Name: Rex Bogue Custom 6 String 1980 Natural
Brand: Rex Bogue
SKU: G-1444
Price: 25000.0 USD
Availability: InStock

No sales tax for customers outside California.

Rex Bogue was a lesser known personality, but nonetheless he was a pioneer and guitar building as well as an enigmatic character.

This incredible, one-of-a-kind guitar was owned by Joseph Anthony Spry of Felony, the American new wave and rock band formed in Los Angeles, California, in the early 1970s.

Joe changed out the original bridge, which included routing of the top of the body to accommodate the Kahler tremolo.

The electronics are wild, as was customary for Rex's guitars. There is an LED in the star near the treble side of the bridge pickup that lights up when the electronics are activated.

When the electronics aren't enabled, you get neck, bridge, and middle pickup positions with just volume control. When enabled, things get wild, and I'm honestly not exactly certain what is happening. What is certain is that two pairs of knobs work together, apparently as active tone controls. One set is more on the treble side, and the other more towards the low end. One knob seems to be a frequency select, and the other feels like it is cutting and boosting that frequency (or group of frequencies). The effect can get really crazy, allowing you to center on frequencies that feed back so you can sail notes forever, and kind of sounding like a "cocked wah" in some extreme settings - nasal, muted, or anywhere in between. The mini switches - those are the mystery. They don't seem to be coil taps, and they do have some effect, but I can't determine exactly what they do.

The guitar is slim, as is the neck. The slim body definitely helped keep the guitar lighter than it would otherwise be, being built out of a gorgeous, solid birdseye maple slab. It is truly a unique build. The action is about as low as you can get.

The case is a large flight case that Joe carried the guitar around in when Felony was on the road. The case will get the guitar to you safely, but it is going to come at a cost.

During the developmental stage of Felony, Jeffrey Spry (Joseph's brother) left the band briefly to be the singer with Detroit Proto-Punk/Hard rock legends, Ron Asheton (of Iggy & The Stooges) and Dennis "Machine Gun" Thompson (of The MC5) in a short lived super-group (based in Los Angeles) that was called "The New Order" (preceding the English new wave group of the same name). He quickly returned to Felony and continued working with his brother Joe and the other members of the band.

Felony went into the studio and emerged with single "The Fanatic," which became a hit on Los Angeles radio station KROQ-FM with help from program director Rick Carroll. The song peaked at No. 42 on the Billboard Hot 100 in early 1983. It became a key track in the development of the Modern Rock radio format. "The Fanatic" was included in the influential 1983 Valley Girl soundtrack, which also featured Modern English's "I Melt With You".

Felony also performed the track on American Bandstand. A video was made from "The Fanatic". "The Fanatic" video was shot in Hollywood, California, in 1983 and aired on MTV. The Fanatic video includes a cameo of Jeffrey Spry with his first wife, SAG actress, Lucrecia Sarita Russo.

The band, which now included Jeffrey on lead vocals, Joe on guitar, Danny Sands on piano/keyboards, Louis Ruiz on bass and Arty Blea on drums, recorded their first full-length album, also called The Fanatic, which was released in 1983 on Scotti Brothers Records with distribution by CBS Records. It included the single and nine other tracks that helped define the trendy-but-never-huge power-pop new wave sound of the early 1980s.

"Rex burned brightly for a little while," says Bill Hoting, "and influenced a lot of people," California luthier Larel Rexford Bogue was associated with one of the most distinctive guitars of recent decades, John McLaughlin's Double Rainbow 6/12 doubleneck.

Hoting was Bogue's best friend. "We went to school in San Gabriel and played in bands," Bill says. "We played with the Mothers of Invention. Zappa was a big influence on Rex," While enrolled at the California Institute of the Arts in Valencia, Bill explains, "Rex started messing with lasers. We did laser shows before anyone really got into it. He was way ahead of the mainstream electronically, but he wanted to build guitars. He put in op-amps with battery power supplies before anyone else. He approached John McLaughlin in about 1972 and said, "You're the greatest player I've ever heard. Let me make you a guitar."

McLaughlin proposed a doubleneck. At the time Rex was apprenticing in Ren Ferguson's Venice Beach shop. "I built that guitar," explains Ferguson. "Rex did the electronics. He would dream up fantasy stuff he made with parts from aerospace suppliers. He opened a shop, selling gadgets and pickups that would do everything but fly across the room. He had many ideas, but the business side was lost on him. He'd get excited about manufacturing something, get investors, then get bored and move on."

Santa Monica repairman/builder Larry Brown shared a shop with Ferguson and also worked on the Double Rainbow. "That thing weighed about 35 pounds and took two years to complete," he remembers. "I fretted the necks. When Rex got paid for it, he bought a lot rum; he was a connoisseur." In a 1975 GP story, McLaughlin himself called Bogue's workmanship "impeccable, flawless." Rex also did electronic work for Alphonso Johnson and Jorge Strunz, sold preamps under the Balz Deluxe and Balz Galore names, and built instruments for Frank Zappa and Miroslav Vitous. In recent years he was something of a recluse. "He had many health problems related to his diabetes," says Hoting. "They finally got the better of him. He's at peace now, in a better place. Rex passed in 1996.

Rex's instruments never come up for sale. Finding a single neck like this is extremely rare. My take is that there are a slim few in existence.

Color: Natural
Weight: 10lbs 2.0ozs
Body: Birdseye Maple
Neck: Flame Maple/Walnut/Flame Maple
Neck Profile: "D" see picture
Fretboard: Bound ebony
Inlays: Abalone stars
Frets: Re-fret
Fret count: 22
Nut: Bone
Nut width: 1 5/8"
Scale: 24 3/4"
Radius: 20"
Neck thickness at 1st fret: 0.77"
Neck thickness at 12th fret: 0.89"
Action 1st String at 12th Fret: 2/32"
Action 6th String at 12th Fret: 2/32"
Total length: 39 5/8"
Lower bout: 13 3/4"
Waist: 8 1/8"
Upper bout: 9 5/8"
Body depth/thickness outside edge: 1 1/8"
String gauge: .010-.046"
Hardware Color: Gold and brass
Bridge Pickup/Brand: Unknown
Bridge Pickup Reading: 7.47k
Pickup Original?: Yes
Neck Pickup/Brand: Unknown
Neck Pickup Reading: 7.97k
Pickup Original?: Yes
Bridge: Replaced with a Kahler Tremolo
Tuners: Original Schaller tuners
Switches: Original
Pots/Codes: 137 8021
Case: HSC + Anvil Road Case
Notes:

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