Mosrite

Semie Moseley (1935–1992) arrived at the Rickenbacker factory in Los Angeles around 1952 as a young apprentice from Bakersfield. There he learned under two figures whose influence would define everything he later built: Roger Rossmeisl, the German luthier who brought the "German carve" — the chamfered body edge visible on both Rickenbacker and Mosrite guitars — into American electric guitar production; and Paul Barth, Rickenbacker's co-founder, who employed Moseley during his time there. Moseley also apprenticed separately with Paul Bigsby in Downey. When Rickenbacker management discovered he was building his own guitars on the side, they fired him.

In 1956, Moseley and his brother Andy founded Mosrite of California — the name a combination of Moseley and Boatright, after Reverend Ray Boatright, a local minister who provided the initial financing. The early years were hand-to-mouth custom work, built in garages and tin sheds wherever equipment could fit. The turning point came in 1963 when Nokie Edwards of The Ventures encountered a Mosrite and brought the band to Semie. The resulting Ventures model deal transformed the company: at peak production in 1968, Mosrite employed 107 people and was producing around 1,000 instruments per month. Sears offered over a million dollars to buy them out. Moseley turned it down.

The collapse was abrupt. A distribution deal with the Thomas Organ Company went badly; Mosrite filed for bankruptcy in late 1968; by February 1969 they arrived at the factory to find the doors padlocked, having sold only 280 guitars that year. Moseley eventually recovered the Mosrite name, restarted in Bakersfield in 1972, and moved the operation repeatedly over the following two decades — Oklahoma City, Jonas Ridge (North Carolina), Booneville (Arkansas) — before dying of bone cancer in August 1992, six weeks after the final move.

Johnny Ramone's weapon of choice throughout the Ramones' career was a 1965 Ventures II — the only budget, slab-body Mosrite Semie ever made, built from basswood without binding or German carve, and a model Moseley himself wasn't satisfied with. That a punk icon chose the one Mosrite Semie considered a compromise is its own footnote. The Ventures connection also explains Mosrite's enduring Japanese popularity, which outlasted the brand's commercial peak in the US by decades.