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1963~64 Alamo Fiesta- Pictures and Tear Down.


Ryoskate

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First of all, as an introduction, I'm Ryoskate. I'm not the biggest guitar junkie so bare with me with me in some parts... haha..

 

I thought about just putting this in "User Reviews" section but since no one really took an Alamo, and documented it in depth, I couldn't help it but to put it in the Forum for everyone to see!

 

*PICTURE HEAVY*

 

- -

 

Hand made in my home state of Texas and in a neighboring city of San Antonio, What I have here is a 1963-64 Alamo Fiesta- or at least what seems to be. The company which made the guitar no longer exists and the founder passed away in the recent years, so all I had were a few online resources, mainly an article from a 90's guitar magazine, but I was able to dig up a decent amount of info anyways.

 

 

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- Picture of the Alamo in the hands of the Previous owner, sitting next to a much rare-er Supro.

 

 

So the story is, I found this guitar at an antique mall, I've always wanted a Harmony Bobkat but they were too expensive, so naturally, this guitar ( Along with the price it was at) caught my sight. When I first found it, it wasn't in the best shape... Missing switch knob, Missing ferrules, screws, paint chips, and well.. Plugged it in and it doesn't play. So Immediately, I start to take things apart.

 

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Aaand voila... To my surprise, Hollow core. (kinda hard to see in the pic but no, it's not just a routing.) Although I should have expected it given how light this thing is and the way it sounds. It's atleast 1/2 the weight of a Les Paul.

This was one of the key component of me determining the year of the guitar, since 1962 Alamo Fiestas were solid body- set necks as opposed to this particular guitar which has a Hollow core- bolt on neck.

 

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- Paint chips everywhere... I later fix this by touching up the chips with enamel paint, but apparently, it wasn't strong enough. It started smearing off so It's whatever. Lets just call it patina.

 

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The flip side of the pick guard.No manufacture date or anything. Unlike the some what similar bobkat, the Pick ups, which were made by Alamo themselves, aren't riveted on and can be adjusted. Which is a nice feature The pots surprisingly worked so I left it as is. Apparently, the fiesta's were sold in the 60's as a Beginner guitar which explains there being only 2 pots- volume and tone, despite it being a Dual Pick up.

 

Although I forget if it's in the picture, The reason why I wasn't getting any sound was because of the selector switch. The nylon end of the switch was out of place- but thanks to the cheap and simple construction, I was able to put it back in place and adjust the contact points to prevent it from happening again.

 

The striped wire on the left is the ground wire.

 

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-chips, scratches, and scruffs on the Headstock. Overall the neck was straight enough and playable. While it was a cheapo guitar of back-in-the-day, It does have an adjustable tuss rod. The tuners, which I believe are original, aren't the greatest thing ever but it stays in tune.

 

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Body and the neck after the touch up. Couldn't mix the color to quite match, but compared to how it was before, it's a lot more pleasing to look.

It's an amazing color. Blood-Red-Wine-Burgundy-Cherry. I couldn't find the color name as the catalogues, which hardly exists and are undated, are in black and white. Hooray.

 

 

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So I put everything together with a fresh set of light gauge strings and good lord, It sounded awful and was unplayable.

While the sound was improved by resorting to less lighter strings (10-45, I know what you're thinking: It's not even that heavy! But trust me.... It feels like a 12 gauge acoustic and I think the fact that it only has 19 frets has something to do with that.) There was something still wrong with it. Sounded alright but hard to play- The string spacing was weird.

So I went ahead and took out my caliper and checked to make sure it wasn't some sort of witchcraft or an optical illusion. Turns out, the Bridge / Tailpiece was the culprit.

 

Gladly (and sadly... R.I.P), a smashed up Alamo Titan was on Ebay, parted out. So I went ahead and bought an another bridge/tailpiece, In hopes of the string spacing being normal.

 

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- Right: What came with this guitar. Left: From an another Alamo off Ebay.

 

And would ya look at that. Night and day difference. Any idea as to WHY a bridge / tailpiece would be offset like this? Maybe it's easier to Slide guitar? Someone here gotta know.

 

--

 

Now these guitars were Hand made in San Antonio, and consistancy seems to be a word from an another universe back then, so every guitar from them is different which adds to the fun in my opinion. The neck gets skinnier as you go down the frets, the pickguard is abstract, with the Alamo trade mark "Fetus" shape on the bottom, The nut cover on the huge and wacky head stock is almost Rickenbacker-esque, which was an another factor that helped me narrow the year down to 1963~64 as the 65 Alamo's had the "french curve" Harmony like headstock with 6 tuners on the same side.

 

Overall, This oddball Alamo Fiesta is just fun to look at and plays "okay". The Rosewood frets just looks good from the aesthetics point, although it only having 19 frets may hinder some playing style. The low resistance pick ups are world away from modern 10k+ ohm pick ups, although the sound is definitely up to preference, especially combined with the hollow core body. With a flat, clean setting on an amp, it has no bass and lot of mid and treble, but low in volume, so it's not a piercing sound but rather an "acoustic" sound I guess... It is hollow after all.

 

I'm no where near decent in terms of playing, so just take the video below as a reference to how it sounds... It's on a clean setting. I may do a distorted sound video later if anyone is interested. It sounds pretty unique.

 

[video=youtube;MPO5A5VYwdM]

 

 

- Pictures of the re-assembled guitar -

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- Hondo II in the back ground. There's more info on the net about it but if anyone is interested, I may write about it later.

 

 

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-The Alamo Tuss rod cover. When I first got it, there was a huge gap between the neck and the cover. When I turned it around, the cover fit perfectly. Turns out, someone from the factory actually stamped the logo on the flip side of the cover... While it was a cool bit of history and error, I couldn't stand the gap that it created so I had to heat it and fix the gap.

 

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- The beautiful rosewood fret board. The 2 colors on the fret board seems unintentional as none of the other Alamo's on the interwebz has it.

 

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- Alamo trademark? Fetus pick guard. Seems like it has always been cream since the other side of the pick guard was the same color. The selector switch has some cheap Gibson replacement knob. It re-threaded it's self when I screwed it on there haha.

 

 

 

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-The back side. Note how the color of the guitar changes depending on the intensity of the light. There's a white primer under the paint and that may be why.

 

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- The bolt pattern is very similar to the Harmony neck. In fact, I may be doing a Bobkat Restoration soon so we'll see then.

 

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-The head stock. Nothing extraordinary. But note the Inch long space of nothing-ness at the top of the head. Pretty derpy looking if you ask me.

 

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And well, that's it folks! Hope you guys enjoyed reading / looking through it as much as I did writing about this American made guitar.

 

-Ryoskate.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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Terrific thread. Very politely would suggest that you think about the sound - I listened to the YT vid and you're right, it has that nice acoustic-y thing going on, and seems close to microphonic with the ability to pick up string attack (your playing is lovely, btw, don't sandbag your playing it's tacky).

 

But there's a lot you could do with those pickups! You could play with caps and pots to change the profile; you could work with a good boost with an adjustable bias to tweak it; you could run it through really pedlolz to get interesting noises. I would also love to hear it through tubes; I'm guessing that was the THR-10 in the vid?

 

For an old beginner's guitar, the neck looks to be in good shape, too - "don't make 'em like they used to" syndrome on my part, I guess.

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Terrific thread. Very politely would suggest that you think about the sound - I listened to the YT vid and you're right, it has that nice acoustic-y thing going on, and seems close to microphonic with the ability to pick up string attack (your playing is lovely, btw, don't sandbag your playing it's tacky).

 

But there's a lot you could do with those pickups! You could play with caps and pots to change the profile; you could work with a good boost with an adjustable bias to tweak it; you could run it through really pedlolz to get interesting noises. I would also love to hear it through tubes; I'm guessing that was the THR-10 in the vid?

 

For an old beginner's guitar, the neck looks to be in good shape, too - "don't make 'em like they used to" syndrome on my part, I guess.

 

Thanks,

The "string attack" may have been the camera microphone actually picking up the guitar's acoustics... It's hard to tell because the guitar is already loud enough as is without an amp!

 

For the caps / pots, I would have to leave it as is... There isn't a thing that has been altered on the guitar in the last 50 years and it'll be a shame to change anything... But I may do some tweaking with the Bobkat (If I am able to scavenge parts... kinda tight on money atm). And yes, the amp is THR-10... There is an period correct alamo amp for sale but I'm all outta funds Haha... And DIstortion sounds decent with a bit of fiddling around, It's certainly different but I think the Modern solid bodies does a better job at that..

 

 

 

 

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We love stuff like this here Ryoskate! I've an old Alamo as well but just the body and the neck. Got it for $2 a few years ago. The vener is peeling off the body. All i have left of the hardware is the tailpiece and the wiring harness.

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Cool! Any frankenstein plans with it? :) I'd have to guess you're in san antonio, but there is a antique mall in Houston with 3-4 alamo tube and solid amps in 300-400 price range and a clean single pickup 65 fiesta for 500... Expensive, but in case you were looking for one.

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  • 5 years later...
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Hey - your Alamo is cool!  I have no clue if you still come here - I don’t hang out here and stumbled on this thread via Google.  If you can access my email, feel free to ping me.  Or if you head to The Gear Page messageboard, go to The Vintage Forum, and search on Alamo, you will see some threads with pictures of mine.   Look for WordMan.  Be well.  

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