![]() ![]() ![]() Premier offered some of the flashiest guitars available in the 1950s, competing only with Gretsch for the most eye-catching guitars. The same design was sold by several other brands, often without f-holes and with cheaper pickups and cosmetics. With a diminutive 13.5” lower bout, the Bantam offered the sound of a fully-hollow archtop without the bulk of a large body. ![]() This guitar is an example of Premier’s most popular archtop design, the Bantam. The fiction was maintained, however, by tacking a Multivox serial badge onto the back of the headstocks. Owner Peter Sorkin founded the Multivox company in the late 1940s to build guitars and amplifiers for his distribution company while Premier amplifiers were built in-house by Multivox, all their guitars were sourced from United Guitars of Jersey City, NJ. The Premier brand was owned by the Sorkin Music Company, a mail-order distributor of musical instruments based in New York City. Now imagine that the brand never attained the same name recognition of those brands, so the guitar costs a fraction of other vintage guitars of similar quality. Imagine this vintage guitar: an electric archtop, built in the 1950s, of similar quality and playability to a contemporary Gretsch, with equally flashy looks and similarly superb DeArmond pickups, and with the same original list price range as a mid-level Gretsch, Gibson or Guild of the period. I bought this a few weeks ago but just got it back from the last bit of restoration work and wanted to share. ![]()
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