My second acoustic guitar is a Lys. I've been told two different ways to pronounce the name. One is "lee" and the other is "leece." I just call her Lisa and that's that!
The company either went out of business or was bought out in the 80's. Originally, my dad bought this guitar for himself. However, over several months, he realized that I was the one playing it, so he gave it to me.
Lys made hand-made guitars in Canada and tried to compete with the Martin Guitar Company. Unfortunately, they couldn't crack the market as expected and things with downhill quickly. My friend, Mr. Hilton Lytle, told me that he and a friend bought about 80 of these guitars from a local wholesale company back in the late 70's. They were able to buy them at an extremely discounted price. Then, they sold the guitars for less than retail but still made a profit. He can't remember seeing one like Lisa, though.
You see, Lisa is special. She not only has a spruce top, like most acoustic guitars. But she also has spruce back and sides. According to Hil, this is rare. The reason most acoustic guitars use spruce on the top is because it's such a good tone wood. Having spruce on the back and sides makes this guitar have exceptional sound quality. Plus, this is a hand-made guitar. Most guitars are manufactured with robotic machines and routers. The less time that a human hand touches it, the less expensive the guitar tends to be. Since I don't know the whole story of what happened to Lys Guitars, I assume that they couldn't compete with the already widely-accepted and well-established Martin Guitars. Coupled with the fact that they were peddling a hand-made guitar, which is typical more expensive, Lys was walking a tightrope...and, I guess somebody blinked.
Several years ago, I learned that a Canadian company named Godin may have purchased the plant that made the Lys guitar. Godin has seven companies under its corporate unbrella, e.g., Seagull, Norman, and Lapatrie. Locally, I've seen and played the Seagull guitar. In fact, over the years, I've played several Seagull guitars. While I'm playing, I can close my eyes and hardly tell the difference between Lisa and a Seagull.
I wish you could have seen Lisa when she was new. The spruce was almost white! Over the years, the wood has aged and she now has this amber-yellow shade. I installed a thinline pickup under the saddle and I've played her at several church functions. She's a keeper!
2 comments:
This is an old blog post I'm not even sure your still monitoring, but just in case, I felt I should share a tidbit of info on your Lys guitar. You see, before Robert Godin made guitars under his own name, he made guitars, by hand, with a fellow Quebec luthier, Claude Boucher (son of famous luthier Norman Boucher), under the name "Lys", "Norman", and "Kamouraska". They ran their shop from 1980 to 1983, then a fire broke out. Godin bought out Boucher and started his own company, which he branded "Godin"; he kept the "Norman" line out of respect to Norman Boucher, but he turned the "Kamouraska" line into "La Patrie"... guess what he turned the "Lys" line of guitars into? That's right, "Seagull"! No wonder you can't tell the difference! Godin left us an easter egg though, look at the headstock; he kept the shape minus the "fleur-de-lys"!
Thank you, Frederic! I knew the connection between the Lys and Seagull was very strong and you provided the information that settles the story for me. Bless you!
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