Oahu/Valco “Sunshine” Lap Steel Set with Amp, Early 1950s

Oahu electric guitar set, as it would have been sold in the early ‘50s. Includes all paperwork, including fun manuals and amp schematic, slide, and leather strap. This set is in used but loved condition. I purchased from what I believe to be the original owner and cleaned everything up. Both items sound great, just thinning the collection. Read on for more details:

The guitar is an Oahu steel in nice shape. Pickup (same as the famed Ry Cooder “Coodercaster”) is strong and hard-wired 1/4” cable is reliable. This is how they came, but it would be easy to replace with a jack if you wanted to. Has new Asher strings and is currently in C6 tuning. 

The amp is an Oahu Sunshine, manufactured by Valco, and the same amp as the Supro 1614B Spectator with a different cosmetic appearance. Single ended 6V6, 6SL7 and 5Y3. This would have been sold in the same era as the tweed Fender Champ, and having played both this has many of the same things that make it great, with a bit more usable clean headroom. The instrument inputs are lower-gain than the microphone input, which gives you a nice palate to work with, and running the Tone knob wide open at moderate volumes gets you some lovely chime and breakup from the 8” alnico speaker, which is still in great shape. This is a great studio amp for gainy sounds, but you could certainly play a jazz gig with it with flatwounds and an archtop as well! This doesn't need servicing, but you may want to install a three-prong cord at some point if planning to use it regularly.

Given the rarity of finding these two together in such great shape, it’s in my heart to sell these as a set. However, I will entertain offers for each separately. If purchased together via this listing, they will ship as two separate packages.