Firstman Liverpool Special 1967 Black

The video up there is of this very guitar for sale.  Well, I don't even know what to say….if you appreciate guitars from the 60s, guitars with unique designs, guitars that are super rare… this is the guitar for you.  These are just so hard to locate.  Only made for less than two years, these Firstman Liverpool guitars are just the pinnacle of extreme guitar design.  One of the last of the cool originals.  My goodness… you can go a lifetime and not find one of these guitars.

Last spring I visited Japan and met with the owner of Firstman…Kazuo Morioka.  He designed this model along with one of the more famous Japanese guitar players of the time.  Kazuo estimated that less than 200 of these Specials were ever produced, which was the high end model of the Firstman guitar line-up.  These cost quite a bit of money back in the day, and this particular model retailed for 33,000 yen.  I do see some Liverpool Juniors for sale occasionally (there's one for sale right now!) but those Juniors were priced much lower than these Liverpool Specials.  Anyway, Kazuo worked for Kawai and Teisco during the 1960s, and even Semie Mosely befriended Kazuo in the late 60s and had Firstman produce the first Japanese Mosrite guitars!  Sadly, Kazuo passed away this past summer.  He was like the Rosetto Stone of vintage Japanese guitars!

OK, so this guitar has it's original finish and does have some dinks and doinks in the finish, some paint loss, but overall this is a nice survivor.  Be sure to check the pics.  The binding is all good and solid, and the guitar is great condition overall. The tremolo arm is a vintage replacement, and the small faux wood tremolo inlay is missing (but you can often find this part, which is really weird).  Other than that this is all original and seriously didn't need much.  The neck angle has been properly set and the guitar plays well, but as with any vintage guitar, you'll probably need to get it set up to meet your tastes and playing style.  I suspect though, this is the kind of guitar that will get hung on the wall.  To me, a guitar like this is part instrument and part artwork.  There aren't any builders today that will put something like this out on the market!!