Messenger guitars were built in Astoria, OR in 1967 and 1968 by the San Francisco-based Musicraft, Inc, and were the first to feature a magnesium-aluminum alloy neck—a design that preceded those of Travis Bean and Veleno guitars by some seven years. The guitar also features two ahead-of-the-curve appointments for 1967: stereo output and a built-in fuzztone circuit. There are two outputs and the switching system allows for routing both pickups through one output jack or sending them to each jack separately to be hooked up to two separate amps. The fuzztone circuit was referred to as the “Tone Messer.” It gave a large signal boost and an incredibly ratty distortion. Indeed, the guitar would vibrate wildly when the “Tone Messer” was employed, and the hollow body would break into controlled (usually), endless feedback. The best known player of Messenger guitars was Mark Farner of Grand Funk Railroad.