This “band,” made up of the Wiggins sisters
from New Hampshire, recorded an album back
in the summer of ’69. That record, Philosophy
of the World would have (should have?) stayed
totally under the radar if not for the fact that
Frank Zappa once declared in a Playboy interview,
“The Shaggs are better
than the Beatles.” Hmmm.
One thing is for sure: The
incredibly strange, atonal,
arrhythmic tunes on Philosophy
are completely devoid of
cliché. If your interest is
piqued (and how could it not
be?), have fun researching this
bizarre group that appears on the
favorite albums lists of guitarists
as diverse as Kurt Cobain and
Ronnie Montrose.
Okay, on to the guitar. At
first glance, it’s a cheapie,
made-in-Japan, ’60’s solidbody,
probably produced
by Kawai, Teisco, or
maybe Tele-Star. It has
two single-coil pickups,
a 3-way selector switch
(conveniently located in
the strum path on the
pickguard), two volume and
two tone knobs, and a surfacemount
whammy. Even though it didn’t catch
on—which is probably why there is so little information
available about this guitar company—
this model was built to be more than an entrylevel
student guitar. The headstock has a beautiful
mother of pearl inlay logo. The pickguard
and back plate are made from high-gloss
chrome plated steel, as are the pickup rings,
bridge plate, tuners, Strat-style output jack,
and the ingenious towel-rack string guide on
the headstock. The AV-T2 is finished in a righteous
tobaccoburst on a figured flame maple
top. The bridge sports six individual rollers
and the neck plate has five set screws. Not
exactly a kid’s guitar!
Here’s what you don’t see at first glance:
This guitar actually plays quite nicely. It has a
skinny, multi-laminated “propellerwood” neck
with jumbo frets, super-low action, and a
tremolo that’s very user-friendly and smooth.
Plugged into the clean channel of my old Boogie,
the Avalon gives good surf, partly due to
the smoothness of the trem system, but also
thanks to the tone of the single-coils, which—
although not particularly unique—are quite
musical, falling somewhere between a Tele and
a Jaguar. With distortion, you can get a tone
reminiscent of Jimmy Page’s Silvertone work
with Led Zeppelin.
With all of the lore surrounding the
Shaggs on the 40th anniversary of the release
of their first album, this weird guitar isn’t
easy to find—and isn’t cheap—but well worth
the hunt, although any of us would be hardpressed
to duplicate the magic of the legendary
Dot Wiggins.