The first Merson guitar advertised in The Music Trades appeared in the December, 1948, issue. Little more is known of the origins of Merson, but it was already marketing Merson-brand archtop electric guitars and amplifiers in the late ’40s, when the company was located in New York City. At some point, Merson was taken over by Ernie Briefel. Merson was a distribution organization founded by a man named Bernie Mersky. If you have catalogs, ads or pictures of guitars that can help fill in some of the blanks, please let me know (Michael Wright, PO Box 60207, Philadelphia, PA 19102).
Unfortunately, not many reference materials are available to document in complete detail, but we can hit some of the highlights, and illuminate a number of relationships along the way. And in this context, Univox is a part of the much larger story that included names you probably see everywhere but know little about, since they’re off the beaten path, names such as Tempo, Giannini, Westbury, Korg and much more! You’re going to have to pay attention here, because a whole bunch of familiar and not-so-familiar names crisscross through this story. Univox was not, as you might guess, just another isolated Japanese import, but was part of a much larger story of its importer, the Merson company. Univox was one of the first brands to make copies, and the brand achieved a fair amount of national visibility and distribution. One name that comes to the mind of anyone who has looked at guitars hanging on racks is Univox, a name generally associated with the “copy era” of the ’70s. While we tend to think of the automobile industry in ethnocentric terms, it’s impossible to think of “cars in America” without considering Volks-wagen Beetles, Toyota Corollas or Datsun Zs (Yugos and Renaults deliberately ignored). Among the major players in the American market were the many importers and distributors who enriched the guitar landscape with instruments – usually at the lower ends of the market brought in from other countries, primarily from Europe, Asia, and to a lesser extent, Latin America.
While most think of the history of American guitars in terms of American manufacturers, if you’ve followed this column you know the tradition is much richer. 1974 or ’75 Univox Hi Flyer Mosrite copy with the later Univox see- through humbuckers.
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