Johnny Ramone's infamous Mosrite guitar was just auctioned off for nearly $1 million

[thomdunn]

Originally published at: https://boingboing.net/2021/09/30/johnny-ramones-infamous-mosrite-guitar-was-just-auctioned-off-for-nearly-1-million.html

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[Grey_Devil]

So why exactly is it a bad guitar?

[delightfultree]

a song written about Johnny by his own bandmate

… allegedly!

Wikipedia has this (for instance):

Joey’s brother Mickey Leigh has disagreed, saying that the song had been written before Joey learned of their affair.

[beautyoftheride]

Mosrites often had fret problems, really thin necks that were difficult to get used to, and bridges that tended to buzz due to misaligned saddles. Also, at least with the Ventures II model that Johnny used, if you took all the strings off at once while changing them, the guitar literally fell apart.

[abutilon]

I played a Mosrite bass for a few years. Loved the totally cool look of it & the pickups worked fine but something about the build made the sound very plunky, not a lot of sustain or power…made for surf music, also worked for slap-style funk bass. On one studio session, another bass player hit the strings with a drumstick instead of plucking with a pick, which gave it a very nice percussive sound. I sold it to a friend for $200 in the 80’s & have always regretted it.

[PartTimeZombie]

I showed this to a guitar playing friend of mine, who laughed and said “those things were made out of cardboard and sounded like it too” but he would buy that one if he had a spare million.