Welcome
Broadway Introduction
First of all, apologies if you reached this site looking for information on Gibson/Epiphone Broadway guitars. You won't find anything here. This is a different Broadway brand from the early 60s.
In 2002 my great friend Pete Haycock (ex Climax Blues Band, ELO II, Thelma and Louise etc ) e-mailed me from Frankfurt .
“Hey, Reg! I've just been on eBay and have seen the same model guitar which was my first electric solid back in the early 60s. My dad bought it for me from a catalogue ”
Intrigued, I checked out the auction and there was the guitar. No one was bidding on it and it was £50 so I bought it. I thought it would make a nice surprise to present it to Pete when I visited him.
When it arrived I did a quick check and found out that it was a small solid mahogany guitar with a set neck and a completely flat fingerboard. The action was quite high but perfectly playable. The single coil pickups gave quite a low output but with a very mellow sound. The output jack was the original but what we would know as a mono 3.5mm mini-jack so it had to be changed to a standard jack for testing.
I remember Pete saying that the special lead supplied with the guitar was a complete headache because it was so short that it did not allow any “rock-god” gymnastics. Pete Townsend might have been a very different kind of guitarist if he had started life with a Broadway!
Renovation of the guitar was very straightforward apart from the mahogany being very hard to sand down. All it really needed was a new coat of mahogany laquer.
Pete was delighted with the guitar and since that day we have both maintained an interest in Broadways but we could find no information on the net. I bought one myself to double the size of the fan club!
Colin Mather in the Isle of Man, Guy Mackenzie in Cornwall and Steve Russell (Vintage Hofner website) are fellow Broadway enthusiasts and we have exchanged information over the years. They have encouraged me to put together what we know about the brand and to create a Broadway website. Please see “Links” page for their sites and credits to other contributors.
We hope you enjoy this little website. It will never be large because of the short production life of the guitar but if any of you have pictures of your Guyatone-made Broadway or stories related to owning one, please let me know and we can build up the history of this quirky little guitar which got so many guitarists started on the road to greater things.
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