This guitar was called the AELITA 1 made at the Rostov-on-don factory in Russia, it was an accordion factory which is why the scratchplate and buttons look like they came off an accordian ! The Aelita guitar was named after Alexi Tolstoi’s famous science fiction heroine. She was the Queen of Mars in his novel which was made into a 1928 silent film. The Aelita 1 was manufactured from around 1978-9 and was still in production up to 1985. You may notice on this guitars headstock that its got the wording Aeluma ? ..Why ? Well, the Aeluma was made at its sister factory in the Belorussian Borisov factory of musical instruments. Some guitars did not even have a name on the headstock, they had a few different production methods and produced other models too, but the Rostov on Don was considered the better model. Unfortunately the quality though is very poor when compared to USA guitars –  especially the fingerboard which needs a lot of work  just to get it playable. The electrics though are a revelation and the tone variety is remarkable.

This guitar was made around 1979 and although the neck and frets are very poor the actual design i love, the fingerboard is a little different than some other production runs of this guitar

The switching and tone controls are very good and easy to use once you sit with it for five minutes. I reckon that this guitar would have been great in a Glam Rock band !

This guitar came to me for a service and the tone pot was missing a wire.  I decided to take these pics as its quite an unusual Guitar and pretty rare these days

Watch this space for more blog entries

Steve