”Morris, a brand of the Japanese company Moridaira and known for its splendid acoustic instruments, has also produced electric guitars and basses under other brands, the best known of which was HS Anderson, famous for Prince's Madcat.
Lorenzo
Morris, a brand of the Japanese company Moridaira and known for its splendid acoustic instruments, has also produced electric guitars and basses under other brands, the best known of which was HS Anderson, famous for Prince’s Madcat.
The Moridaira Guitar company has long been building quality handcrafted instruments in Matsumoto, Nagano. It is named after its founder, Mr. Toshio Moridaira, who founded the company in 1961 and became the first importer of Gibson and Fender for Japan.
In 1964, thanks to his working relationship with Gibson, Toshio visited the factory in Kalamazoo, Michigan and a Gibson employee nicknamed him “Mori”.
Consequently, Mori-san founded the Morris Guitars company in 1967, inspired by this nickname.
Morris has produced high-quality dreadnought and jumbo copies based on Martin and Gibson.
The factory also manufactured for third parties, including Morris-branded guitars which were imported to England by Rose Morris. Moridaira has also produced guitars for Hohner (the Madcat made famous by Prince came out under both the HS Anderson and Hohner brands) and other smaller brands.
Morris began producing proprietary design models in the 70s and among these also the Global Sound line, of which here we have one of the models designed by Patrick Vrolant for HS Anderson, in fact.
Vrolant is a French musician who made a career as a Country singer-guitarist under the stage name of Pat Winther. In the 1970s he was a salesman for Gamme (the company that had Matsumoku produce the Country SV 300 for the French market).
Today Morris produces exclusively acoustic instruments, largely in Korea while still retaining its base in Matsumoto where it produces its own line of handcrafted instruments of the highest quality.
Going back to this beautiful Global Sound by Vrolant and owned by our friend Gordy, it is a neck-thru made in maple and mahogany, with steel and brass hardware and which seems to wear a beautiful pair of Di Marzio with split coils and adjustable by two pairs of potentiometers enriched by mahogany knobs.
But now let’s enjoy the pictures.
Click the button and watch the exclusive videos of this incredible Morris Global Sound!
