David Hilowitz Music vs. The Dutch Vinyl Oddity: A Sixties Guitar Gets a Rave Resurrection

David Hilowitz kicks off his adventure in classic covert-ops style, tracking down a mysterious sixties guitar spotted on Craigslist. The rendezvous? Not some dingy pawn shop, but right next to Carnegie Hall—because why not add a touch of espionage to your gear hunt? The seller, keeping things strictly off-camera, hands over a case that’s more likely to contain secrets than strings.

What’s inside is a brand the likes of which even seasoned gear-heads haven’t seen. Cheap, weird, and a bit broken—Hilowitz is all in. There’s a certain thrill in picking up a piece of gear with a past, especially when it’s got more quirks than a modular synth convention. If you’re the sort who loves a fixer-upper with a story, this is your kind of chase.

Once back in the lab, David gives the guitar a proper once-over. The body? Wrapped in diner-seat vinyl—forget sunburst, this is pure retro upholstery chic. All the hardware looks original, but the neck’s been swapped for a Squier Stratocaster number. Surprisingly, it feels great, but the electrics are another story: dodgy volume knob, staticky output, and only the neck pickup working. There’s even a mystery toggle switch that does absolutely nothing except refuse to stay put.

Peeling back the pickguard reveals even more oddities. No grounding wire, a hollow body with a secret chamber, and pickups mounted on top of the guard like an afterthought. The wiring is dead simple, but the toggle switch isn’t even connected—someone’s idea of a fix was just to leave it dangling. If you like your guitars with a side of chaos, this one’s a feast.

A bit of digging uncovers the guitar’s roots: Egmond, a Dutch company started by a retired station master in 1932. By the time rock and roll hit Europe, Egmond was churning out cheap student guitars by the truckload—so basic they made entry-level Squires look fancy. But they were everywhere, and even legends like George Harrison and Brian May cut their teeth on them. The Typhoon model, with its vinyl-wrapped body and hollow plywood construction, was Egmond’s mid-sixties answer to the American giants. It’s a budget street weapon from a time when rules were still being written, and it’s got the scars to prove it.

Back at the bench, David dives into repairs. The volume knob gets a dose of contact cleaner—miraculously, it actually works, killing the hum for once. Cleaning up the body is a challenge; guitar polish isn’t meant for vinyl, but a bit of elbow grease and compressed air do the trick. The real surprise? No grounding wire to the bridge, so David adds one, giving the guitar a fighting chance against buzz.

The neck pickup is a gem, but the bridge pickup is dead as disco. Rather than hack up the pickguard, David rigs a Squier Mustang humbucker straight to the guard—no holes, just screws and stubbornness. It’s a hack worthy of any DIY bunker, and somehow, it all fits. If you want to see a guitar held together by hope and hardware-store ingenuity, this is the bit to watch.