Guyatone and Zen-On Plastic Guitar Bridges
Teisco has nothing to do with these but people often incorrectly refer to any
vintage Japanese guitar as being made by "Teisco" so its worth mentioning
About
A weird chapter in the totally bizarre world of 1960s Japanese-built electric guitars is the molded plastic bridge which appeared on instruments by two distinct manufacturers. Both bridges are molded from an off-white plastic and do remain fairly sturdy; I haven't had any issues with them crumbling or chipping. Tonally, I haven't A-B'd them against a traditional metal bridge but all 3 instruments I've had with these bridges sounded a little more 'thumpy' than I expected.
You can find these on Ebay and Reverb for about $30-40. It wouldn't be a bad move to start reproducing them but that's beyond my capabilities
Guyatone
Guyatone produced electric guitars for major guitar manufacturer Suzuki. The company also produced their house brand Guyatone. Badged guitars produced by Guyatone include Barclay, Broadway, Coronado, Crestwood, Futurama, Howard, Ibanez, Ideal, Imperial, Johnny Guitar, Kent, Kingston, Lafayette, Marco Polo (electrics only), Montclair, Omega, Orpheus, Prestige, Royalist, Saturn, Silhouette, Silvertone, Vernon, Winston and Zenta, an impressive amount of names produced by a single company. [1]Guyatone plastic bridges can be easily identified by their softer angles and compensation. They are also less wide than the Zen-On bridges.
I've also found this variant on a Guyatone guitar which is uncompensated but has similar dimensions. I presume its an earlier design
Zen-On
Little known Japanese manufacturer who was out of business by 1968. Zen-On made electric guitars with the house brand Zen-on badge, as well as Beltone, Morales and Zenon badges [1]Zen-On plastic bridges are distinguishable due to the sharp angles and drastic compensation for the strings. They are also wider than the Guyatone counterparts.
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