Micro-Frets Signature Made For Tommy Cash & The Tom Cats Semi-Hollow Body Electric Guitar (1970)
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Item # 11238
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Micro-Frets Signature Made For Tommy Cash & The Tom Cats Model Semi-Hollow Body Electric Guitar (1970), made in Fredrick, Maryland, serial # 2002, black lacquer finish, maple body, maple neck with rosewood fingerboard, original black tolex hard shell case.
This super cool looking Micro-Frets Signature guitar was built for Tommy Cash & the Tom Cats, who like a number of country artists in the late '60s were Micro-Frets endorsers. These unique original American guitars came out of Frederick, Maryland, where the small Micro-Frets company built beautifully engineered if slightly oddball fretted offerings from the later 1960s up through the early '70s. This is a second series Signature Model, a thin hollow body instrument with acoustic chambers routed out of the solid wood body halves joined at the center of the rim.
This black beauty is one of a set of (at least) four instruments custom built for the Tom Cats around 1969, finished in gleaming black lacquer with the trademark "Tom Cat" silhouette logo done in pickguard plastic on the lower face of the body. Two other black models (a bass and another 6-string) were presented along with this one, plus a custom white Huntington with black trim for Tommy himself. (we were fortunate enough to have handled that guitar some years back!). Tommy Cash was of course Johnny's younger brother, who had a decently successful singing career himself around this time and appeared on his brother's TV show with this guitar backing him up.
The "Signature" was one of Micro-Frets' more conventional looking instruments, built on a symmetrical double cutaway hollowed-out maple body. It carries the firm's trademark white plastic-encased pickups and the patented Micro-Nut, which allows harmonic compensation at the headstock. It is also fitted with the company's elaborate Calibrato trem system designed to allow the strings to remain in tune when the vibrato is used, and a fully-adjustable bridge unit.
The maple neck is rather Fender-like. Finished in natural with a thick unbound dot-inlaid rosewood fingerboard. The controls: tone, volume, pickup select and an extra tone modification switch are carried on the bi-level top-mounted pickguard. The tuners are openback strip Waverlys with metal buttons and the sculpted space-age headstock also carries the brand logo and model name.
This is a very well-made and fine playing guitar with a slim, comfortable neck and responsive full-range pickups. The sound is crisp and hi-fi with surprising depth when needed; the tonal range is impressive. This particular guitar appears to have been used by Tom Cat's lead guitarist Wayne Gray. A number of other country artists endorsed Micro-Frets in the late 1960's, notably Carl Perkins, at the time part of Johnny Cash's revue. Micro-Frets had a fairly short history but the high-quality, well engineered instruments they left behind are fine examples of American guitar ingenuity. This custom piece plays great, sounds great, has a very cool provenance and with its feline trademark really just looks wicked as hell: the ultimate cat fancier's guitar
Overall length is 42 1/4 in. (107.3 cm.), 14 1/2 in. (36.8 cm.) wide at lower bout, and 1 5/8 in. (4.1 cm.) in depth, measured at side of rim. Scale length is 23 1/2 in. (597 mm.). Width of nut is 1 5/8 in. (41 mm.).
This one-off custom Micro-Frets shows some typical play wear but remains all original with no notable damage or repair. It was definitely gigged by the original endorsers, there is video evidence of it in use on the Johnny Cash TV show. The all-original finish shows dings, scrapes and dents overall, especially the edges but no heavy wear. All hardware is original and complete except one of the small rotary saddle locking pieces has gone missing from the bridge. The frets have been crowned down just a bit and playability is excellent. This is a fine playing and sounding guitar, typical of these hugely under-appreciated instruments and a neat if small piece of vintage country music history, still resting in the original HSC. Overall Excellent - Condition.
This super cool looking Micro-Frets Signature guitar was built for Tommy Cash & the Tom Cats, who like a number of country artists in the late '60s were Micro-Frets endorsers. These unique original American guitars came out of Frederick, Maryland, where the small Micro-Frets company built beautifully engineered if slightly oddball fretted offerings from the later 1960s up through the early '70s. This is a second series Signature Model, a thin hollow body instrument with acoustic chambers routed out of the solid wood body halves joined at the center of the rim.
This black beauty is one of a set of (at least) four instruments custom built for the Tom Cats around 1969, finished in gleaming black lacquer with the trademark "Tom Cat" silhouette logo done in pickguard plastic on the lower face of the body. Two other black models (a bass and another 6-string) were presented along with this one, plus a custom white Huntington with black trim for Tommy himself. (we were fortunate enough to have handled that guitar some years back!). Tommy Cash was of course Johnny's younger brother, who had a decently successful singing career himself around this time and appeared on his brother's TV show with this guitar backing him up.
The "Signature" was one of Micro-Frets' more conventional looking instruments, built on a symmetrical double cutaway hollowed-out maple body. It carries the firm's trademark white plastic-encased pickups and the patented Micro-Nut, which allows harmonic compensation at the headstock. It is also fitted with the company's elaborate Calibrato trem system designed to allow the strings to remain in tune when the vibrato is used, and a fully-adjustable bridge unit.
The maple neck is rather Fender-like. Finished in natural with a thick unbound dot-inlaid rosewood fingerboard. The controls: tone, volume, pickup select and an extra tone modification switch are carried on the bi-level top-mounted pickguard. The tuners are openback strip Waverlys with metal buttons and the sculpted space-age headstock also carries the brand logo and model name.
This is a very well-made and fine playing guitar with a slim, comfortable neck and responsive full-range pickups. The sound is crisp and hi-fi with surprising depth when needed; the tonal range is impressive. This particular guitar appears to have been used by Tom Cat's lead guitarist Wayne Gray. A number of other country artists endorsed Micro-Frets in the late 1960's, notably Carl Perkins, at the time part of Johnny Cash's revue. Micro-Frets had a fairly short history but the high-quality, well engineered instruments they left behind are fine examples of American guitar ingenuity. This custom piece plays great, sounds great, has a very cool provenance and with its feline trademark really just looks wicked as hell: the ultimate cat fancier's guitar
Overall length is 42 1/4 in. (107.3 cm.), 14 1/2 in. (36.8 cm.) wide at lower bout, and 1 5/8 in. (4.1 cm.) in depth, measured at side of rim. Scale length is 23 1/2 in. (597 mm.). Width of nut is 1 5/8 in. (41 mm.).
This one-off custom Micro-Frets shows some typical play wear but remains all original with no notable damage or repair. It was definitely gigged by the original endorsers, there is video evidence of it in use on the Johnny Cash TV show. The all-original finish shows dings, scrapes and dents overall, especially the edges but no heavy wear. All hardware is original and complete except one of the small rotary saddle locking pieces has gone missing from the bridge. The frets have been crowned down just a bit and playability is excellent. This is a fine playing and sounding guitar, typical of these hugely under-appreciated instruments and a neat if small piece of vintage country music history, still resting in the original HSC. Overall Excellent - Condition.