So what should I do with this thing now? Last chance to grab the new course for $9 samuraiguitartheory.com/p/chord-revolution?coupon_code=WORSTGUITAR&product_id=5676346
You can spend a lot of effort and make these guitars playable. But in the end, all you get is a mediocre, but no longer authentic instrument. Russian guitar collectors have been through this for a long time and it's not considered a meaningful activity here. The worst part is that the guitars that survived until 2024 are not the worst. It is a historical artifact with all its flaws. Just hang it on the wall.
Some misinformation here... Soviets absolutely did not make these guitars "antithetical" to the west, they just made whatever they could with what they had, probably copying japanese guitars from the 60s. It does actually says Aelita. "Аэлита". The factory as stated on the guitar was in Ordzhonikidze (now Vladikavkaz) The instruments from japan all had switches and buttons in the 70s, and I am sure thats where the inspiration came from. Nothing to do with "doing everything opposite to the west" But terrible instrument of course.
came here to make this same comment, they were clearly copying the production model of 60s Japanese electric guitars which makes a lot more sense considering their original price point
@@opart Yes and no, the master volume control is counterintuitive when also paired with independent volumes, tone dials would provide more adjustability compared to a dark/bright button, and the loss of the ability to have N/B and N/M/B pickup options is most easily rectified by wiring a 5-way switch with a push-pull (or push-push) tone pot rigged to activate the neck (or bridge) pickup in any switch position ("7-way mod"). Those original Soviet button switches will also likely be a challenge to refurbish/replace.
@@ZacksRockingLifestyle Humbly disagree with most of the things you said. The tone switches is whats missing here, as for the 7-way or a "The Gilmour Switch Mod", sure - but thats a custom modification, and I am talking vanilla 5-way - still more confusing and less versatile. And don't get me started on Les Paul 4 knobs ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ . The original Soviet switches are built like tanks, so the likelihood of them failing is nil. In fact you can probably fight a zombie horde with this guitar and then play a tune or two right after. In any case, my main point is that the "expert" did not provide any real info, just misinformation, and that somehow Jaguar and all the Japanese guitars with buttons were all of a sudden forgotten. But hey, I guess this is how you get UA-cam views :/
@@opart dude, are you well? You’re saying a (standard) Les Paul, with two pickups and independent volume and tone pots for each pickup, plus a lone three-position toggle… is confusing? But less confusing is a guitar with three (microphonic) pickups, four volume controls that contradict each other (because of the master), and six switches? And to say the 7-way wiring is a “custom modification” is a bit disingenuous. Many guitars today come with that as a standard, even budget guitars like the Squier Nashville Telecaster. Last, “built like a tank.” So, bulky, used largely in specialized conditions, is complicated to operate, costs a fortune to operate effectively, and needs constant maintenance? Perhaps, yes.
I had to play such guitar many years, because I was born and raised in Soviet Union. At that time there where no way to get other guitars there, and even in the music store there where no choice - one or two models of the guitars You illustrated (and all of them in theese terrible colours). So I played that guitar many years, no other option. We had the experience to modifications, fixed some of the problems You have mentioned. We disabled all those buttons, playedmostly one pickup (otherwise there where terrible noisy from electromagnetic field). The bridge (with the moving parts, usualy where glued, not to make noise. The tremolo where abslolutely not in tune, so I removed the bar, and tried not to touch the tremolo. The worst part fhere the neck truss road, - not possible to adjust the relief, so playd on really high action height, and suffering from strongs going out of tune. T So, two years back I got my old russian made guitar, tuned it, and tried to play. It is teerible instrument. I really feel sorry for myself, that as teenager I was forced to lern guitar on such peace of junk.
Shame about the build quality. Pretty cool people were modding them though. Kinda like that DIY instrument/musician relationship but if it's just to fix quality problems, that's not so good. Need to strike a balance of a guitar that isn't some pristine thing that you can't touch or modify because it's being treated as an investment that's going to be sold or traded on in the future, but still being something you care about and can rely upon. I love the colors, though, but yeah if there are only a couple options of colors, they probably lose their novelty.
That’s what learning guitar was like for me in the USA in the 90s. I couldn’t afford a guitar that wasn’t junk until I was older. A lot of my friends back then had equally bad equipment, but we made do and had fun! I don’t think having a high end instrument would have made us sound any better
@@honkytonkinson9787 Absolutely agree. We seurvived bad instruments, and got the hard experience :) Most important - we still play the guitar, despite probably hate those junk guitars in our past.
My family never bought me any musical instruments, so my first guitar (this was the 1970's) was almost exactly like that; same shape, same pickups, layout & switch positions (it didn't have buttons like this one). But no tremelo, a different headstock, & the finish was just red spray-paint. It had no name. I found it a Flee market in California. They wanted 6$. I talked them down to 1$. When I was very young, my Nana taught me how to haggle. lols
Yeah those often have the mute/felt thing and it's about as useless on those. Other than that though, I love Jags especially the Japanese made ones, assuming you install better pickups and hardware etc, the luthiery is usually outstanding on them. I like the switches, sets it apart from other guitars, confuses other players, allows you to kill switch toggle either pickup. Fun stuff.
I don't know that a switch is more intuitive than buttons. We're more used to it, but "down is on, up is off" seems pretty intuitive to me. You can also get more combinations that way, like having all three on at the same time for instance (can't do that with a strat). Brian May's homemade guitar has a similar set up. I think the biggest downfall, and perhaps why it isn't used more, is that it becomes really difficult to switch QUICKLY. In certain styles of music you're switching from the neck to the bridge, perhaps multiple times in the same solo. If you had to both turn ON one pickup, and also turn the other one OFF, I can see how that might get to be a pain in the ass
Seems like motions you'd just learn. But yeah it comes off as more of a "studio" guitar with a bunch of weird switches for different functions where you're recording different parts of a song in different takes. Probably awkward for live performance, but the muscle memory comes if it's just what you're used to.
Having played a Brian May guitar live, you are correct about switching pickups (or in/out of phase). However, works great if you know ahead of time what you're going to do and when. Also, NOTHING sounds like a Brian May guitar, even if you don't run it through a bunch of AC30's.
Uhm alot of guitars have 1 switch per coil or pickup, Sammy is just being a dummy here. . . . . . Kramer specifically did this for years and years also 5 way switches are garbage and in the way ALL THE TIME on strats and Teles.
The way I deal with this is that I have _pushbutton_ switches for each pickup mounted in the same place the 5-way switch normally goes on a Strat. I can strike any one, two, or all three buttons in one motion, taking about the same amount of time as flicking a 5-way. It requires more forethought though, since it depends on the state you're already in. Obviously this makes neck+bridge (what I call "Tele position" on a Strat because it's the one the Tele has and the stock Strat does not) and all pickups possible -- and also NO pickups, if I want to use a headstock tuner.
Leo Fender ... didn't play guitar, also made guitars with mutes and cool looking impractical chrome covers and a ton of switches. (Also apparently got the bridge pickups slanted the other way and headstocks make more sense to be reversed...:)) Some Gretches have weird mutes and tone switches instead of pots ... these weird east european guitars seem more like an attempt of cramp all that into one guitar. I bet you could find weird italian or japanese guitars from the same era that will also be quirky like this...
These were definitely a "trend" in Brazil back in the 60s and 70s, any idea fender had they imitated here for a while, which resulted in a bunch of guitars that feel like a mix of a jaguar and a danelectro in the worst possible way.
@@Sewersyrup also over here in central/east europe they kind of used hardware they had at hand ... Jolana Alfa for example used switches that were from a vacuum cleaner :)
You'll find plenty of japanese guitars from the 60s and 70s that also feature a lot of these same weird design quirks. They're usually better built than the soviet guitars though.
Leo isn't even the only example, Ned Steinberger isn't a guitar player either! The main thing that's wrong with those soviet guitars is likely the build quality (most things made in the USSR were terribly built), but the weirdo spec does seem fairly usual for the 1960s.
@@seanmckelvey6618 It almost looks like the Soviets tried to copy Japan's low cost guitars and utterly failed to comprehend what corners can be cut, and what corners must not be cut. Kinda like China for the last 40 years, only without the lipstick on the pig.
I know someone who buys weird guitars and basses and all manner of string and percussion instruments in order to sample them. He eventually has to sell most of them, he doesn't have infinite space.
"Engineers who think of things in terms of engineering and not in terms of guitar or guitar culture." so... exactly like Leo Fender. To be honest most of the design flaws you point out were or even still are present in the USA models. The argument the tuners to be thread in the "opposite" way... back then it wanst as set in stone as it is today, even less in the Soviet Union where the western influence was limited. Also I think it would have been better to compare it to some teisco models than to a les paul as they are way more similar in price, design and target, it looks a lot like some of those japanese designs so maybe that whats the used as a starting point as Im sure cold war Soviet government wouldn't like to be perceived as copying the enemy (although Japan was basically a US controlled satellite after WW2). About the quality of the instrument im sure it wasnt the best as they were mass produced to be available not to be professional grade instruments, you can easily find on Google how much buying power those 190 rubles had. All that being said I think they were a product of their time and the circumstances in which they were designed and produced so in my opinion some more context would have been nice. Afte all I enjoy the video and id love to know more about these obscure and forgotten guitars that didnt leave that much of a mark at this side of the iron curtain, or even some less known european designs.
@@__aythami it’s a fair comparison. This was top of the line in the Soviet Union just like Fender/Gibson was top of the line in the US. And you say Fender and Gibson have these problems, but EVERY Soviet guitar plays like trash
@@__aythamiObligatory “That’s what she said.” But yeah, I agree. This video is looking at a guitar from the 70s with a modern view. In the 70s electric guitars were ubiquitous, but nonetheless still relatively new. There was still some experimentation, and as you said nothing was really set in stone yet. Things that have a precedence of 70+ years now were still just 10 to 20 years old at the time. Also ideology plays a role. The idea of many Soviet products was that every household should have been able to own something like it. Cameras, musical instruments, vehicles, tools, houses, a lot of things were built for the masses. Often poor builds compared to what was available in the West, but not bad for its price. I’ve played on some cheap East German guitars a few years ago, and while they definitely weren’t good (also considering they were 50 years old) , they were at least relatively affordable for many East Germans of the time.
Correct me if im wrong but I'm pretty sure that "turning peg away from neck = note goes higher" has been a convention on Western instruments since before mechanical tuners were invented. (Eg the violin, or ... I want to say the lute but all playable lutes today are ofc modern replicas and even if there are existing period lutes they are strung by modern musicians who know the convention... which i guess could be the same for the violin ... but also doing it that way reduces the angle from nut to fretboard, so it's probably beneficial.
Гитара на самом деле плохая. Таковой ее считали все, кто профессионально занимались музыкой. Аэлита - одна из самых плохих гитар СССР. Причина этому в том, что гитары делали для того что бы сделать, а не для людей. На качество во многом было наплевать, главное было выполнить план по производству. 190 рублей - это полторы месячной зарплаты инженера в СССР. Очень дорого. И автор показал завод - в Ростове на Дону, но он не знал что музыкальные инструменты как правило делались на тех же заводах что и обычная мебель)))
@@OngoGablogian487 Yeah, the build quality stuff are fair arguments but other stuff that's just "it's different and not made by some famous guy or played by some famous guys so it's bad" are silly. He should've padded it out with more playing demos.
@@TheHesseJames _Three_ more settings. All pickups off makes a separate mute switch (on the guitar or on the floor) unnecessary. And I like "Telecaster position", neck and bridge combined, even though this defeats the hum canceling the middle pickup should be providing. All three at once just sounds sludgy though, I can see why few people bother enabling it. This works a whole lot better with pushbutton switches that can be slapped rather than slid. Then changing pickups is just as fast as any other switch in the same position on the guitar (slapping multiple pushbutton switches at once is pretty trivial), although more situational awareness is required.
Sorry but you are wrong about switches. Brain May's "Red Special"(I own one) has pickup selectors just like the ones you have there. Only difference is they are below the strings, not above.
@@Amorous578 most of the "flaws" he listed are present in high end guitars. The mute, switches, bridge cover. Even the inverted tuners were a thing in old silvertone guitars.
Most Mustangs also have individual on/off switches for each pickup. I actually think that is better in a 3 pickup guitar than the strat type of switch, because it allows you to play neck+bridge and also with all the pickups at once.
The button for pickups is even more intuitive and can help get different configurations. Sammy is just riding the USA cold war theme here, ask every guitar player here how many times they accidentally have switched to the other pickups whilst playing. You gotta give props where necessary and be objective about things.
A quick correction: on the backplate, it says "city Ordzhonikidze" rather than "mountains Ordzhonikidze." This city is currently known as Vladikavkaz, and that's probably where this guitar is made, as opposed to Rostov-on-Don as your friend has suggested. After doing a bit of research, it looks like Rostov-Don refers not to the city, but to another factory that was indeed located in Rostov-on-Don. Both factories were parts of a large association called MPO "KAVKAZ." The Rostov-Don factory was probably the main one, and the guitar you have is a copy of their model line made at a different factory called TEREK in the city of Ordzhonikidze, now known as Vladikavkaz.
The guitar headstock also says Aelita, not Aerima... kinda ranting video, and an "expert" friend is not helping. Soviets absolutely did not make these guitars "antithetical" to the west lol. They just made whatever they could with whatever they had.
@@opart I chose not to point out aelita/aerima thing cause I felt it was more of a joke, though I do feel like people may get the wrong impression if they can't read Cyrillic
@@114Freesoul pretty sure he meant it :D In any case, these were mostly copies of instruments from Japan. Gibson and Fender guitars were pretty rare in Europe anyway, and I doubt soviet engineers even saw them.
Like anything else, it's hit or miss. From an outsiders perspective we have this need to tie everything we experience about such a product to the conditions it was produced in (in this case Soviet style communism). But that was of thinking obviously falls flat quite quickly if you look at other products that were made in these conditions and that don't suffer in quality to nearly the same degree. For example, some of the best cheap and reliable mechanical watches you can get are from a brand that has already existed in the Soviet Union (raketa)
There was an odd quirk of Czech culture that communism wasn't able to squash and that's pride in craftsmanship. Czech firearms are another example, often on par with their western counterparts whereas most other ComBloc stuff has pretty bad QC.
@@Zundfolge why do you think communism would inherently try to "squash" good craftsmanship? It's ok if you are ideologically opposed to socialism but the picture you're painting in your head is comically simplistic
Lol, what? How are switches more intuitive than buttons? You've got three pickups. Three buttons. Any button pressed means the corresponding pickup is active. Combine them however you want. Switches are counterintuitive, because they have multiple positions and you've gotta remember what combination of pickups each position corresponds to. I think all guitars should have buttons now!
A blind person can find a switch by feel and push it the direction they need. Adding multiple buttons in different positions with the same feel is much more confusing. Consider most place you play a gig at are going to be dark as well. A switch has a much more haptic and accessible design
I can't imagine trying to switch between pickups mid song with buttons bruh. You normally have half a second mid song to switch pickups and having to memorize button layouts sounds like hell. HAHA. If buttons were more intuitive, they'd have been normalized on guitars by now.
@@pznt_patrick9980 As a guitar player with impaired vision, I can’t imagine anything that would upset me more than turning my pickup selector from one switch into 3-5 buttons. I also think switches are more intuitive because the sound moves the direction you pushed your switch, either up to the neck or back to the bridge
@@Augrills There are 3 buttons, each 1 for each pickup, and there can't be 5 unless you have 5 pickups. It's literally isn't any less intuitive and follows the neck and the bridge just the same. You say it's bad only because you are conditioned to think that a guitar has to have a switch and not anything else. But what if you don't just blindly reject everything novel or unconventional? Pun intended. Buttons and switches are indeed different from each other, and they allow for different things in your instrument. It's that simple. We all play different music on different instrument. If your playing requires you to quickly hop from the neck to the bridge pickups - or at least you think it does - then yeah, you go for a switch. But if speed isn't necessary, then you can have great flexibility with buttons. Again, it's a design choice that you can make when you build a guitar. There's nothing inherently bad about it. It's just different. Don't bring your habits into this.
You guys are funny: First you complain about all guitars being pretty much identical without much personality... until you find something quirky and odd. Then you complain that it isn't a Stratocaster. Certainly if this guitar was made at some random city in 'Muricah during that same period of history that would make it a fun and honest guitar. Since it was made in the USSR it is shitty. Did I get it right?
I own one of these from the Terek factory (red pickguard) aside from it being highly flammable it plays really nice the neck is thicker and has a more rounded feel. It’s more solid and the tremolo makes it a beast for shoegaze
It's shitty because the goal was to deliver a product that looked like a guitar in the required quantity. There are things that the USSR did well but this just wasn't one of them. There was essentially no quality control for them as musical instruments. Many of them can't even be tuned properly. And the end consumers were mainly organizations (who also didn’t care much), and not individuals. Yes, they are different from Western guitars, but they have a lot in common with each other. It's just a different school of guitar making, and these differences are largely due to technological limitations, not creative thought. Like having the same pickup switches that toggle the room light. The quality still varied between different models, years of production and factories. And there was also some custom production, as I understand it. At least in the last years of the USSR. But in general it can be said that it was possible to get a decent guitar from Eastern Europe or East Germany, but the native USSR production was a nightmare.
yes man soviets never ever made a single good guitar, just like they never made a good car. Also many of these ugly odd guitar designs were borrowed from Japanese guitars (that were at least playable). So yeah it is a terrible guitar
You mention that it is strange that the prize would be printed on the back plate. What about the ES-175 that sold for $175, the 335 which went for $335 and so on?
As someone learning on an acoustic, those switches are WAY more intuitive. You're just used to the switches. One thing I hate about electric guitars is they're all built with the assumption that everyone all knows how to play them, no labels, no manual, half the time the dials don't even show a marker for where the dial is turned to, no information whatsoever.
Only the KGB has information on these guitars. The guitars are easily converted to an AK-47 assualt gun and T-72 tank but sadly you can't do both at the same time. The headstocks contain a 2.5 kiloton nuclear warhead.
CBS is the worst thing that ever happened to Fender; we already know that. They traded ingenuity for profit, and Fender has never recovered. Still just longing for the 50s-60s ever since.
@@rmaxtpmx I actually owned that '85 Strat (and still own a Gibson Victory MV-X from that era that I love). While the build quality of the Fender was nowhere near what I got from my Strat Plus that I traded the CBS Strat for, I have to admit that I missed the two pickup options the buttons gave you.
Well, at least with three pickups that you can turn on in any combination, and two tone choices for each pickup and the ability to blend them all with individual volumes, it would give you a huge range of sucky sounds.
You should do a video attempting to correct issues with it like replacement tuners, non-microphones pickups,etc. See if you can make it into a useable instrument.
I've seen modern custom guitars with individual toggles for the pickups. It's niche, but it is a thing some people find more practical. As for everything else... It was surely assembled in an accordion factory by workers who were not trained as luthiers and were probably not guitar players either.
It's just a cheap 70's guitar, like any other cheap 70's guitar from any other country. You are "comparing apples with pears", like we say in my country.
I bought an old guitar which was made in soviet in 1970's but after a few modification it plays better than it used to and stays in tune even though I don't have lock tuners.
I’ve had the same issue with old Soviet film cameras. They try to mirror western design but just…nope. I propose a challenge. Make the guitar functional without buying a part. You can make any change so long as the parts on the guitar at the end are the same. No swap outs. With one exception. You can drill out and dowel the neck so it can be realigned.
soviet lenses on the other hand>>> . the lenses are really good cuz they striped the Carl Zeiss Jena factory for its parts after defeating the nazi's. the cameras do have a ton issues the two ive had are just sorta meh too frustrating
It is funny hear the rant about capitlist quality in the age of awful build-to-break stuff. And by the way, there were acoustic guitars made at a furniture factory. They had a certain "fame" for sounding like a wardrobe :)
When I worked on Denmark Street in London years ago, one of the technicians we hired for fixing amps was Russian. Nice guy, hard worker, fairly decent player. He did once tell me that Soviet guitars were awful and to stay away from them, most of what we could get in the UK even budget would be miles better, but Sovtek amps on the other hand were robust and kind of a nice take on Hiwatt/Plexi/Bassman tones, plus easy to work on. I know the latter is right, and now I'm sure on the former too. Wow the build quality is... wait, is there any build quality? It's the cracked paint around the fretboard edges and the completely off-centre neck that gets me.
Individual buttons actually SUPERIOR to 5 way switches. 5 way switches only get 5 PU combos Individual on/off gets you 7 different PU combos. Jazzmasters/Jaguars have switches that control tone, and many guitars have individual tone knobs instead of master. Some of your criticisms of this guitar are praised on popular fenders and gibsons Also, Leo Fender was an engineer that didn't play guitar. This guitar, at strictly electrically speaking, is superior to most. The unique blending options are worth the cumbersome nature of it, cuz it's really not all that cumbersome. Very respectefully, skill issue. Sammy I challenge you to get your hands on a Brian May guitar and spend a week with it. Some of the most versatile guitars out there, but unlike this one they're well constructed. (But please don't play any Queen songs it's so much more than that)
I love the look of all the USSR guitars and the switching. No matter how much he complains about it it just makes me want one more. The pickup switches are good, not sure why anyone would prefer a strat 5-way over on off. volume for each pickup, awesome, mechanical palm mute another winner, microphonic pickups? YES PLEASE. machine heads wrong way? replace them, action high? lower it, fret buzz? level and crown. crackling electronics? clean or re-solder/replace. Nothing on this guitar can't be fixed to make it great, neck dive probably the worst problem with it.
@@BogoBob yeah!… everything about the function he was disliking i was like …. “ thats cool , i like that!”lol … maybe he was kidding or it will grow on him. Neck dive is gross. i had an ibanez that did that… i got rid of it. i would make an exception this eccentric piece of awesome.
So fun fact, about a week before this video came out, I started planning for a project where I make one of these from scratch, except I make it actually good. I haven't been sure of going through with it, it might be a waste of time, whatever. However I think this video is a sign
Yep, the Soviet guitars are straightly knockoffs of Japanese 60s guitars which were horrible also, there are some videos on Russian guitar-themed YT channels that revive and modernize 'Ural', 'Aelita', 'Tonika', etc. But these guitar-substitutes don't deserve any attention
The string alignment issue is also common on Fenders. Just loosen the neck screws, give it a firm tug in the direction needed, and retighten the screws.
I like your channel. But I love such guitars. And I do not agree with every negative point. Gretsch builds drums and they used Drum-Materials for guitars. There are some great sovjet guitars. And dudes which restorates them or mod them.
@@OngoGablogian487 perhaps you are right. I like the design and the ideas. Of course I would change the pickups and perhaps the tuners. Brian May has his Red Special and almost everybody likes so many options with his on and off switches and so on.
@@OngoGablogian487 Eh. Not really. A bad guitar is a bad guitar. You can make the argument that some American guitars had some of these problems, but on batting average, a wonky 60s strat with a bad setup would still smoke this thing. It looks cool tho.
@@pznt_patrick9980 That's the problem there. You're comparing a Soviet instrument against a Strat. Compare it to old Sears catalog guitars like Silvertone or Airline. America was just as capable of making a cheap piece of shit guitar as the Soviets.
In 1990, some ships from the Soviet Union visited San Diego. My dad was the Commanding Officer of the Naval Station in San Diego where they tied up pierside and came ashore for international relations building purposes. As a teenager at the time, I was SO EXCITED to get to go aboard Russian warships, trade things with Russian sailors, and we even had a musical exchange, with a band from a US Navy ship playing on the pier, and a band from the Russian ship playing from their quarterdeck. I got the chance to go meet the band members, and play one of these horrible electric guitars. It was the same make & style of the one you showcase here, but it was plain black in color. Terrible frets that felt like they were made of nails. Pickups that could have been made by soldiers cooped up in an Afghan cave out of spare parts from an exploded tank. The sailor joked that if you could play on one of these you could play anything. It was to date the most terrible instrument I've ever held in my hands and attempted to make music with.
I love it when they compare products from capitalist countries and from countries with planned economies... Oh, the tuning pegs are turned the wrong way, oh, there is no usual switch, oh, 25 more things. They were simply impossible, because people did not know another technology and there were no necessary parts. And at that time, guitarists said thank you at least for what they had. By the way, when you criticize something, show something good too. For example, what wonderful guitars are produced in Russia today. For example, Lepsky, Inspector, Fokin.
I think he was biesed in this video, we can't compare the two countries, they made what they could with what they had. Went from a agrarian country to a industrial one in so short time, that wasn't easy
Fender and Gibson had a duopoly for decades. All guitar companies went through their overdesign era and Fender was famously bought by people who never played a guitar in their life. Attributing any element of this guitar to an economic model is unhinged.
I mean we live in capitalist world right now and how many companies produce best (in terms of popularity) guitars? The same that were decades ago. Yamaha, Gibson, Fender…
@@СерафимТоманов Exactly, they lowered quality and increased prices to increase profits - often horrifically exploiting poorer economies overseas. In particular Indonesia, which had mass anti-communist pogroms in the 60s, killing over a million for being communist or at least looking like one.
@@j.sparrow3265 Well I mean all major guitar companies make them in Asia. Indonesia, China mostly. Even Yamaha doesn’t make then in Japan anymore. So yea, they make business
@@j.sparrow3265 people don’t understand that unfortunately. They think their country invented an iPhone and it’s just because they have brilliant inventors (and they do), but the point is HOW they make them. With Russian and Ukrainian resources and most importantly, with child labour from African countries in case to get cobalt. And in sweatshops from China.
We might just be forgetting that Jaguars exist and that's likely the design reference for this??? One switch per pickup. Strangle switch for tonal variation, and another switch for a rhythm circuit? The bridge mute feature? Also a Jaguar thing.
Crappy electronics, a head stock that wants to kneecap you, questionable frets, an inability to stay in tune... sounds just like my Epiphone SG (bought in '97).
i quite like the button system actually, you can get pickup and tonal combinations that you can't achieve on a normal 3 pickup guitar with a 5 way switch, and it really wouldn't be cumbersome at all unless you need to switch mid-solo or something like that.
5:38 it's not "mountains" Ordzhonikidze, it's city. The "гор." writing means short for "город" - city. The guitar was made in Ordzhonikize, TEREK factory. The city was renamed and now it is called Vladikavkaz.
I hate switches for changing pickups. I had a guitar that had a on/off switch for each humbucker, it was ok. The button system seems interesting to me, since you can combine the pickups in ways a switch can't plus you get a killswitch button for free. As to what to do with it, make it work! Put your luthier skills to the test and try to fix the guitar as much as you can by yourself.
Well, to dive a little more of these miracles you also need to understand one thing - no one really intended to use this guitars for long. There is no USSR Blackie from modified Aelita. A lot of musicians - approved Vocal and Instrumental Ensembles or underground movements did everything to copy, manually recreate or even buy real guitars just not to use this garbage. Also, because of this scarcity a lot of amateur musicians who wanted, but couldn't just played acoustics instead. And that was massively, im sure - a lot more than in other countries.
Yeah, compared to electric instruments, acoustics were a lot more bang for your buck in Soviet Russia. Which is why you have a lot more Mike Naumenko and Boris Grebenshikov (I could also cite older players like Visotskiy and Bulat Okujawa) against the likes of early Bob Dylan and Chet Atkins and the like, as opposed to having a lot of Black Coffee, Aria, Master, Epidemia (russian metal bands) against the likes of Metallica, Exodus and others. It's just a lot easier to play such intricate music in America, which is why Russia is full of music that's strumming chords to strange riddims and weird lyrics))))
The problem with soviet guitars was that they were not made by musicians for musicians, but by furniture makers in furniture factories who assembled cabinets and sofas because that was what the government wanted, it should not and could not be of high quality, it should be cheap and there should be a lot of it. so that people do not look at the guitars that were done in the west. But because of this lousy quality, people wanted an unattainable guitar from the west even more, because any cheapest guitar from Europe or America was like a Lamborghini compared to a Fiat
Exactly. They just had to think that through, find some professional musicians (they had enough of them) and hire engineers and they would find a way to make them properly. Guess they didn’t had that priority
There is a funny mistake in the translation of the plate. "гор. Орджоникидзе" -> "mountains Ordzhonikidze" In fact it is "Ordzhinikidize city" "гор." here means a "city", it is a bureaucratic shorthand for "город" (which means city/town), not for "гора" or "горы" which mean "mountain" or "mountains".
My friend got two of these Aelitas from a village club in 1996 or so, and one of them was standing in a shed and was hit by an axe, so part of the body was lost. Also had an Ural guitar with some parts lost. So what we had to do is to upgrade them in some way and hope for the best. About the TONEWOOD: much later I got a book about Soviet guitars and learned that NONE of them were made out of solid pieces of timber. I’m not even speaking about some mahogany, ash or alder, though Russia obviously have some trees growing there. It was always some veneered furniture board, heavy as fuck and without any resonance. Just Soviet engineers believed that nobody will hear the difference and whatever they produce people would play.
ok i never processed in my head that tuning machines are reverse threaded. of course the turning direction is carried over from friction pegs, but then could you just wind the strings the other way and have right-hand threaded machines?
Welcome to wonders of USSR. Soviet guitars are notoriously horrible, simply because electric guitars wasn't at the top of production. Government pushing classical music education, which required pianos, violins and accordeons. Electric guitars were usually just a side product. Also I can add that most of the models were unsuccessful try to copy Japanese productions.
When you remember the official state position was that electric guitars are likely to be used to play "Western" styles which the government associated wirh spies since the '30s it's not surprising they didn't have much desire to ramp up production of those.
So many times I have been watching late night TV and the last guest-band always has a guitar player playing something that you have never seen. I would spend a lot of time searching for the guitar only to find out it is some Eastern European cheesy guitar that looked exotic on stage! I wanted one because no one else had one! It only needed to look good on stage. I love them!
The brand on the headstock is ‘Аэлнта’, in italic type. What looks an ‘m’ is in fact the Russian letter ‘т’ in italic type. So it is not Aeruma but Aelita. Still, it is a horrible guitar.
Я из России, и у моего дяди была такая гитара. Играть на ней действительно не очень удобно, с точки зрения эргономики. Звук по сегодняшним меркам тоже на любителя. Да и время не счадит инструменты. Большинство, наверное, долгое время лежали на сырых чердаках годами
да и дизайн у них не слишком удачный все-таки - как правильно многие уже здесь написали, инженеры пытались скопировать японские гитары из 70-ых. И это тоже не супер-веха в дизайне. Вообще, у как-то играл на Аэлите и Урале и конечно же первая гитара была в разы лучше) Урал годится только для драк))
Back in the 90's I worked in a guitar shop and we had a period where loads of these Soviet guitars and basses either came in for sale or return or for work. Like you mentioned, many had that oddball DIN style jack so we had to figure out the rewire to a standard jack. Quality-wise it was an absolute roll of the dice ranging from ok to diabolical but one thing I'd say though, you always ended up smiling when you played one... whether that was because it was fun to play something different or (more likely) it was just so laughably bad. The basses were quite eye opening, they were similar to playing a baseball bat and the neck was bowed up like a cart spring. They certainly have a weird charm to them and you can modify them. We did one for a customer who wanted the original pickups rewound, new pots and jack, Bridge rework that turned into a replacement and we removed the fretboard and truss rod and reset them with new items, oh and we dowelled the headstock, re-drilled it for some s/h Grovers and colour matched the refinish. Came out sounding a bit like a Gretsch crossed with a Sheraton/335 kind of thing.
In one of the videos, I saw a very necessary mod that is necessary for absolutely all Soviet guitars - replacing the neck. In that video, the neck was made to order in the workshop.
Have you seen what kind of guitars we sell on sites like eBay? We sell them without anything, just the soundboard and neck and all the guitars that are shown in the video are very normal
Soviet guitars were made not to rock and heavy metal. Soviet comrade should not shred and play for money. It's a joke. They are so weird just because almost all of them were produced in the furniture factories. But soviet had an underground market where you can order some kind of a custom shop. Also, there was an option to get something pretty close to Gibson Les Paul. There were a lot of magazines with blueprints of many kinds of stuff, and sometimes, you may find electric guitar blueprints. The most famous DIY guitar was 'Aria'. Nowadays you have a lot of parts in the special shops, but at that time it was something between modern cigar box guitars and Red Special by Brian May and his dad.
Такую гитару мне подарил отец в 1990.Она дейсвительно ужасная и на ней сложно играть.Но отца нет уже 24 года,и хотя сейчас я имею другие качествные гитары, дороже Аэлиты для меня нет....
So what should I do with this thing now? Last chance to grab the new course for $9 samuraiguitartheory.com/p/chord-revolution?coupon_code=WORSTGUITAR&product_id=5676346
Weaponize or Harmonize it
The choice is yours, samurai.
You should send it to a youtuber luthier and challenge them to fix it into a playable instrument while keeping as much of the original as possible.
I can grab that guitar for $9
Homemade conversion to a fretless? Seems like the best solution to both the neck being skewed and the frets so terribly set.
You can spend a lot of effort and make these guitars playable. But in the end, all you get is a mediocre, but no longer authentic instrument. Russian guitar collectors have been through this for a long time and it's not considered a meaningful activity here. The worst part is that the guitars that survived until 2024 are not the worst.
It is a historical artifact with all its flaws. Just hang it on the wall.
Some misinformation here... Soviets absolutely did not make these guitars "antithetical" to the west, they just made whatever they could with what they had, probably copying japanese guitars from the 60s.
It does actually says Aelita. "Аэлита".
The factory as stated on the guitar was in Ordzhonikidze (now Vladikavkaz)
The instruments from japan all had switches and buttons in the 70s, and I am sure thats where the inspiration came from. Nothing to do with "doing everything opposite to the west"
But terrible instrument of course.
came here to make this same comment, they were clearly copying the production model of 60s Japanese electric guitars which makes a lot more sense considering their original price point
@@JTHelectronics Honestly, having these buttons gives you more options than 5-way switch (which I actually think is way more counterintuitive)
@@opart Yes and no, the master volume control is counterintuitive when also paired with independent volumes, tone dials would provide more adjustability compared to a dark/bright button, and the loss of the ability to have N/B and N/M/B pickup options is most easily rectified by wiring a 5-way switch with a push-pull (or push-push) tone pot rigged to activate the neck (or bridge) pickup in any switch position ("7-way mod"). Those original Soviet button switches will also likely be a challenge to refurbish/replace.
@@ZacksRockingLifestyle Humbly disagree with most of the things you said.
The tone switches is whats missing here, as for the 7-way or a "The Gilmour Switch Mod", sure - but thats a custom modification, and I am talking vanilla 5-way - still more confusing and less versatile.
And don't get me started on Les Paul 4 knobs ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ .
The original Soviet switches are built like tanks, so the likelihood of them failing is nil. In fact you can probably fight a zombie horde with this guitar and then play a tune or two right after.
In any case, my main point is that the "expert" did not provide any real info, just misinformation, and that somehow Jaguar and all the Japanese guitars with buttons were all of a sudden forgotten.
But hey, I guess this is how you get UA-cam views :/
@@opart dude, are you well? You’re saying a (standard) Les Paul, with two pickups and independent volume and tone pots for each pickup, plus a lone three-position toggle… is confusing?
But less confusing is a guitar with three (microphonic) pickups, four volume controls that contradict each other (because of the master), and six switches?
And to say the 7-way wiring is a “custom modification” is a bit disingenuous. Many guitars today come with that as a standard, even budget guitars like the Squier Nashville Telecaster.
Last, “built like a tank.” So, bulky, used largely in specialized conditions, is complicated to operate, costs a fortune to operate effectively, and needs constant maintenance? Perhaps, yes.
>Gets a Soviet guitar
>Doesn't play Tetris theme on it
I am disappoint.
Or Soviet anthem😂
Or Kino
Ahahaha! Hilarious comment! 😂
@@juliuszjeziorski6031kino? Like bo1 kino?
I had to play such guitar many years, because I was born and raised in Soviet Union. At that time there where no way to get other guitars there, and even in the music store there where no choice - one or two models of the guitars You illustrated (and all of them in theese terrible colours). So I played that guitar many years, no other option. We had the experience to modifications, fixed some of the problems You have mentioned. We disabled all those buttons, playedmostly one pickup (otherwise there where terrible noisy from electromagnetic field). The bridge (with the moving parts, usualy where glued, not to make noise. The tremolo where abslolutely not in tune, so I removed the bar, and tried not to touch the tremolo. The worst part fhere the neck truss road, - not possible to adjust the relief, so playd on really high action height, and suffering from strongs going out of tune. T So, two years back I got my old russian made guitar, tuned it, and tried to play. It is teerible instrument. I really feel sorry for myself, that as teenager I was forced to lern guitar on such peace of junk.
Shame about the build quality. Pretty cool people were modding them though. Kinda like that DIY instrument/musician relationship but if it's just to fix quality problems, that's not so good. Need to strike a balance of a guitar that isn't some pristine thing that you can't touch or modify because it's being treated as an investment that's going to be sold or traded on in the future, but still being something you care about and can rely upon.
I love the colors, though, but yeah if there are only a couple options of colors, they probably lose their novelty.
That’s what learning guitar was like for me in the USA in the 90s. I couldn’t afford a guitar that wasn’t junk until I was older. A lot of my friends back then had equally bad equipment, but we made do and had fun!
I don’t think having a high end instrument would have made us sound any better
@@honkytonkinson9787 Absolutely agree. We seurvived bad instruments, and got the hard experience :) Most important - we still play the guitar, despite probably hate those junk guitars in our past.
What's wild is that Soviet synths from the same era are considered kinda groovy even with their limitations.
My family never bought me any musical instruments, so my first guitar (this was the 1970's) was almost exactly like that; same shape, same pickups, layout & switch positions (it didn't have buttons like this one). But no tremelo, a different headstock, & the finish was just red spray-paint. It had no name. I found it a Flee market in California. They wanted 6$. I talked them down to 1$. When I was very young, my Nana taught me how to haggle. lols
I thought you’d play “back in the USSR” on it.
He even made something that kinda comes off as that melancholic post-punk music sound like Canadian folk guitar. :p
perhaps 'born in the USA'
Best comment.
@@mycosys freebird, some NASCAR rock, Lee greenwood, haha
@@Aeduo maybe listen to the song sometime
4:30 - SammyG pretends like he's never played a Fender Jaguar
Yeah I'm not a fan of Jag switches either.
Fender Mustang, Jazzmaster, Jaguar, Burns, Les Paul Recording..... List is endless. Quickly adapt and appreciate options like bridge and neck etc.
Yeah those often have the mute/felt thing and it's about as useless on those. Other than that though, I love Jags especially the Japanese made ones, assuming you install better pickups and hardware etc, the luthiery is usually outstanding on them. I like the switches, sets it apart from other guitars, confuses other players, allows you to kill switch toggle either pickup. Fun stuff.
I’m not a guitarist and after a day with a jaguar I had figured it out and memorized the settings as good as a strat. Not a challenge at all.
@@garydiamondguitarist I don't think most modern Jaguars outside of vintage reissues come with the mutes installed anymore.
I don't know that a switch is more intuitive than buttons. We're more used to it, but "down is on, up is off" seems pretty intuitive to me. You can also get more combinations that way, like having all three on at the same time for instance (can't do that with a strat). Brian May's homemade guitar has a similar set up. I think the biggest downfall, and perhaps why it isn't used more, is that it becomes really difficult to switch QUICKLY. In certain styles of music you're switching from the neck to the bridge, perhaps multiple times in the same solo. If you had to both turn ON one pickup, and also turn the other one OFF, I can see how that might get to be a pain in the ass
Seems like motions you'd just learn. But yeah it comes off as more of a "studio" guitar with a bunch of weird switches for different functions where you're recording different parts of a song in different takes. Probably awkward for live performance, but the muscle memory comes if it's just what you're used to.
Having played a Brian May guitar live, you are correct about switching pickups (or in/out of phase). However, works great if you know ahead of time what you're going to do and when. Also, NOTHING sounds like a Brian May guitar, even if you don't run it through a bunch of AC30's.
One press of a finger on both buttons and you're set, these П2К switches are not hard to press at all
Uhm alot of guitars have 1 switch per coil or pickup, Sammy is just being a dummy here. . . . . . Kramer specifically did this for years and years also 5 way switches are garbage and in the way ALL THE TIME on strats and Teles.
The way I deal with this is that I have _pushbutton_ switches for each pickup mounted in the same place the 5-way switch normally goes on a Strat. I can strike any one, two, or all three buttons in one motion, taking about the same amount of time as flicking a 5-way. It requires more forethought though, since it depends on the state you're already in. Obviously this makes neck+bridge (what I call "Tele position" on a Strat because it's the one the Tele has and the stock Strat does not) and all pickups possible -- and also NO pickups, if I want to use a headstock tuner.
Leo Fender ... didn't play guitar, also made guitars with mutes and cool looking impractical chrome covers and a ton of switches. (Also apparently got the bridge pickups slanted the other way and headstocks make more sense to be reversed...:)) Some Gretches have weird mutes and tone switches instead of pots ... these weird east european guitars seem more like an attempt of cramp all that into one guitar. I bet you could find weird italian or japanese guitars from the same era that will also be quirky like this...
These were definitely a "trend" in Brazil back in the 60s and 70s, any idea fender had they imitated here for a while, which resulted in a bunch of guitars that feel like a mix of a jaguar and a danelectro in the worst possible way.
@@Sewersyrup also over here in central/east europe they kind of used hardware they had at hand ... Jolana Alfa for example used switches that were from a vacuum cleaner :)
You'll find plenty of japanese guitars from the 60s and 70s that also feature a lot of these same weird design quirks. They're usually better built than the soviet guitars though.
Leo isn't even the only example, Ned Steinberger isn't a guitar player either! The main thing that's wrong with those soviet guitars is likely the build quality (most things made in the USSR were terribly built), but the weirdo spec does seem fairly usual for the 1960s.
@@seanmckelvey6618 It almost looks like the Soviets tried to copy Japan's low cost guitars and utterly failed to comprehend what corners can be cut, and what corners must not be cut. Kinda like China for the last 40 years, only without the lipstick on the pig.
It actually says "Аэлита" on a headstock, so "Aelita" in Russian
It does say "Aelita", it's just written in what looks like cursive Cyrillic. I'm a Bulgarian, I can read it.
That's correct.
He probably meant that other similar guitars had a different name, though my first thought was that it says Aelita too
Привет брат словянин.
Круто, что у вас такой же алфавит как у нас:) 🤝
Give this guy some potatos!
There is a guitar youtuber, Gleb Oleynik, he's specialised in these weird things
ВУНДЕРВАФЛЯ
ЕТИТСКАЯ СИЛА!
ОУУУУУУУУУУУУУУУУУУУУУУУУУУ ВСЕМ ПРИВЕТ, МОИ МОЛОДЫЕ ГИТАРНЫЙ ДРОЧЕРЫ!
Абсолютли
I know someone who buys weird guitars and basses and all manner of string and percussion instruments in order to sample them. He eventually has to sell most of them, he doesn't have infinite space.
In soviet russia, guitars play you
Ha! Classic
maybe the hackiest joke format of all time
@@OngoGablogian487 It was funny 70 years ago when Bob Hope invented it.
@@Bacopa68 In Soviet Russia 70 years ago, joke invented Bob Hope
@@cranklabexplosion-labcentr8245 I have to agree! Regardless of one man's opinion, this joke will always be funny. To at least someone.
"Engineers who think of things in terms of engineering and not in terms of guitar or guitar culture." so... exactly like Leo Fender. To be honest most of the design flaws you point out were or even still are present in the USA models. The argument the tuners to be thread in the "opposite" way... back then it wanst as set in stone as it is today, even less in the Soviet Union where the western influence was limited. Also I think it would have been better to compare it to some teisco models than to a les paul as they are way more similar in price, design and target, it looks a lot like some of those japanese designs so maybe that whats the used as a starting point as Im sure cold war Soviet government wouldn't like to be perceived as copying the enemy (although Japan was basically a US controlled satellite after WW2). About the quality of the instrument im sure it wasnt the best as they were mass produced to be available not to be professional grade instruments, you can easily find on Google how much buying power those 190 rubles had. All that being said I think they were a product of their time and the circumstances in which they were designed and produced so in my opinion some more context would have been nice. Afte all I enjoy the video and id love to know more about these obscure and forgotten guitars that didnt leave that much of a mark at this side of the iron curtain, or even some less known european designs.
F..k I didn't think it was that long...
@@__aythami it’s a fair comparison. This was top of the line in the Soviet Union just like Fender/Gibson was top of the line in the US. And you say Fender and Gibson have these problems, but EVERY Soviet guitar plays like trash
@@__aythamiObligatory “That’s what she said.” But yeah, I agree. This video is looking at a guitar from the 70s with a modern view. In the 70s electric guitars were ubiquitous, but nonetheless still relatively new. There was still some experimentation, and as you said nothing was really set in stone yet. Things that have a precedence of 70+ years now were still just 10 to 20 years old at the time. Also ideology plays a role. The idea of many Soviet products was that every household should have been able to own something like it. Cameras, musical instruments, vehicles, tools, houses, a lot of things were built for the masses. Often poor builds compared to what was available in the West, but not bad for its price. I’ve played on some cheap East German guitars a few years ago, and while they definitely weren’t good (also considering they were 50 years old) , they were at least relatively affordable for many East Germans of the time.
Correct me if im wrong but I'm pretty sure that "turning peg away from neck = note goes higher" has been a convention on Western instruments since before mechanical tuners were invented. (Eg the violin, or ... I want to say the lute but all playable lutes today are ofc modern replicas and even if there are existing period lutes they are strung by modern musicians who know the convention... which i guess could be the same for the violin ... but also doing it that way reduces the angle from nut to fretboard, so it's probably beneficial.
Гитара на самом деле плохая. Таковой ее считали все, кто профессионально занимались музыкой. Аэлита - одна из самых плохих гитар СССР. Причина этому в том, что гитары делали для того что бы сделать, а не для людей. На качество во многом было наплевать, главное было выполнить план по производству. 190 рублей - это полторы месячной зарплаты инженера в СССР. Очень дорого.
И автор показал завод - в Ростове на Дону, но он не знал что музыкальные инструменты как правило делались на тех же заводах что и обычная мебель)))
NGL, I think I would like the buttons for pickup selection. You get way more selection variety than you can from a switch.
He's just looking for shit to hate on to pad out the video length, if we're being honest.
@@OngoGablogian487 Yeah, the build quality stuff are fair arguments but other stuff that's just "it's different and not made by some famous guy or played by some famous guys so it's bad" are silly. He should've padded it out with more playing demos.
Exactly, if it didn't have the mentioned hardware issues I would totally consider this guitar for its tonal capabilities. Guitar looks dope too IMO.
You just get two more which don’t make much sense.
@@TheHesseJames _Three_ more settings. All pickups off makes a separate mute switch (on the guitar or on the floor) unnecessary. And I like "Telecaster position", neck and bridge combined, even though this defeats the hum canceling the middle pickup should be providing. All three at once just sounds sludgy though, I can see why few people bother enabling it.
This works a whole lot better with pushbutton switches that can be slapped rather than slid. Then changing pickups is just as fast as any other switch in the same position on the guitar (slapping multiple pushbutton switches at once is pretty trivial), although more situational awareness is required.
Sorry but you are wrong about switches. Brain May's "Red Special"(I own one) has pickup selectors just like the ones you have there. Only difference is they are below the strings, not above.
And the fender Mustang has individual switches above the pickups.
@@joseislanio8910 as well as my Squier Bass VI. Bruh.
@@Amorous578 most of the "flaws" he listed are present in high end guitars. The mute, switches, bridge cover. Even the inverted tuners were a thing in old silvertone guitars.
@@joseislanio8910 💯
@@joseislanio8910indeed. lame review
Jaguars, Jazzmasters and bass vi have switches too...
Most Mustangs also have individual on/off switches for each pickup.
I actually think that is better in a 3 pickup guitar than the strat type of switch, because it allows you to play neck+bridge and also with all the pickups at once.
The button for pickups is even more intuitive and can help get different configurations. Sammy is just riding the USA cold war theme here, ask every guitar player here how many times they accidentally have switched to the other pickups whilst playing. You gotta give props where necessary and be objective about things.
Right
A quick correction: on the backplate, it says "city Ordzhonikidze" rather than "mountains Ordzhonikidze." This city is currently known as Vladikavkaz, and that's probably where this guitar is made, as opposed to Rostov-on-Don as your friend has suggested.
After doing a bit of research, it looks like Rostov-Don refers not to the city, but to another factory that was indeed located in Rostov-on-Don. Both factories were parts of a large association called MPO "KAVKAZ." The Rostov-Don factory was probably the main one, and the guitar you have is a copy of their model line made at a different factory called TEREK in the city of Ordzhonikidze, now known as Vladikavkaz.
oh i could imagine how the translation mixes up city and mountains haha
The guitar headstock also says Aelita, not Aerima... kinda ranting video, and an "expert" friend is not helping.
Soviets absolutely did not make these guitars "antithetical" to the west lol. They just made whatever they could with whatever they had.
@@opart I chose not to point out aelita/aerima thing cause I felt it was more of a joke, though I do feel like people may get the wrong impression if they can't read Cyrillic
@@114Freesoul pretty sure he meant it :D In any case, these were mostly copies of instruments from Japan. Gibson and Fender guitars were pretty rare in Europe anyway, and I doubt soviet engineers even saw them.
Autocorrect struck you on the last word, mate.
old czechoslovak guitars were actually kinda great, some pre 80s ones are able to rival the big brands
My first electric was Jolana Diamant and I still have (it) a fond memory of playing it.
Like anything else, it's hit or miss. From an outsiders perspective we have this need to tie everything we experience about such a product to the conditions it was produced in (in this case Soviet style communism).
But that was of thinking obviously falls flat quite quickly if you look at other products that were made in these conditions and that don't suffer in quality to nearly the same degree. For example, some of the best cheap and reliable mechanical watches you can get are from a brand that has already existed in the Soviet Union (raketa)
There was an odd quirk of Czech culture that communism wasn't able to squash and that's pride in craftsmanship. Czech firearms are another example, often on par with their western counterparts whereas most other ComBloc stuff has pretty bad QC.
Just to add: they were exported to the West under the name Futurama and some famous rock guitarists actually started on these, cause they were cheap
@@Zundfolge why do you think communism would inherently try to "squash" good craftsmanship? It's ok if you are ideologically opposed to socialism but the picture you're painting in your head is comically simplistic
Not gonna lie i absolutely love that felt mute for the bridge, i wish i could get something like that to add to some of my guitars
probably could make something you can shove under there.
@@Aeduo yeah but i like how it's self contained and switches on and off
I also liked it! I think that's actually a pretty cool little feature
Fender made a mute for jags, did the same basic thing. I bet you could reverse wng8neer sowmth8ng from one of those
@@lorde_spooky oh well yeah I just mean to experiment with something and it might just be good enough in most cases. :p
Lol, what? How are switches more intuitive than buttons? You've got three pickups. Three buttons. Any button pressed means the corresponding pickup is active. Combine them however you want. Switches are counterintuitive, because they have multiple positions and you've gotta remember what combination of pickups each position corresponds to. I think all guitars should have buttons now!
A blind person can find a switch by feel and push it the direction they need. Adding multiple buttons in different positions with the same feel is much more confusing. Consider most place you play a gig at are going to be dark as well. A switch has a much more haptic and accessible design
I can't imagine trying to switch between pickups mid song with buttons bruh. You normally have half a second mid song to switch pickups and having to memorize button layouts sounds like hell. HAHA. If buttons were more intuitive, they'd have been normalized on guitars by now.
@@pznt_patrick9980 As a guitar player with impaired vision, I can’t imagine anything that would upset me more than turning my pickup selector from one switch into 3-5 buttons. I also think switches are more intuitive because the sound moves the direction you pushed your switch, either up to the neck or back to the bridge
@@Augrills There are 3 buttons, each 1 for each pickup, and there can't be 5 unless you have 5 pickups. It's literally isn't any less intuitive and follows the neck and the bridge just the same. You say it's bad only because you are conditioned to think that a guitar has to have a switch and not anything else. But what if you don't just blindly reject everything novel or unconventional? Pun intended.
Buttons and switches are indeed different from each other, and they allow for different things in your instrument. It's that simple. We all play different music on different instrument. If your playing requires you to quickly hop from the neck to the bridge pickups - or at least you think it does - then yeah, you go for a switch. But if speed isn't necessary, then you can have great flexibility with buttons.
Again, it's a design choice that you can make when you build a guitar. There's nothing inherently bad about it. It's just different. Don't bring your habits into this.
Stopping in a groove to push a button doesn't work for some.
I'm from Russia, and my uncle always told me, that the only sound that Soviet guitars should make is crackle in the fire
You guys are funny: First you complain about all guitars being pretty much identical without much personality... until you find something quirky and odd. Then you complain that it isn't a Stratocaster.
Certainly if this guitar was made at some random city in 'Muricah during that same period of history that would make it a fun and honest guitar. Since it was made in the USSR it is shitty. Did I get it right?
100%
I own one of these from the Terek factory (red pickguard) aside from it being highly flammable it plays really nice the neck is thicker and has a more rounded feel. It’s more solid and the tremolo makes it a beast for shoegaze
@@jermswormsmine has the red pickguard too, faded to browny pink. Still rebuilding it, it had been heavily abused.
It's shitty because the goal was to deliver a product that looked like a guitar in the required quantity. There are things that the USSR did well but this just wasn't one of them. There was essentially no quality control for them as musical instruments. Many of them can't even be tuned properly. And the end consumers were mainly organizations (who also didn’t care much), and not individuals.
Yes, they are different from Western guitars, but they have a lot in common with each other. It's just a different school of guitar making, and these differences are largely due to technological limitations, not creative thought. Like having the same pickup switches that toggle the room light.
The quality still varied between different models, years of production and factories. And there was also some custom production, as I understand it. At least in the last years of the USSR. But in general it can be said that it was possible to get a decent guitar from Eastern Europe or East Germany, but the native USSR production was a nightmare.
yes man soviets never ever made a single good guitar, just like they never made a good car. Also many of these ugly odd guitar designs were borrowed from Japanese guitars (that were at least playable). So yeah it is a terrible guitar
You mention that it is strange that the prize would be printed on the back plate. What about the ES-175 that sold for $175, the 335 which went for $335 and so on?
Fender had a problem with those crooked necks as recent as the gold foil guitars from a year or so ago. Only those were $1500.
Really? I thought those were cool. Were they all bad?
As someone learning on an acoustic, those switches are WAY more intuitive. You're just used to the switches. One thing I hate about electric guitars is they're all built with the assumption that everyone all knows how to play them, no labels, no manual, half the time the dials don't even show a marker for where the dial is turned to, no information whatsoever.
Remember how sammyg figured out those bar springs on camera just last year?
Only the KGB has information on these guitars. The guitars are easily converted to an AK-47 assualt gun and T-72 tank but sadly you can't do both at the same time. The headstocks contain a 2.5 kiloton nuclear warhead.
You probably shouldn't take a look at an 80's CBS Strat if you hate the buttons...
CBS is the worst thing that ever happened to Fender; we already know that. They traded ingenuity for profit, and Fender has never recovered. Still just longing for the 50s-60s ever since.
@@rmaxtpmx I actually owned that '85 Strat (and still own a Gibson Victory MV-X from that era that I love). While the build quality of the Fender was nowhere near what I got from my Strat Plus that I traded the CBS Strat for, I have to admit that I missed the two pickup options the buttons gave you.
Somewhere in Connecticut, Tim Sway is sobbing in his hands.
I’d love to see a crossover where Tim brings it up to modern code
Well, at least with three pickups that you can turn on in any combination, and two tone choices for each pickup and the ability to blend them all with individual volumes, it would give you a huge range of sucky sounds.
I never had a Soviet made guitar, but I once had a barber named Dominique. 🗺
yes... what Brian May also tried to do. Bt he succeeded ;)
You should do a video attempting to correct issues with it like replacement tuners, non-microphones pickups,etc. See if you can make it into a useable instrument.
Seeking the worst is never a good approach in life.
I've seen modern custom guitars with individual toggles for the pickups. It's niche, but it is a thing some people find more practical. As for everything else... It was surely assembled in an accordion factory by workers who were not trained as luthiers and were probably not guitar players either.
It's just a cheap 70's guitar, like any other cheap 70's guitar from any other country.
You are "comparing apples with pears", like we say in my country.
He also compares it with Gibson and Fender
I bought an old guitar which was made in soviet in 1970's but after a few modification it plays better than it used to and stays in tune even though I don't have lock tuners.
I’ve had the same issue with old Soviet film cameras. They try to mirror western design but just…nope. I propose a challenge. Make the guitar functional without buying a part. You can make any change so long as the parts on the guitar at the end are the same. No swap outs. With one exception. You can drill out and dowel the neck so it can be realigned.
All Soviet technology was reverse engengineered. Minor exceptions what wasn't even available to buy for general public.
soviet lenses on the other hand>>> . the lenses are really good cuz they striped the Carl Zeiss Jena factory for its parts after defeating the nazi's. the cameras do have a ton issues the two ive had are just sorta meh too frustrating
3:09 Interesting tidbit: The 1962 Gretsch Chet Atkins Country Gentleman had a felt string mute that was controlled by a mechanical toggle switch.
Aaaand I just learned that there was a model that had separate mutes for the top 3 and bottom 3 strings. Neat-o!
It is funny hear the rant about capitlist quality in the age of awful build-to-break stuff. And by the way, there were acoustic guitars made at a furniture factory. They had a certain "fame" for sounding like a wardrobe :)
It's accurate to say that it's not surprising that state-enforced extreme poverty communist countries make dogshit products.
I actually own one of these “ wardrobes” 😅
When I worked on Denmark Street in London years ago, one of the technicians we hired for fixing amps was Russian. Nice guy, hard worker, fairly decent player. He did once tell me that Soviet guitars were awful and to stay away from them, most of what we could get in the UK even budget would be miles better, but Sovtek amps on the other hand were robust and kind of a nice take on Hiwatt/Plexi/Bassman tones, plus easy to work on. I know the latter is right, and now I'm sure on the former too. Wow the build quality is... wait, is there any build quality? It's the cracked paint around the fretboard edges and the completely off-centre neck that gets me.
Individual buttons actually SUPERIOR to 5 way switches.
5 way switches only get 5 PU combos
Individual on/off gets you 7 different PU combos.
Jazzmasters/Jaguars have switches that control tone, and many guitars have individual tone knobs instead of master. Some of your criticisms of this guitar are praised on popular fenders and gibsons
Also, Leo Fender was an engineer that didn't play guitar.
This guitar, at strictly electrically speaking, is superior to most.
The unique blending options are worth the cumbersome nature of it, cuz it's really not all that cumbersome. Very respectefully, skill issue.
Sammy I challenge you to get your hands on a Brian May guitar and spend a week with it. Some of the most versatile guitars out there, but unlike this one they're well constructed. (But please don't play any Queen songs it's so much more than that)
"Uniquely horrible" is a new favorite insult I'm adding to my vernacular.
i instantly love the way the guitar looks…. lol…is it just me?
No I think it looks cool too; I think it’s so different looking
It totally looks cool, as many Soviet axes do (with design being derived from obscure Japanese models).
Not just you, I think it looks really fun. I think Sammy is just hating here 😂
I love the look of all the USSR guitars and the switching. No matter how much he complains about it it just makes me want one more. The pickup switches are good, not sure why anyone would prefer a strat 5-way over on off. volume for each pickup, awesome, mechanical palm mute another winner, microphonic pickups? YES PLEASE. machine heads wrong way? replace them, action high? lower it, fret buzz? level and crown. crackling electronics? clean or re-solder/replace.
Nothing on this guitar can't be fixed to make it great, neck dive probably the worst problem with it.
@@BogoBob yeah!… everything about the function he was disliking i was like …. “ thats cool , i like that!”lol … maybe he was kidding or it will grow on him. Neck dive is gross. i had an ibanez that did that… i got rid of it. i would make an exception this eccentric piece of awesome.
So fun fact, about a week before this video came out, I started planning for a project where I make one of these from scratch, except I make it actually good. I haven't been sure of going through with it, it might be a waste of time, whatever.
However
I think this video is a sign
Yep, the Soviet guitars are straightly knockoffs of Japanese 60s guitars which were horrible also, there are some videos on Russian guitar-themed YT channels that revive and modernize 'Ural', 'Aelita', 'Tonika', etc. But these guitar-substitutes don't deserve any attention
The string alignment issue is also common on Fenders. Just loosen the neck screws, give it a firm tug in the direction needed, and retighten the screws.
I like your channel. But I love such guitars. And I do not agree with every negative point. Gretsch builds drums and they used Drum-Materials for guitars. There are some great sovjet guitars. And dudes which restorates them or mod them.
It's a western tradition to reflexively shit on anything that came out of Socialism. Exhausting, honestly.
@@OngoGablogian487 perhaps you are right. I like the design and the ideas. Of course I would change the pickups and perhaps the tuners. Brian May has his Red Special and almost everybody likes so many options with his on and off switches and so on.
@@OngoGablogian487 Yes. It pisses me off. Never ending xenophobia. Anything that isn't American is shit by default.
@@OngoGablogian487 Eh. Not really. A bad guitar is a bad guitar. You can make the argument that some American guitars had some of these problems, but on batting average, a wonky 60s strat with a bad setup would still smoke this thing. It looks cool tho.
@@pznt_patrick9980 That's the problem there. You're comparing a Soviet instrument against a Strat. Compare it to old Sears catalog guitars like Silvertone or Airline. America was just as capable of making a cheap piece of shit guitar as the Soviets.
In 1990, some ships from the Soviet Union visited San Diego. My dad was the Commanding Officer of the Naval Station in San Diego where they tied up pierside and came ashore for international relations building purposes. As a teenager at the time, I was SO EXCITED to get to go aboard Russian warships, trade things with Russian sailors, and we even had a musical exchange, with a band from a US Navy ship playing on the pier, and a band from the Russian ship playing from their quarterdeck. I got the chance to go meet the band members, and play one of these horrible electric guitars. It was the same make & style of the one you showcase here, but it was plain black in color. Terrible frets that felt like they were made of nails. Pickups that could have been made by soldiers cooped up in an Afghan cave out of spare parts from an exploded tank. The sailor joked that if you could play on one of these you could play anything. It was to date the most terrible instrument I've ever held in my hands and attempted to make music with.
Sounded surprisingly sweet 😅
Lots of guitars from the 60’s had buttons. Especially guitars from “foreign” countries
I love it when they compare products from capitalist countries and from countries with planned economies... Oh, the tuning pegs are turned the wrong way, oh, there is no usual switch, oh, 25 more things. They were simply impossible, because people did not know another technology and there were no necessary parts. And at that time, guitarists said thank you at least for what they had. By the way, when you criticize something, show something good too. For example, what wonderful guitars are produced in Russia today. For example, Lepsky, Inspector, Fokin.
Exactly. You have to be at least a little diplomatic when you talk about things like this.
I think he was biesed in this video, we can't compare the two countries, they made what they could with what they had. Went from a agrarian country to a industrial one in so short time, that wasn't easy
Fender and Gibson had a duopoly for decades. All guitar companies went through their overdesign era and Fender was famously bought by people who never played a guitar in their life. Attributing any element of this guitar to an economic model is unhinged.
I mean we live in capitalist world right now and how many companies produce best (in terms of popularity) guitars? The same that were decades ago. Yamaha, Gibson, Fender…
@@СерафимТоманов Exactly, they lowered quality and increased prices to increase profits - often horrifically exploiting poorer economies overseas. In particular Indonesia, which had mass anti-communist pogroms in the 60s, killing over a million for being communist or at least looking like one.
@@j.sparrow3265 Well I mean all major guitar companies make them in Asia. Indonesia, China mostly. Even Yamaha doesn’t make then in Japan anymore. So yea, they make business
@@j.sparrow3265 people don’t understand that unfortunately. They think their country invented an iPhone and it’s just because they have brilliant inventors (and they do), but the point is HOW they make them. With Russian and Ukrainian resources and most importantly, with child labour from African countries in case to get cobalt. And in sweatshops from China.
We might just be forgetting that Jaguars exist and that's likely the design reference for this??? One switch per pickup. Strangle switch for tonal variation, and another switch for a rhythm circuit? The bridge mute feature? Also a Jaguar thing.
Send it to Tim Sway and see what he can do to make it more playable.
Soviet map at 1:31 is a little off
@ 7:29 I have a 70's Fender Tele that is once had a misaligned neck.
Crappy electronics, a head stock that wants to kneecap you, questionable frets, an inability to stay in tune... sounds just like my Epiphone SG (bought in '97).
0:25 was really enjoying that tune, wish I could hear you play on it’s own without the ad overtop
Also the original jazzmaster and jaguar had those style mutes and bridges
60s Hagström guitars have a LOT of switches, but they all give you a plethora of options.
i quite like the button system actually, you can get pickup and tonal combinations that you can't achieve on a normal 3 pickup guitar with a 5 way switch, and it really wouldn't be cumbersome at all unless you need to switch mid-solo or something like that.
3:29
it says aelita in cyrillic.
why would the soviets use the latin alphabet?
5:38 it's not "mountains" Ordzhonikidze, it's city. The "гор." writing means short for "город" - city.
The guitar was made in Ordzhonikize, TEREK factory. The city was renamed and now it is called Vladikavkaz.
It looks like they added buttons to make it look like a machine in an old James Bond movie.
I like those buttons, I don't understand what's wrong with them. I still don't find pickup switch intuitive after years of playing casually.
I think you should send it to me and let me make it playable and see what it’s like when you get it back.
Seeing my hometown at 3:58 was quite a surprise
Take it to the luthier and make it playable
I hate switches for changing pickups. I had a guitar that had a on/off switch for each humbucker, it was ok. The button system seems interesting to me, since you can combine the pickups in ways a switch can't plus you get a killswitch button for free.
As to what to do with it, make it work! Put your luthier skills to the test and try to fix the guitar as much as you can by yourself.
That’s why post-soviet space is full of males who fix everything, re-do everything and invent new hand-made things. It’s like a religion
Well, to dive a little more of these miracles you also need to understand one thing - no one really intended to use this guitars for long. There is no USSR Blackie from modified Aelita. A lot of musicians - approved Vocal and Instrumental Ensembles or underground movements did everything to copy, manually recreate or even buy real guitars just not to use this garbage. Also, because of this scarcity a lot of amateur musicians who wanted, but couldn't just played acoustics instead. And that was massively, im sure - a lot more than in other countries.
Yeah, compared to electric instruments, acoustics were a lot more bang for your buck in Soviet Russia. Which is why you have a lot more Mike Naumenko and Boris Grebenshikov (I could also cite older players like Visotskiy and Bulat Okujawa) against the likes of early Bob Dylan and Chet Atkins and the like, as opposed to having a lot of Black Coffee, Aria, Master, Epidemia (russian metal bands) against the likes of Metallica, Exodus and others. It's just a lot easier to play such intricate music in America, which is why Russia is full of music that's strumming chords to strange riddims and weird lyrics))))
@@yobrethren surprisingly precise!
USSR is technically not Russia. The title image is misleading. But yes, Soviet guitars mostly are logs.
The problem with soviet guitars was that they were not made by musicians for musicians, but by furniture makers in furniture factories who assembled cabinets and sofas because that was what the government wanted, it should not and could not be of high quality, it should be cheap and there should be a lot of it. so that people do not look at the guitars that were done in the west. But because of this lousy quality, people wanted an unattainable guitar from the west even more, because any cheapest guitar from Europe or America was like a Lamborghini compared to a Fiat
Exactly. They just had to think that through, find some professional musicians (they had enough of them) and hire engineers and they would find a way to make them properly.
Guess they didn’t had that priority
Sounds like the future of AI music. Think about it. It will make real music even more desirable
This commentator speaks with facts
There is a funny mistake in the translation of the plate.
"гор. Орджоникидзе" -> "mountains Ordzhonikidze"
In fact it is "Ordzhinikidize city"
"гор." here means a "city", it is a bureaucratic shorthand for "город" (which means city/town), not for "гора" or "горы" which mean "mountain" or "mountains".
A guitar designed by committee....great idea!
I think the pop-up, felt, mute is a pretty cool feature and it sounded kinda dope when you flicked it up.
My friend got two of these Aelitas from a village club in 1996 or so, and one of them was standing in a shed and was hit by an axe, so part of the body was lost. Also had an Ural guitar with some parts lost. So what we had to do is to upgrade them in some way and hope for the best. About the TONEWOOD: much later I got a book about Soviet guitars and learned that NONE of them were made out of solid pieces of timber. I’m not even speaking about some mahogany, ash or alder, though Russia obviously have some trees growing there. It was always some veneered furniture board, heavy as fuck and without any resonance. Just Soviet engineers believed that nobody will hear the difference and whatever they produce people would play.
So wood doesn't affect the sound of an electric guitar, this myth has long been debunked😁
ok i never processed in my head that tuning machines are reverse threaded. of course the turning direction is carried over from friction pegs, but then could you just wind the strings the other way and have right-hand threaded machines?
Welcome to wonders of USSR. Soviet guitars are notoriously horrible, simply because electric guitars wasn't at the top of production. Government pushing classical music education, which required pianos, violins and accordeons. Electric guitars were usually just a side product. Also I can add that most of the models were unsuccessful try to copy Japanese productions.
When you remember the official state position was that electric guitars are likely to be used to play "Western" styles which the government associated wirh spies since the '30s it's not surprising they didn't have much desire to ramp up production of those.
So many times I have been watching late night TV and the last guest-band always has a guitar player playing something that you have never seen.
I would spend a lot of time searching for the guitar only to find out it is some Eastern European cheesy guitar that looked exotic on stage!
I wanted one because no one else had one!
It only needed to look good on stage.
I love them!
The brand on the headstock is ‘Аэлнта’, in italic type. What looks an ‘m’ is in fact the Russian letter ‘т’ in italic type. So it is not Aeruma but Aelita. Still, it is a horrible guitar.
I like the buttons for turning on and off the pickups, makes me think of those old Guild BM01 Brian May guitars but way faster!
Я из России, и у моего дяди была такая гитара. Играть на ней действительно не очень удобно, с точки зрения эргономики. Звук по сегодняшним меркам тоже на любителя. Да и время не счадит инструменты. Большинство, наверное, долгое время лежали на сырых чердаках годами
да и дизайн у них не слишком удачный все-таки - как правильно многие уже здесь написали, инженеры пытались скопировать японские гитары из 70-ых. И это тоже не супер-веха в дизайне. Вообще, у как-то играл на Аэлите и Урале и конечно же первая гитара была в разы лучше) Урал годится только для драк))
Back in the 90's I worked in a guitar shop and we had a period where loads of these Soviet guitars and basses either came in for sale or return or for work.
Like you mentioned, many had that oddball DIN style jack so we had to figure out the rewire to a standard jack.
Quality-wise it was an absolute roll of the dice ranging from ok to diabolical but one thing I'd say though, you always ended up smiling when you played one... whether that was because it was fun to play something different or (more likely) it was just so laughably bad.
The basses were quite eye opening, they were similar to playing a baseball bat and the neck was bowed up like a cart spring.
They certainly have a weird charm to them and you can modify them. We did one for a customer who wanted the original pickups rewound, new pots and jack, Bridge rework that turned into a replacement and we removed the fretboard and truss rod and reset them with new items, oh and we dowelled the headstock, re-drilled it for some s/h Grovers and colour matched the refinish. Came out sounding a bit like a Gretsch crossed with a Sheraton/335 kind of thing.
IT SAYS AELITA IN RUSSIAN CURSIVE BRO DO SOME RESEARCH
Many things said about Soviet production and economy were inaccurate at best but this is a guitar channel so whatever but Aeruma? Come on
@@yvavi6851 Agreed, the "expert" friend did not really say anything meaningful.
I really dig the aesthetics of Soviet era guitars. I'd buy them just for display
The muted sound using the green felt piece at 3:12 is actually a pretty nice sound, too bad it has too many other issues
Этими гитарами ломали стены железного занавеса. Вы ещё Тонику не видели.
It’s not that strange to have the price printed onto a guitar, Gibson 335. Guess how much that cost…
USE WITH A FUZZFACE. PUT THE TONE IN 0 AND VOLUME IN 10
This is my first guitar, of course it was very inconvenient to play it, but I still like the design
In one of the videos, I saw a very necessary mod that is necessary for absolutely all Soviet guitars - replacing the neck. In that video, the neck was made to order in the workshop.
Chernobyl + fireplace + vodka + guitar = cheeki breeky
One knob to control the tone.
Strat and Les Paul: say what???
Thank you!
The shape of this thing has Japanese roots, body and headstock were copied from Yamaha SG5, but body was flipped vertically.
Have you seen what kind of guitars we sell on sites like eBay? We sell them without anything, just the soundboard and neck and all the guitars that are shown in the video are very normal
come on these buttons are more intuitive by essence than a switch
Leo fender didn’t play guitar. He was an engineer, he did listen to players, but if you look at a tele you can see an engineers mind.
The button system actually sounds pretty nice to me.
i think the buttons and knobs are pretty cool, and I can't see a downside unless you want to switch pickups mid song
Soviet guitars were made not to rock and heavy metal. Soviet comrade should not shred and play for money. It's a joke. They are so weird just because almost all of them were produced in the furniture factories. But soviet had an underground market where you can order some kind of a custom shop. Also, there was an option to get something pretty close to Gibson Les Paul. There were a lot of magazines with blueprints of many kinds of stuff, and sometimes, you may find electric guitar blueprints. The most famous DIY guitar was 'Aria'. Nowadays you have a lot of parts in the special shops, but at that time it was something between modern cigar box guitars and Red Special by Brian May and his dad.
Такую гитару мне подарил отец в 1990.Она дейсвительно ужасная и на ней сложно играть.Но отца нет уже 24 года,и хотя сейчас я имею другие качествные гитары, дороже Аэлиты для меня нет....
This guitar is certainly bad, but couldn't the video have been a bit less chauvinistic? Learn from Adam Neely and his video about Chechnya.