In 1964, my parents bought me an acoustic guitar on which I learned how to play. It was all they could afford and I was grateful to have something on which to learn, but with the advent of The Beatles, acoustic guitars were not cool. Luckily, my best friend had an electric guitar and a drum set and that summer we formed a band with a couple of other guys. I alternated between electric guitar, bass, and drums, and we played at parties every Saturday night. "Wild Thing", "Louie Louie", "Gloria", "Little Black Egg", and any other song with A, E, and D chords were on our set lists.
My best friend had an electric guitar, an amplifier, and his dad had a drum set that we could use, and together with other friends we formed a band and played at parties every Saturday night. We all rotated on instruments, but I mostly played drums, some bass, and the occasional song on my friend's guitar. We were the kings of all songs with the chords A, D, and E, like Louie Louie, Gloria, Wild Thing, and Little Black Egg.
In 1965, we moved to a town with a population of less than 4,000 in northern Indiana. Needless to say, there was no music store but we did have an appliance store that stocked a handful of guitars and other music gear. I worked a few part time jobs and saved my money and in the fall of 1966 I finally saved enough money to buy an electric guitar. For several months, the store had a Decca DMI 501 hollow body electric that had sat in the window for a year with no takers. I would walk by that window every chance I got to see if it was still there, hoping it would still be there once I saved up enough money to buy it. It was finally fine, setting me back a whopping $69.95 (approximately $645 in today's money). I didn't have an amplifier for it, but since it was a hollow body electric, I could still play it.
The guitar was manufactured in 1966 by Teisco, a Japanese manufacturer that operated under its own name from 1948 to 1967 until it was acquired by Kawai Gakki Seisakusho (better known today simply as "Kawai"). So what do Teisco and Kawai have to do with a "Decca" branded guitar? Decca Records was a British record label established in 1929 that created an American counterpart in late 1934. Decca was the record label that passed on signing the Beatles to a record deal in 1962 because the company believed that "...guitar groups were on their way out." and The Beatles had "...no future in show business." Myopically, Decca also turned down the Yardbirds, the Kinks, the Who, and Manfred Mann, but then later redeemed itself by signing The Rolling Stones, The Moody Blues, Rod Stewart, and others to record contracts.
Decca had physical store locations that sold records and other merchandise such as phonographs, guitars, amps, drums, bongos, organs, and a full line of musical accessories. In the 1960s and '70s, American Decca sourced cheap guitars from small Japanese factories such as Teisco. These guitars, acoustic and electric, bore the Decca brand name and almost all retailed for under $100. The model names started with DMI followed by a sequence of numbers. There were three different Decca hollow body electric guitars like the one I bought - the DMI 500 (one pickup), the DMI 501 (two pickups), and the DMI 502 (three pickups).
In 1966, the Decca DMI 502 was the most expensive 6-string guitar and sold for $99.95. The version I bought with two pickups was the mid-priced model, and at the time, I didn't know the difference between the sound of a bridge pickup versus a neck pickup. All I cared about was that it was an electric guitar, I could play it without an amplifier, and it resembled George Harrison's Gretsch. The Decca is reminiscent of the Harmony Rocket No. H54, a U.S, made guitar with two pickups and a tremolo that was almost twice the price. The switching was standard, with a toggle switch similar to a Gibson Les Paul that determined which pickup was active - the forward position activated just the neck pick up, the middle position activated both pickups, and the rear position activated just the bridge pickup. There were two volume knobs, one for each pickup, and one tone knob that controlled the tone for both pickups.
The magic in this particular guitar was in its construction with super-thin wood This made the guitar resonate like none other, and with the super-hot pickups it was quite the feedback machine. On the downside, with its high action, small frets, and barely being able to stay in tune, this guitar required a lot of attention in order to make it playable. But with the appropriate nurturing, watch the YouTube video below to hear what these guitars could sound like....