1960s EKO-made Vox Super Lynx Hollowbody Electric Guitar

January 17, 2019

1960s EKO-made Vox Super Lynx Hollowbody Electric Guitar

I have a soft spot for EKO electrics from the '60s. They're just... cool. Like all things Italian and intended to interact with a user, they reek of design. This one, made for Vox's electric guitar lineup, is definitely stylish. It's light, fun, individual, has quality hardware, and the neck plays like butter. It's fast, slim, and handles like a sports car.

This is one of two guitars sent in by a customer -- one was this Vox body with a Japanese neck and the other was a Japanese body with a Teisco neck. Both were purchased separately and at different times by the owner. After seeing the filled screwholes on both necks and the matching body-finish on the sides of the Vox neck I repatriated to this body, I'm pretty sure these were separated at one point and are now back together again in their "right ways." At the end of the post I've included "before" pictures.

So, like I was saying, now that the work is done, this guitar plays beautifully. It feels, well -- modern. However, soundwise it's totally weird, import, '60s-stuff. It has two vaguely-Jaguar-looking pickups with polepiece-magnets mounted on the top and they appear to be fairly low-output -- maybe around 4-5k ohms or so. The kicker is that the 3-way switch works Danelectro style -- middle position is both on in series while "up" is for the neck pickup filtered by a mudswitch-style capacitor while "down" is bridge position with some sort of strangle/resistor added to it to drop the signal and make it tinnier than it should be. Therefore, the "neck" is your default "muddy jazz tone" while the bridge is your "twanger cowboy chord whacker" position. The center position thus becomes the default because it actually sounds good and has decent output. Of course, if one was inclined, one might rewire the whole thing... but there goes the originality!

Clearly, this guitar was modeled on an ES-335 but it's weight-wise more like an ES-330 or Epiphone Casino as it's a hollowbody.

Work included: a fret level/dress, some fret reseating, redrill of old neck bolt holes, removal of glued-down bridge and relocation/cleaning of it, a lot of badgering the original wiring harness until the 3-way switch was operational again and everything was nice and snug and not falling-apart, replacement switch tip, general cleaning, a restring, and a good setup. The neck is straight and the truss works and action is on-the-dot at hair-over 1/16" EA and 1/16" DGBE at the 12th fret.

Scale length: 25"
Nut width: 1 5/8"

String spacing at nut: 1 3/8"
String spacing at saddle: 1 7/8"

Body length: 19"
Lower bout width: 15 3/4"
Upper bout width: 11"

Side depth: 1 3/3"

Body wood: mahogany, maybe, of some sort?
Neck wood: 3-piece maple
Fretboard: rosewood

Neck shape: 12" radius board with very slim, C-shaped profile

Bridge: adjustable saddles over rosewood base

Nut: zero fret with plastic spacer nut

Weight: 7 lb 0 oz

Condition notes: there is a 1/64" drop-off on the fretboard from the 12th-fret onwards but it is essentially irrelevant to playability. The body has plenty of weather-checks and finish cracks. Both pickups have non-functional string-adjusters for height. They've been shimmed or propped-up to their current, proper alignment with the strings. The whammy bar and spring are missing, too, though otherwise the guitar is all-original (well, as far as I know).