1940s Supro Supreme Hawaiian Model 1400 Steel Guitar
"So ugly it's cute."
This is a Supro Supreme Hawaiian Guitar Model 1400 from somewhere around 1945. I've seen an identical one that was purchased new by the original owner during that year exactly. That date appeals to my love of WWII history, of course, because it was the last year of the war. I found this one languishing in the back of a vintage guitar store in Williamsburg, Virginia, while my wife and I were on our 30th anniversary holiday trip. The guitar is covered in lovely reddish-brown "mother of toilet seat" and has a non-slip back.
The body and hardware are in great shape and the original tuners and knobs are exceptional. The guitar features a nice wide string spacing that makes single-string hammer-ons and pull-offs very comfortable.
When I first plugged it in, it made a sound like it was "fretting out" if you put a bar at the twelfth fret position. That's a pretty good feat, given that the guitar has no frets. It turned out that someone had cranked up the pole pieces for extra gain, but had cranked them so far that the strings made contact with them when the guitar was played. A quick tweak right in the store with a jeweler's screwdriver sorted them out and revealed the lovely vintage sound of this little beastie. Supro developed a neat strings-through pickup system with staggered pole pieces that this guitar features.
The guitar is very light in weight and pretty resonant. At this point they were hard-wiring the cord right into the guitar with a nifty spring strain relief on the plug. This guitar has a brighter sound than my Gretsch and I probably prefer it for ultra-clean work because it has that vintage "thang" going on that some call "mojo." I am, however, trying to get the driven sound sorted at this point because of all the overtones. Now I know what sort of sound the Telecaster bridge pickup was based upon!
It still resides in its original chipboard case with a leather handle, though the case has seen a lot of miles and smiles at this point. If you look closely, you can see dings in the fingerboard where the cord and plug were tossed into the case haphazardly.
Supro was one of several brands made by parent company Valco during its life from 1935-1968. You'll rarely see a guitar actually branded "Valco," though they made all the guitars branded Supro, National, and Oahu as well as a host of guitars labeled with store brands for Sears, Montgomery Ward, and others.
There were at least three different versions of this guitar with differing knobs, fingerboards, control plates, cord mounting, and trim. One even had a nice rosewood fingerboard with dots. This version was the most monochromatic of the bunch, I suppose. It cleaned up really nicely for these pictures. Okay, so it's an ugly little spud. My wife describes this guitar as "so ugly it's cute," and she fell in love with it in the store for that reason. I like that.
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