Circa 1968 Norma EG 403-2
I suppose I should say at the outset that this Norma EG 403-2 is not an example of the finest in Japanese lutherie. Still, to me, it has a certain offbeat charm that is hard to explain. Perhaps, because I grew up in the late 1960s watching Japanese TV shows like Astro Boy, Kimba, Speed Racer and Ultraman, the EG 403-2 reminds me of something Spritle and Chim-Chim or The Science Patrol would play. We do know a little of Norma’s general history but not enough to say much about any specific model. Norma was a brand that was started by Norman Sackheim in 1965. Sackheim ran a wholesale music firm called Strum & Drum in Chicago and began importing guitars from Japan, which he named after the feminine version of his first name. At first, all of the Norma guitars were made by a Japanese company called Tombo and they were based on the wild Italian guitars made companies like EKO, Goya and Avanti. (Tombo is still in business but they now specialize in harmonicas.) As the guitar market grew, Sackheim added more models to the line, most of which were made a variety of Japanese builders.
It’s difficult to say which Japanese company actually built this guitar. The instruments from Tombo tended to be quite fancy, with three or four pickups, lots of knobs and switches and flamboyant colors, so it’s not likely they built this rather plain guitar. To me, it seems to have a bit of Teisco in its DNA, but who knows for sure? Like most Japanese guitars from this period, I suspect that even though it has a truss rod cover, this guitar doesn’t have an adjustable truss rod. From the photos, the neck looks like it’s quite stout, which was how the builders kept the necks from bowing too much under the string tension. Still, these guitars can sometimes really surprise you with how good they sound. The pickups tended to be fairly crudely made, but they can have one or two great sounds that you just can’t get with any other guitar. This example looks to be in fine shape and it comes with the original chipboard case. It’s currently listed on eBay and as of this writing the bidding is up $67.66, although I suspect it will go for around $250 to $300.
Click here for the original listing.
UPDATE: This guitar sold for $240 on March 27, 2014.
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Scroll to the bottom of the page for a surprising coda to the Strum & Drum story.
Strum & Drum was the company that wound up with National Guitar trademark after they went of business in the early 1960s. For a Strum & Drum imported a line of solid body electrics from Japan bearing the National name, as you can see from this page from the 1972 catalog. The EG 405-2 on the left looks like it might be a slightly cosmetically different version of the EG 403-2. Sadly, this catalog was printed the same year Norman Sackheim died in a plane crash in Moscow while on a layover on his way to Japan.
