Wait a dagblasted second! How come I never heard of Dave Bunker or stumbled across his radical 1950s “Duo-Lectar” in all my musical readings until just now?
On this clip from TV’s Ozark Jubilee we learn that this modernistic musical machine took eight years to put together (with his father’s assistance) — check out the beautiful steel guitar-like chording he emulates with his right hand:
Dave Bunker playing his “Duo-Lectar”
Ozark Jubilee
c. 1960
What synchronicity — just one month ago, Christopher Scapelliti wrote an appreciation of the Duo-Lectar Double-Neck “Touch Guitar” for Guitar World:
In 1958, Bunker patented the guitar as the Duo-Lectar and subsequently showed it at NAMM when the show was still held in Chicago’s Palmer House hotel. He recalls sharing space at the Standel amps booth with a young Barbara Mandrell and entertaining guitar greats like Chet Atkins, Mel Bay and Joe Maphis with his Duo-Lectar.
Bunker says Leo Fender approached him with an offer to buy the guitar and Bunker’s related innovations. Leo offered $20,000 and a three percent royalty—“which at the time was like a million dollars,” Bunker notes. But he turned down Fender and continued refining the guitar on his own.
As Dave Bunker himself notes about his very first instrument on the Bunker Guitars website:
This is the very first Double Neck touch type musical instrument ever patented. Notice the date in the script below the photo (1956). This first Touch Guitar which I patented as the Duo-Lectar™ was made by my Father Joe Bunker and I in 1955. We didn’t have money to buy fret wire so we made the frets out of an old chain saw stinger (blade).
(image courtesy of Guitar World)
Guitar archaeologist, Deke Dickerson (as you would expect) once acquired a Bunker touch guitar secondhand (made in 1967 for Johnny Paycheck) and wrote about his experience in The Strat In The Attic: Thrilling Stories of Guitar Archaeology —
This guitar was the weirdest – and coolest – one that I had ever seen. It was a headless guitar, like an early version of a Steinberger, with the tuning keys on the tail. A decorative plexiglass and naugahyde faux headstock read “Bunker.” The scale length was an odd twenty-six and three-quarter inches, like a standard guitar with one extra fret’s worth of neck added. The body was covered in padded, plush gold naugahyde vinyl and looked vaguely like a fancy toilet seat. There were six individual pickups where each pickup should be, leading to a switch array of staggering proportions.
Most interestingly, the vibrato worked by threading a rod in a channel underneath the pickups to activate a spring-loaded neck-body joint. In essence, the guitar “cocked” like a rifle, loosening the strings for a vibrato effect! Everything about this guitar represented Dave Bunker’s attempt to totally redefine the electric guitar. I dug the hell out of it.
Note: Deke’s gold naugahyde ‘Johnny Paycheck’ Bunker guitar, which looks considerably different than the one pictured above, is photographed in close detail for Strat In The Attic.
Bunker’s designs have evolved notably since the 1950s – and not all of his instruments are “touch guitars,” either. And with regard to the whole “two-handed double tapping” issue, Bunker has a few things to say:
Lots of controversy exist over who did what and when on the Touch/Tap method of play, well here it is and this is right. Actually, Merle Travis was one of the first artists to play using two hands on the fingerboard. The first artist to really bring it out and do something with was Jimmie Webster, who wrote the first touch system method book for a single neck type electric guitar played with two hand tapping.
One Response
I have a Bunker Duo Lectar from 1962, one of the 50 that Dave Bunker built. It is in very good condition. I am thinking about selling it and wondering where I would check to find out what it is worth. So far, no one can give me a ballpark figure, once they finish scratching their heads in puzzlement. Can anyone point me in the right direction?