This rare English Tonemaster was made circa 1957.
So, let’s examine a guitar from the mid-’50s that had a bit of a personality crisis, born out of the American Valco Company, which also suffered from fits of mania … but in the best ways. I’ve spoken about the company a lot in this column, but to summarize: Chicago-based Valco made instruments under several different brand names, including Supro, Airline, National, and Oahu. They were a quirky organization with a lot of interesting ideas and build styles. One of Valco’s lesser-known brands was English Electronics, which was sold out of a music store/studio in Lansing, Michigan.
Here's a look at the distinctive strings-through bridge pickup.
The English Electronics Tonemaster is a perfect example of this transitional era in instrument production. Half lap steel and half electric guitar, this model was meant to appeal to all sorts of players and was totally unique. There was a similar and more common model in the Supro-branded lineup, the Supro Sixty, which made its appearance in the 1955 catalog and was among the first standard Supro electrics to feature a lap-steel pickup. Both the Supro Sixty and the English Electronics Tonemaster came equipped with similar single volume and tone knobs as well as that same pickup, whose design allowed for the strings to pass through the middle. In the Supro catalog, the pickup was described this way: “The dynamic ‘locked-power’ unit design provides the sensitive extra responsive punch that Western ‘take-off’ players are always looking for—each string has its own individual adjustment to assure perfect string output balance.”
The English Tonemaster logo on the headstock is straight out of 1950s industrial design.
That lap-steel pickup in the bridge position made for a real treble-laden adventure. I love the “take-off” tone descriptor used in the catalog, because when one of these is dialed in, the guitar surely does have a sharp attack. The Supro Sixty was renamed the 1560S Ozark around 1958, but it kept the unique lap-steel unit at the bridge. The Supro Sixty/Ozark was cool and had a good five-year run. But the lesser-known, way cooler, and way rarer, cousin the Tonemaster was the king-daddy!
Half lap steel and half electric guitar, this model was meant to appeal to all sorts of players and was totally unique for its time.
I’ve never seen an English Electronics catalog and I don’t know anything about the owner, Norman English, but I do know that one reason this guitar was unique in the Valco lineup was that it sported not one, but two, pickups: that lap-steel pickup at the bridge and a proprietary Valco unit at the neck. That neck pickup, which is often confused for a humbucker, is actually an in-house designed, patented single-coil with some amazing tones to offer. With these two units, the sound of the Tonemaster was wide-ranging, going from nasally and thin at the bridge to thick and loud at the neck. The Tonemaster also included a pickup switch, but the one on mine was more like a blender without a detent for each position. I’m not sure if my switch was broken or if it worked as intended. Thankfully, Valco used a serial number plate, often found on the back of the headstock, and that number put this guitar in the 1957 range.
The bridge pickup cover is on in this shot. The neck pickup is a single-coil, despite appearances.
Stuff like this makes me ponder the era when electric guitars and lap steels were transitioning to different styles of music and playability, and there weren’t many definitive lines between country & Western, rock ’n’ roll, swing, and rockabilly. Things were blurred and woven into one another, as they are in this guitar!
This rare gem has all the looks of a cool ’50s lap steel—plus the pickup—and sounds great fretting, strumming, and with a slide.
The PRS SE Silver Sky is a familiar iteration of Mayer’s signature model, which was first introduced with John Mayer in 2018. The SE model starts with a poplar body, bolt-on maple neck, and rosewood fretboard with PRS trademark bird inlays. The 22-fret, 25.5” scale length neck features the original 635JM carve and an 8.5” fretboard radius, which will make the SE Silver Sky feel right at home. The SE Silver Sky comes in four colors: Dragon Fruit, Ever Green, Moon White, and Stone Blue.
At the heart of the instrument are the three single-coil pickups, which were meticulously designed to capture the voicing of the original Silver Sky. The 635JM “S” pickups capture the same round, full tone with musical high end that is never too harsh and add a bit of a bite. This guitar is anchored by a two-point steel tremolo, synthetic bone nut, and vintage-style tuners. Other design features include the PRS Silver Sky inverted headstock shape and the PRS double-acting truss rod (accessible from the front of the headstock for ease of use). This instrument ships with PRS Classic 10-46 strings and a PRS SE gig bag.
“This guitar is the product of planetary alignment,” said Jack Higginbotham, COO of PRS Guitars. “John has an incredible ability to sweat all the right details; PT CORT Indonesia has all the skill, enthusiasm, and courage to take on large-scale manufacturing; and our own guitar making is sophisticated enough to collaboratively design an instrument that is both complementary to original Silver Sky but also uniquely itself. All this comes at a time when guitar players are looking to us to provide musical solutions in ever larger numbers. We have had amazing experiences with the SE Silver Sky ourselves, and it feels wonderful to share those with guitar players around the world.”
For full specifications, demo videos, and more please visit www.prsguitars.com and PRS Guitars’ YouTube channel, and follow @prsguitars on Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter.
