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Bought for £80, from a small
guitar shop in Hither Green, Kent in 1999, after a random internet search.
This is probably a late 60s issue of the hugely popular (i.e. cheap) Watkins
/Wilson Rapier - a '22' - there was also a '33' with three pickups, and even
a four pickup version.
Watkins was a Britsh company which originally made amps and PA equipment,
then turned their hands to guitar making as demand grew in the early 60s. The
Rapier was their basic strat-inspired product, available in blue and white
and maybe black but mostly in red.
The shape stayed the same thoughout the '60s and into the early '70s, but
pickup styles came and went as did the knobs and switches. Mine has very
ordinary-looking single coil pickups with non-adjustable pole pieces, plus a
plastic switch (giving a slight output boost) and nice machined metal knobs
and plastic pickup on/off switches.
There's not much info anywhere online about these guitars apart from snobby
put-downs by ageing musos. There doesn't seem to be much idea of when the
company changed its name from Watkins to Wilson even - 'Sometime in the
mid-late 60s' is as good as it gets.
I like this guitar a lot, it looks good, plays well, and has a lovely smooth
tremelo system. If anything it's a bit boring, and do wish it wasn't red, but
then most '60s guitars are - blame Hank Marvin.
Image above right: the apotheosis of the Rapier format - the Circuit 4.
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