and has held up extremely well. It's more or less solid black all the way through, so if it gets scratched, you don't see a lighter color underneath, and you can buff most scratches out pretty effectively. Fortunately, the guy I bought it from had it well set-up and it plays great. The pickup selector switch is especially beefy and gives a firm, solid, satisfying click into each position, almost like a light switch in an old house. Nothing's loose on this guitar.

It's lasted 40 years, so...

Sadly, Supro is no more.

I've played for over 20 years now. I own lots of guitars (18-ish) from vintage Strats to cheap Kay and Univox models. If this guitar were stolen, I'd be very, very sad. And I'm sure, unable to replace it. This is the kind of guitar you name. (Black Velvet seems obvious, but...) The only thing I'd change is a switch to a fully intonatable bridge. I'd expect a vintage guitar shop to sell one of these for $800 to a grand easy. Certainly far lesser guitars have sold for far more. The best guitar deal of my life.

Supro guitars were built by National in Chicago. This Supro Dual tone is a two-pickup solidbody built in the late 50's. It has a vaguely Les Paul-shaped body painted white, a two-level black & white pickguard, a short-scale 20 fret neck with a weird semicircular neck/body joint, individual volume and tone controls for the pickups and a 3-way switch. Interestingly, the switch positions seem to be: neck, bridge, and bridge pickup through a high-pass filter. You can't turn both pickups on together. The pickups themselves look like double coils but they're just really huge single-coils with big metal covers. The bridge is a pseudo-tune-o-matic on a wooden base (like a Gibson hollowbody bridge) and the strings anchor into a tailpiece typical of National/Supro guitars from the late 50's and early 60's. Tuners are Kluson Deluxes with white plastic heads.

This guitar is really fat sounding on the bridge pickup, MASSIVELY fat on the neck pickup, and Tele-thin on the bridge pickup in low-rolloff mode. I mostly played the Supro with a Premier tube amp. Crank up the tremolo and you have a seriously swampy tone good for blues (of the pre-SRV/Clapton/Hendrix variety) rockabilly, or garage. I saw a promo photo of Link Wray (c.1958) with this guitar and that's why I got it, sounds alot like Link's Swan Records-era stuff (Fatback, Law of the Jungle, Deuces Wild).

Well, I don't know how this thing felt and played BRAND NEW in the late 50's, but when I got it it was beat s*** with many huge paint chips and corroded hardware. Worst of all, the frets are almost all gone. Still plays ok, though.

I used this guitar live a few times in low-volume situations with a 25-watt tube amp. Sounded great, but the pickup switch wouldn't always make a clean contact and the thing would crackle real loud. Still, it lived this long and it looks like it'll be around another 40 years.

Supro are long gone...the parent company, National, has changed hands many times and I'd be very surprised if they had anything to do with 40 year old Supro guitars.

I mainly play a ,65 Jaguar and a '65 Jazzmaster, but I love CHEAPO guitars. I've had tons of them and this is one of the best. It sounds really great for primitive rock'n'roll and blues and plays really well considering the baseball bat neck and decaying frets. Wish you could turn both pickups on together, and a Bigsby would really make this an out-of-sight axe, otherwise it's a great guitar if you're a Link Wray freak like me!