Airline Guitars
IN the 50s and 60 the good folks at Montgomery Ward used the brandname Airlineto market a line of guitars. Some were produced by Kay and some by Valco who is responsible for the National and Supro guitars. These guitars were best know for their unusual body shapes.
Valcowas founded in the 1940s, by Victor Smith, Al Frost, and Louis Dopyera. The Airline was one of the makes which pioneered the fibreglass or res-o-glass construction. a. In 1967 Valco merged with Kay guitars. Shortly thereafter the joint venture went belly up.
One of the Valco flops was their line of fibreglass acousitic guitars. As you might guess the pure acoustic properties of these guitars were nil.
Today they are played by people like David Bowie, The Cure, Calexico and White Stripes. Original Res-O-Glass models now sell for $2,000-$3,000.
These guitars are notoriously hard to find now. Eastwood Guitars makes a very plausible knock-off which probably plays much nicer than the original.
Vintage Guitar Serial Numbers - Valco / Supro
| Year | Serial Number |
| 1940-1942 | Serial numbers began or ended with the letter G. |
| 1943-1946 | No instrument produced - wartime. |
| 1947 | V100-V7500 |
| 1948 | V7500-V15000 |
| 1949 | V15000-V25000 |
| 1950 | V25000-V35000 |
| 1951 | V35000-V38000, X100-X7000 |
| 1952 | X7000-X17000 |
| 1953 | X17000-X30000 |
| 1954 | X30000-X43000 |
| 1955 | X43000-X57000 |
| 1956 | X57000-X71000 |
| 1957 | X71000-X85000 |
| 1958 | X85000-X99000, T100-T5000 |
| 1959 | T5000-T25000 |
| 1960 | T25000-T50000 |
| 1961 | T50000-T75000 |
| 1962 | T75000-T90000, G100-G5000 |
| 1963 | T90000-T99000, G5000-G15000 |
| 1964 | G15000-G40000 |
| 1965-1968 | Serial numbers had a 1 prefix. Early to mid-1968, serial numbers had a 2 prefix. |
