Mosrite

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Mosrite was an American guitar manufacturing company, based in Bakersfield, California, from the late 1950s to the mid 1990s Founded by Semie Moseley, Mosrite guitars were played by many rock and roll and country artists such as Kurt Cobain, Joe Maphis, Larry Collins, Buck Trent, The Ventures, the MC5, and The Ramones. A friend of Moseley, a singing preacher named Rev.Ray Boatright, was deeply impressed with Moseley's guitar designs, and put up front money for Moseley to found his guitar company. In gratitude, Moseley named the company by combining his and Boatright's last names.

Mosrite guitars were known for innovative design, beautiful engineering, very thin, low-fretted and narrow necks, and extremely hot (high output) pickups. Moseley's design for the Ventures, known as the "Ventures Model" (later known as the "Mark I") was generally considered to be the flagship of the line, but all of his guitars bore his unmistakeable touch. Mosrite also produced an unusual double-necked guitar, which was the type favored by Collins and Maphis; this design was also used by Nick Nastos, lead guitar player for Bill Haley & His Comets, during 1968.

Semie Mosley began building guitars in Oildale, CA in 1959. He moved his shop to Panama Lane in 1962 where he designed and produced the first Ventures Model guitars.

Though a genius at guitar design and construction, Moseley lacked many basic skills neccesary to a good businessman, and the company fell on hard times repeatedly in the late 1960's and 1970's, but continued to produce Mosrite guitars until 1993 in North Carolina and Arkansas. Most of them were exported to Japan, where their popularity remained very strong. The quality of the instruments always remained very respectable. Semie Moseley died in 1992. His wife Loretta continued to produce Mosrites a year or so after his death. There have been a few attempts at reviving the line, but with little success. Kurt Cobain's Mosrite Gospel Guitar (one of only two 'Mark IV gospels') was recently featured in an online auction by Heritage Auction Galleries [1]in Dallas, TX, fetching $131,450.00