Teisco

A Brief Teisco History

By Frank Meyers (2016)

 

The Teisco company produced guitars, amplifiers and electronics from the late 40s to the late 70s.

Unfortunately the Teisco name has become synonymous with most every vintage Japanese guitar, regardless of style or build quality.

There is also a great amountof misinformation about the company and Japanese guitars in general, so this brief history aims to serve the interesred people with some factual information about the company, the employees, and the instruments.

 

After WWII, the Teisco company was started in or around 1947. The primary founders were Doryu Matsuda, Hiroshi Hashimoto, and Tomizo Matsumoto, and the company name was AOI Sound.

 

The first factory was located in the Furukawa Bashi area of Tokyo. The original company employees were a mix of electronics engineers, musicians, and salesmen. The goal was to provide instruments and electronics for the growing Hawaiian music scene that arose after being banned in Japan during wartime.

 

Doryu Matsuda essentially ran the business and developed electronics. Tomizo Matsumoto focused on electronics design, and Hiroshi Hashimoto was the primary salesperson and actually owned a music store in Tokyo that served as the storefront for Teisco products.

 

Initially the company made pickups and lap steel guitars. The first attempt at an electric guitar was the EO-180 which was an acoustic guitar fitted with a Teisco pickupand electronics.

During the 50s the company grew steadily and hired several new employees including Yoshio Kojima, Osamu Takeshima, and Yukichi Iwase.

The company was truly an all-star group of musically gifted designers during this time inJapan.

 

As rock 'n roll became more popular, the demand for electric guitars steadily rose. During the 1950s, Teisco introduced several hollowbody guitar models (often called  "Pick Guitars" in Japan). These early hollowbody guitars were made at other factories including Maruha Gakki and Nardan, and then were finished at the Tokyo Teisco factoryfor final electronics assembly.

Teisco also produced its first solidbody electric guitars in1954, with guitar bodies and necks being made by a local Tokyo woodcrafter. By 1960,some of the very first Teisco guitars were being imported around the world and thecompany moved to a larger factory in Tokyo, to keep up with increased demand.

Teisco never really made the wood portions of guitars, so the company often employed other factories as subcontractors.

 

In the early Teisco used the newly formed Fujigen Gakki company.

Then Teisco started employed another wood-making factory, aptly named Teisco Gen Gakki in the city of Matsumoto.

This factory made all the wood portions of Teisco guitars from 1963-1967.

 

During the 1960s, there was an incredible guitar "boom" and produced a great demand for electric guitars. In 1963 Teisco produced many new models and these were being sold in great numbers around the world.

The company was unique in many ways,and the guitars featured original designs and components, all produced in-house. Teisco was also one of the few Japanese companies that produced yearly catalogs, and one ofthe few companies that used its own name on guitars. It was in this way that the Teisconame became popular across the globe.

 

In 1965 Teisco signed an exclusive export agreementwith the American W.M.I. company, which was a groundbreaking agreement at the time Major department stores started carrying Teisco guitars and the company experienced huge success in this year. But by 1967 guitars sales were starting to see a decline, so Doryu Matsuda decided to sell the company to the Kawai Company in Hamamatsu.

Kawai had been building electric guitars since 1963, so the company began to shift all woodproduction away from the Teisco Gen Gakki factory in Matsumoto, to the Kawai Enshufactory. Kawai continued to build traditional Teisco models but added many new ones too.

The Teisco factory in Tokyo continued to build pickups and electronics (although on amuch lesser scale), but the main focus there was to produce amplifiers and electricorgans.

 

During the late 60s and early 70s, Teisco guitars were shifting from original designs, and mainly becoming copies of popular American guitar designs like the Gibson SG and the Fender Telecaster. Sales outside of Japan had slowed to the point where the last of the Teisco electric guitars were last produced around 1977.

 

Around 2010 I started researching the company and its history. I was able to meet and talk with some of the original Teisco employees including Kazuo Morioka (died in2014), Yukichi Iwase, and Doryu Matsuda. I was also able to interview and meet employees of Kawai during the Teisco years, including plant manager Kotaro Tanaka.

Most of these men had never been interviewed about the company history, and were often genuinely surprised that any westerner would be interested in these early days of guitar production.

 

There are many brand names that appeared on Teisco guitars. Besides the obvious Teisco and World Teisco names, these brands also appeared:

Beltone, Coltone, Douglas, Feather, Gemtone, Heit, Kent, Kimberly, Kingston, Lafayette, Melody  Mello-Tone, Marco Polo, Noble, Pearl, Silvertone, St. George, Starway, Zim, and Gar.

These are confirmed Teisco brand names, and although not a complete list it is the most accurate and comprehensive list to date.