Hertiecaster
The Hertiecaster was an inexpensive electric guitar that was manufactured in the Far East in the 1970s, at least probably manufactured by the Japanese company Sakai, imported by Hohner and mainly offered in department stores. The name Hertiecaster is a recent creation, the electric guitar itself had neither a name nor a type / model designation. The word Hertiecaster is rather an ironic allusion to the department store ( Hertie ) that sold the electric guitar, as well as the shape based on a Fender Stratocaster .
Furnishing
There were different models of the Hertie Caster, whose main distinguishing feature, the number of built-in pickups (Engl. Pickups ) which were always built in black or weißfarbenem plastic with chrome surrounds at right angles to the strings. While the simplest model offered only one pickup, the top model in the series shone with four pickups. The pole caps of the pickups consisted of chrome-colored slotted screws that were adjustable in height. White plastic slide switches were available for selecting the pickups, with which each individual pickup could be switched on or off. Some models with four pickups also offered a slide switch with which the bass could be cut. Other models had a potentiometer for this. For the tone control , the electric guitar also had a volume and height control knob made of white plastic, with a scale from 0 to 10. A nice detail here were small pointers that were screwed to the potentiometer under the rotary knob and served as a scale fixed point .
The body of the electric guitar was made of multilayer plywood, on the top layer of which a thin ash wood veneer was glued. The Hertiecaster was only offered in a simple sunburst finish . Some Hertiecasters had a strap button under the upper horn, some had the strap button on the back of their neck. A distinguishing feature of the Hertiecaster is the metal bracket mounted diagonally on the head plate, which acts as a string retainer. The guitar neck was attached to the back with four wood screws and consisted of one piece of solid maple wood. The fingerboard had 21 or 22 frets. Some models had a zero fret as a string rest. The fingerboard itself consisted only of a thin piece of rosewood veneer, which was glued to the fingerboard and had round marking points (dot inlays). The fingerboard was bordered with white plastic strips (English binding). The headstock, which was also based on the Stratocaster shape, offered six simple, open mechanisms, all of which were attached to a metal rail. In general, no brand emblem or type designation was applied here, which at the time gave room for imaginative own creations or brand forgeries. A silver-colored sticker with the inscription "Reinforced Steel Neck" was applied to the headstock and made it clear that a steel neck tensioning rod was incorporated for neck adjustment.
The neck tension rod protruded from under the pickguard and could be adjusted with a screwdriver or Allen key. The pickguard was made of simple plastic in tortoise (artificial tortoise shell ) optics. A simple metal rod was used as a bridge or bridge, which had notches to guide the strings and which could only be adjusted in height using two knurled screws. It was not possible to adjust the octave purity. The vibrato , which was standard in almost every model and consisted of a metal bracket that was tensioned by a spring, was also simple . Instead of the simple metal bar bridge, "upscale" Hertiecasters offered a model with six individual rollers as string guides, which promoted tuning stability when using vibrato. The octave purity was not adjustable here either. In the basic model, a comparatively massive, chrome-plated metal piece was used as a fixed tailpiece, which was fixed to the body with four screws. The ground connection between the pickguard and vibrato was factory-made with a simple electric guitar string.
reception
Robert Smith of the English band The Cure played a Woolworth 's Top-20 in the early days of "The Easy Cure / The Cure" , which was very similar to the Hertiecaster guitars (probably identical instruments that were used in the 1970s in In the Far East, and then sold cheaply in European department stores). The debut album "Three Imaginary Boys" by The Cure was partially recorded even with Smith's cheaper department store guitar. A little later Robert Smith then played a Fender Jazzmaster electric guitar, on which, however, he installed one of the pickups of his old Top 20 electric guitar between the two factory-installed single coil pickups of the Jazzmaster, because he liked the unconventional sound of the simple one Liked electric guitar.
Individual evidence
- ↑ Robert Smith's comment in the booklet of the “Three Imaginary Boys” Deluxe CD