Saturday, February 20, 2010

The Electra MPC Guitar

Vintage Electra MPC guitars
Around 1977 Keller Music, the local store in my town began to offer a new guitar brand called the Electra MPC. Tim Keller, the owner, had built up a respectable business. The guitar's distributor was more than happy to send a demonstrator to perform one night.

I could not believe how many Les Paul owners and owners of other respectable instruments traded these guitars in for an Electra MPC Les Paul style guitar.



Each guitar held two effects modules and a nine volt battery in a body compartment. Instead of a toggle switch found on the upper bout of a Les Paul, there was a rotary switch to control which combinations of pickups/effects were turned on. There were twin toggle switches on the guitars body to turn on or off the modules.

The four potentiometers were lined up in a row. The upper knobs controlled volume/tone and the lower two controlled the effects level and attack.

These unusual Electra guitars were imported from Japan by the Saint Louis Music aka SLM from 1971 to 1984. The Electra guitars with MPC models were made by Matsumoku of Matsumoku, Japan. We have already discussed this company in detail if you would like to refer to an earlier post.

Matsumoku has made many popular guitar brands over the years including; Aria, Westbury, Westone, Epiphone, Vantage & Vox to name but a few.

In 1975 Tom Presley was hired by St. Louis Music as the Product Manager and part of the marketing team to begin MPC project. Electronics engineeer John Karpowitz was hired to design and build the Modular Powered Circuits knowns as MPC modules.


Finally in 1976 The MPC guitars made their debut.

By 1978 the Outlaw MPC & Outlaw MPC Bass (both named after the band "The Outlaws" who endorsed Electra MPC guitars). Around the same time, the Semi-Acoustic MPC (ES-335 style) was offered for sale and the X910 "Derringer" MPC (Explorer)debuted.


Due to a lawsuit for patent infringement that Gibson initiated, all Electra guitars with Gibson style head stocks were changed this year to what is called the wave or fan shaped head stock.


Also in 1978 the Contoured Ultima MPC Les Paul and the Vulcan MPC (a Les Paul copy with a Tele curve on upper bout)were offered.





The Leslie West MPC (sort of a Les Paul Special) and the MPC Ultima X960 also made it's debut this year.

1981 saw ties with Matsumoku further solidified and decision was made to merge SLM Electra brand with Matsumoku's Westone brand. In the early 80's, some production is moved to Korea. This is mentioned in the Matsumoku post.

By the fall of 1983, the Electra brand changes it's name to Electra-Phoenix. In 1984 the company became Electra-Westone and by the end of 1984 it is just Westone as St Louis Music abandoned the Electra MPC line due to lack of marketing success.

The Electra MPC's forte was it's on-board effects or module powered circuits. There was no need for a stomp box. This was before the era of affordable digital effects and pedal boards. If you needed to use an effect, all that was necessary was to flip a switch on the front of the guitar, and turn a knob (also on the front of the guitar) to adjust the intensity of the effect.

These twelve Module Powered Circuits that gave the guitars their name. These modules plugged into a compartment in the rear of the guitar and were controlled by two potentiometers on the guitar front surface.

The guitar could hold two modules at a time and could be switched or combined with a toggle switch on the guitar

There were major musicians that endorsed the MPC line; Peter Frampton, Leslie West,ELO, Allen "Free Bird" Collins, Chris Squire, The Outlaws and Rick Derringer. Some artists had their own model, such as Derringer with the X910 known as the "Derringer" model Electra MPC.

Despite these endorsements, the Electra line still disappeared while the SLM went on to produce Westone & Crate products. As of now, Westone is just a memory, but Crate products are still in production.

Today, SLM distributes Crate, Ampeg, Alvarez & Austin products. Though they have simplified there product line, St. Louis Music continues to distribute musical instruments, music books and sheet music.



Early on some people thought the Electra MPC line were of inferior quality and poorly manufactured gimmick guitars.




As we lurch forward in search of vintage instruments they are finally starting to be recognized for their playability and superior build when compared to some Asian instruments that are considered to be vintage.

Electra offered the following options for their modules:

Phase Shifter – self explanatory
Dymanic Fuzz – pick harder = more distortion
Trebel /Bass boost – self explanatory
Tank Tone – provides a hollow percussive mid range sound. Sort of a Wah stuck in one position. The Vox Crybaby was designed on an EQ filter known as a Tank Circuit.
Overdrive – Self explanatory
Filter Follower – Envelope filter
Auto Wah – self explanatory
Tube Sound – provides a clean tube like sound
Octave Box – Provides Octave below
Flanger – self explanatory
Frog Nose – built in headphone amplifier (a reference to Pig Nose amplifiers)
Compresor – self explanatory.

During it's early years Electra guitars were ordered from all the Japanese factories and distributors. As a result, early models especially vary in details and quality. Which set the Electra name up for failure.

However during the MPC years all guitar models were manufactured by the Matsumoku Company. Therefore the quality of Electra guitars were superior to other Asian made instruments. But in this era of Buy American, most all Asian manufactured guitars were considered to be inferior. This stigma still exists.


Electra produced a total of 18 different MPC guitar models.

Of these the most popular was the was a Les Paul copy known as The Super Rock.



They also made at least one bass model.
©UniqueGuitar Publications







10 comments:

michael silvey said...

Dear Electra,I have an Electra Les paul copy with 11 Mpc effects cartridges;2 are flangers,1 is a phase shifter,1 is power overdrive,1 is treble/bass expander,1 is a dynamic fuzz,i is a tank sound,1 is a tube sound,1 is black with no markings,1 is dark blue with no markings and the other 1 is 'off' yellow color.Do you know what these unmarked effects are/Also,can you give me any guidance/direction as to where i can buy all of the effects that came with the Electra MPC guitars?Any help with this matter will be greatly apppreciated.Thank-you for your time,effort and concern.Sincerely,Michael Silvey e-mail:msilvey@peoplepc.com

RCSBlues said...

Michael -

Just in case you didn't know -

Please join the Electra Web site @ www.rivercityamps.com

There are several members with Electra guitar discussions, parts and MPC resources, etc.

Ther are Electra catalogs and pages for each model;

The web site is maintained by John Thornburg and has been up and running for several years now and has many members;

Tom Presley - one of the inventors of the MPC model is even a member;

Personally I own 2 1977 Electra MPC guitars - an X330 and an X330 - I bought them both NEW.

Thanks,
RCSBlues

RCSBlues said...

Previous comment should have been -

Personally I own 2 1977 Electra MPC guitars - an X330 Sunburst and an X340 Satin Jacaranda - I bought them both NEW.

Thanks,
RCSBlues

Al B Romano said...

I own Leslie Wests main Electra Guitar which he used to teach me on when i was a kid. I took lessons from Leslie west at age 14. this grey sunburst Mpc that Leslie had he loved and played for 5 years straight before he had all the major endorsements he has now. Al B Romano

Anonymous said...

I find it curious that of the four Guitars pictured in this post, two of them have been modded. The top most one (while very pretty) should only have four knobs in a row, the two lower ones have been placed where the MPC on/off switches would be. Also the X910 (explorer shaped) guitar pictured is owned by a collector in Washington State and has also been modded, the 5-way pickup switch that would be on the pickguard has been omitted.

It just seems like an article about Electra's should have original un-modded guitars pictured. Nice video though.

Anonymous said...

My Electra X340 MPC Satin Jacaranda is pictured here and since the original post I have changed the pick guard to a black one - the only mods on the X340 and the X330 that I own are having changed the stop tail piece on each to a TP-6 fine tuner - that's all; I have the OEM parts still. RCSBlues

Unknown said...

Why not plug up and turn the effect on and see what it is?

Anonymous said...

The new Electra's don't have the modules and same quality construction as the Japanese models. Granted, their okay for a Korean made guitar but no better than a Michael Kelly Korean made model at 1/3 the price.

jsrfo said...

Any idea how to register for the Electra forum? I keep trying, but it says:

The confirmation code you entered was incorrect.

I have never received a code, don't know where to put it, and also have never gotten a confirmation email.

Thanks for the help. I'd like to get involved in the forum.

Fugli said...

Well, here's a blast from the past. I have one of the original Outlaw guitars in a blond wood finish. I got it back around '78. I have most of the modules too... and the original case, all entirely unmodified... it is by far the heaviest and perhaps the sturdiest guitar that I own. I noticed a lack of pictures of the Outlaw model.