Russian 7 string - Need advice and ID!

[lethes]

I bought this guitar off an old russian dude in Beijing today and it sounds amazing, i'm not a connoisseur but its the nicest sounding guitar i've ever played.

lethestan's Library | Photobucket

lethestan's Library | Photobucket

Seeing as i dont understand russian, i'm wondering if someone here can help me to identify it - when it was made etc? the russian guy said he bought it a few decades ago, thinks it was made in the 50s and that it originally had 7 strings - thats all he knew...

Also there are a few cracks on the front, some have been filled with glue, others haven't and the laquer has worn off in several areas. The neck also seems to be misaligned and you can see in one of the pictures that someone has propped it up near the sound hole, but im worried this is starting to crack the front...should i attempt to remove the prop or take it to a luthier first?

One other thing, i wonder whether its a good idea to restore it to its original seven string form? (seeing as this is sevenstring.org im guessing the answer will be a hell yes) However the extra tuning knob has been removed and holes filled in...what to do?

 

[TheFashel12]

Ehhhh .... I only see 6 strings

 

[RV350ALSCYTHE]

Looks like it is and always has been a 6 string to me.

Hard to tell whether it had a 4x3 headstock. It does appear to have some holes plugged.
Perhaps it was filled, the remaining three tuners were spread out to fill the space leaving those extra holes and visible plugs on the side of the head.


This is messed up, 7 drilled holes, but the middle two strings are wrapped around the bridge through two small holes/grooves cut through the bottom.



Possible it's a replacement bridge thrown on there like the rest of the"fixes"

Everything looks Frankened together from random parts. It may be difficult to brand/date this guitar.

 

[cwhitey2]

 

[Necris]

No idea about the guitars background, but as it sits right now it needs some serious work done to it. I'm not sure I would have the headstock redrilled to return it to it's original 7 string state unless a luthier can do it without compromising the integrity of the headstock. It looks like the new tuner was drilled right between the 2 holes that were plugged.

 

[turenkodenis]

based on labels
guitar was made ​​on "a musical instrument factory named Lunacharsky"

yet there is an inscription "economic council" and "second degree diploma"

as well as
Article number 247
cost 250 rubles (Soviet)
the city of Leningrad (now St. Petersburg)
Chapaev Street 15


about 6 or 7 strings
in the Soviet Union, most of it was a seven-string guitars. and Most of them were converted from their own

I myself learned to play guitar like this)))

check this out http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russian_guitar

also that standard and weird for now 7 string tuning...

 

[Letuchy]

actually 250 rubles was HUGE Money in USSR

 

[Chrisjd]

You bought a guitar from a russian person living in china. Think about it... China and Russia dude, I wouldn't be surprised if you get scammed badly.

 

[ofu]

^Shady bastards, these communists, aren't they. They can sell you a fake guitar, flip your Rs and teach your bears to drink vodka and to make cheap amps in a glimpse.

As the comrade above stated, this is a Lunacharsky guitar. I've seen such guitars, some of them had seven strings, which was considered typical for a russian guitar, here people even called it "russian tuning" (adding the seventh string).

On the quality of it - soviet era guitars made in Russia, and in Eastern Europe in general, are notorious for being awful, most of them at least. Here some russian guitars were considered superior, Lunacharsky being one of them. My personal opinion is that it depends on the particular instrument - most of them are drift woods for the fireplace, some of them are fine, some are great. If you like the sound, keep it and restore it.

In brief - confirmed russian sevenstring, that survived the perestroyka and some serious hillbilly modding, may deserve repair for the glory of the motherland.

 

[GoreNotCore]

This is total stereotypically russian hahaha. The only way any of us could tell if its worth it or not is to play it personally. On looks alone, it doesnt look very promising

 

[Given To Fly]

The Russian 7 String guitar is a unique type of guitar with a small but established repertoire.
Russian guitar - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

 

[Cloudy]

and that it originally had 7 strings - thats all he knew...

From the looks of it this thing definitely wasn't a 7 string at any point. I understand the bridge is for a 7 string but the fretboard/nut/headstock all disagree with that pretty quickly I dunno, weird.

 

[AlexeyKo]

Grab it and play "djent", better than any custom guitar, IMHO.

 

[Andrew Romanov]

Yep. That looks a Lunacharsky guitar. They were making sevenstrings back in the day. We call it a russian 7-string. The quality varied from horrible to... well.... "ok" instruments. Usually they had a sticker inside looking like this
http://mastergitar.com/forum/download/file.php?id=1321
The guy from that forum did a rebuild of a similar one:
Гитара фабрики им.Луначарского (Казахстан) - страница 1
You'll have to use google translate)

I'd say go for it. It will DJENT

P.S. Enough with the stereotypes, goddamit! ))

 

[UltraParanoia]

This is awkward...