Short Takes: The 1936 Premiervox Spanish Electric Guitar

We don’t often discuss instruments from before F.C. Hall’s 1953 purchase of Rickenbacker, but this one is interesting enough to get a quick rundown. What’s so interesting about it? Well, we’re filing it under “Rickenbacker adjacent guitars” on the site map, for starters!

“Premiervox Electric Guitar. British Made”. What on earth does that have to do with Rickenbacker? Well, let’s zoom out a bit.

If you say that looks a lot like a Rickenbacher Electro B6 you are absolutely correct. Yet it is not…technically.

So let’s drill down into what’s going on. And while most of these you’ll come across will have the nameplate you see above, a couple (likely with replacement necks) have the one below that might make what’s going on here a little bit clearer.

So Premiervox was a private label guitar made by Rickenbacker for UK distributor Selmer, right? Well, not exactly. Remember that our label says “British Made”. That’s important for our story.

Quick aside about Selmer because the name probably sounds familiar to you. The UK branch of Selmer was founded in the late 1920s as a distributor for the French saxophone maker Henri Selmer. In the 1930s they began moving into amplification and guitars, and by the early 1960s the Selmer store on Denmark Street in London was “the” guitar store in London, where cats like Jimmy Page and Eric Clapton bought, respectively, a Les Paul Custom and the “Beano” Les Paul burst.

But that was still a long way away in the mid 1930s when UK Selmer decided they wanted in on this electric Hawaiian guitar craze. And this is where Rickenbacker enters the story.

I told you these guitars weren’t “just” private label B6s and that’s true. That said, there is obviously quite a lot of B6 there. Rickenbacker sold Selmer Bakelite bodies and necks and the parts to wind their own horseshoe pickups. And that’s exactly what they did.

And it seems like they just kinda grabbed whatever parts they could lay hands on to build these things out once the Rickenbacker bodies and necks arrived in the UK. You’ll find all kinds of different tuners and controls on these guitars. Some have a volume control only—sometimes on the right and sometimes on the left—some have a volume and a tone. Some have an output jack, some have an integrated cord—they’re just all over the place!

These were likely the first electric guitars “made” in the UK—if we use the word “made” loosely. It’s probably more like somewhere between “made” and “assembled”.

Now there’s one inconsistency I haven’t really addressed yet. I called this a Spanish guitar, yet I also said Selmer wanted in on the Hawaiian guitar craze. What gives? Let’s quickly explain the difference.

The “Hawaiian guitar” was invented in…wait for it…Hawaii, by Joseph Kekuku in 1889. It’s what we call the lap steel today. It’s played flat in the lap with a slide bar. A “Spanish guitar” is what you probably think of when you think of a guitar—fretted with one hand and strummed with the other.

There are (usually) a few differences between the two. The string height is much higher on a Hawaiian guitar as it’s not meant to be fretted. Similarly, the frets themselves are meant more as position markers and are usually quite low (or painted on!) and not made of material meant to stand up to wear—part of the Bakelite neck itself in this case.

Then there’s the back of the neck. If you’re not holding it and not fretting it with your hand…the shape doesn’t matter. Consequently, the back of most Hawaiian guitar necks are flat—or even “weight relieved” like the B6 below.

So why did I call these “Spanish guitars”? Well, the Premiervox guitars got round Spanish necks, and while it looks like the scale is longer, it’s the same on both guitars—the bridge is just in a different space

Was it meant to be played like a Spanish guitar? Well, that depends. US B6 round neck guitars? Yes! What happened when you wore out the Bakelite frets? You replaced the neck, obviously!

But the Premiervox? No, not really. The US iteration had a nut of the correct height for Spanish guitar. The Premiervox, however, had as new an extension cap fitted atop the nut to raise the strings to allow for Hawaiian style guitar. So a Spanish guitar adapted for Hawaiian play?

It’s a little hard to break down the exact year(s) of production on these, but most signs point to 1936…although sources cite anywhere between 1935 and 1938.

So…Rickenbacker, but not really Rickenbacker. Spanish guitar, but not really Spanish guitar. British made, but not really British made. Checks out!

Want to learn more about…everything else? Check out our handy site map to see what we’ve already covered. Got something you’d like to see covered? Drop it in the comments and we’ll add it to the queue.