Author Archive
Thanks to my never ending daily Ebay keyword search, another Vitar has popped up in Alabama. This one had me racing to find mine because it’s IDENTICAL to mine… except for the serial number and the Xinde brand name rather than the earlier Exinde). Very cool. Unfortunately missing the battery box and cable, so without [&hellip[ READ MORE ]
Somehow I never posted anything about Mietek’s first Vitar… so here it is. V5-P-22 – A black on black 5-string with pearl Schaller tuners. I know he also modified his so that there is a second cable to run to an 18V power box and he replaced the original U92B/U jack with a 1/4″ so [&hellip[ READ MORE ]
(AKA when I actually follow up with emails I find interesting things) Another new Vitar (V5-P-11)… this one has been living in upper New York state since at least the 80s and was played extensively by Douglas Christy (AKA Fiddling Chris Douglas) of the Chris Douglas Band. This one is a black 5-string with aluminium [&hellip[ READ MORE ]
I should also post an email I received… an embarassingly long time ago… but you know how it is… anyway, 2 years later, Glen! This is very interesting! I was the first employee of Exinde. I was hired specifically to learn how to build the Vi-Tar. We were essentially a three man shop. Me, David [&hellip[ READ MORE ]
I recently had a call from Mr. W. Nelson Louderback in Colorado who has a Vitar he’s had since about 1997. It was left for repair at his violin shop and to this day remains unrepairable… the electronics seem to be shot and as you may imagine, schematics are a little difficult to find. This [&hellip[ READ MORE ]
Wow Vitars must be more popular than I (and this guy) thought… he’s put together a “book” on Vitar information. It’s apparently 60 pages long and is a copy/paste of the Wikipedia entry I wrote which is approximately 4 paragraphs long. He’s either using an incredibly large typeface or he just pasted in the entire [&hellip[ READ MORE ]
Mietek Glinkowski has discovered (and purchased) yet another Vi-Tar at Frederick Oster Violins in Philadelphia… this one is a white 5 string with chrome hardware, Schaller tuners and no binding. Very cool[ READ MORE ]
Hey check out this fun toy that Santa Ebay brought me today – An original Vi-Tar demo record. The narrator is great… some of that will definitely be making it into the next session my band records… but there’s some music on there as well. They were obviously proud of it’s ability to play classical [&hellip[ READ MORE ]
Another trip back in time to the seventies with this, the Vitar Brochure. A fancypants 4-page color foldout cardboard brochure extolling the fantastic state-of-the-art design of the Vitar. I think the most interesting feature are the 3 different Vitars pictured – on the cover, a very sexy White/Gold 5-string with gold purfling (and an awkwardly [&hellip[ READ MORE ]
Here’s a page from the Exinde files called simply “Vi-Tar Description”. I’m not sure where or when this would have been used… but here it is. There’s no new information hidden in there, except the claim that “The Vi-Tar will NOT feedback at any volume level”……. well that sounds like a challenge[ READ MORE ]