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These are objectively awful instruments. They were so bad (and hard to get), that it was a common practice to make your own. For these purposes, the public phone booths were frequently vandalized as the pnones contained mics, that could be turned into pickups. Yet, much of the punk and rock stuff of the former USSR has been and, in some cases, are still made with them. E.g. Villu Tamme, legendary Estonian punk still plays a Musima Lead Star and it’s a key part of his sound.

Musima Lead Star is a musical instrument, Ural "guitars" were not. I played and owned several ones during eighties. The moment I could finally afford Musima Lead Star and finally get a sound I had in my head, was one of happiest moments of my life.

Musima means Musik marktneukirchen, a place with a long tradition of instrument manufacture. The Martin family emigrated from there to America and the rest is history..

I see Villu Tamme, mentioned here, of all places. His bansds concept album Külmale maale has its 40 year anniversary. It is about the atrocities of the soviet union, deportations, Beria, kgb, etc.

I know the author! Ben's a great guy. A real treat seeing this on HN. He does really gnarly Caucasus-inspired ambient electronica:

https://www.youtube.com/benwheelermusic/videos

https://mountainsoftongues.bandcamp.com/

https://invertedspectrumrecords.bandcamp.com/album/bneleti

https://crashsymbols.bandcamp.com/album/lurji-talgha

https://sayatnovaproject.bandcamp.com/album/kazbek-field-rec...

> The guitars were nearly impossible to play

I can attest to that, as I had a few in my hands - brought in as a curiosity by a friend or largely gathering dust in some school.

That being said those made in Czechoslovakia were the least bad out of all eastern block instruments.

The same infrastructure and most likely also people went on to make instruments for other manufacturers - notably Epiphone.

These models are sought after by collectors, if only because so few were made. Some say they were better made, but I only held one in my life for a brief moment and at the time wasn't aware of its rarity.

It's hard to compare as broadly speaking guitars have become much better in every aspect over the years.

Rocker switches are an interesting design choice. The DPDT on-off switches we use today are ok but those big button beauty's are gorgeous.

Jesus those things are big!

> It was unreasonably heavy and made of cheap wood, with a neck like a carved baseball bat.

Guitar necks need to withstand the tension of the strings, and any Russian-educated engineer tasked by the politburo with making a guitar out of fiberboard[^2], will plug tension plus safety margins into the secant formula[^1] and immediately realize that some steel rods from Magnitogorsk for reinforcement are in order, and promptly discover that they only have 1/2'' ones. Oh well.

[^1]: http://www.engineeringcorecourses.com/solidmechanics2/C5-buc...

[^2]: Not that there's anything wrong with fiberboard for guitars; see Danelectro. In fact, if you own a laser cutter and want to make something cool with it, an electric guitar is a great project.

A lot of those Soviet guitars didn't have truss rods. Maybe none of them did. Some of them look cool but the quality is terrible.

Thank you for this. Sent me down a real rabbithole. I've been looking up Eastern Bloc electric guitars and it's fascinating.

According to what I saw the Soviet ones are apparently barely playable, but look very distinctive.

Soviet synthesisers are pretty fascinating too. There are few demos of the Polivoks/Polyvox online. It would work really well in industrial music.

That's a very cool find, thanks!

Remish was truly amazing.Even if you were not into music or guitars you must have known him if you were born in Azerbaijan. He was a guitar hero. R.I.P.

cool stuff!