Only the first 26 of these very rare '74 Murphy-Shaw guitars were labeled as a Murphy-Shaw production. This guitar is stamped as No. #14, 1974 - Kalamazoo, Mich. The last plaque was put in the back of guitar #26. After that the name changed from Murphy-Shaw to Sunrise. The Sunrise guitar brand was used on the remainder of the 81 guitar production run. A total of 107 Murphy-Shaw/Sunrise guitars were manufactured, most of them were custom orders for some very famous guitar players... like Billy Gibbons. The folks over at Murphy-Shaw/Sunrise built 2 of Billy's "Texas" guitars.
Patrick Murphy & Tim Shaw were the original partners. Their shop was over a music store in Kalamazoo called The Sound Factory, later becoming Pro-Co Sound. The early guitars, like this one, used Gibson components, with very "HOT" rewound pickups.
The controls are master volume, master tone, a 5-way rotary (series, fingerboard pick-up, parallel, bridge pick-up, and series out-of-phase) and two series/parallel switches. The original tuners were Gotohs. This Murphy-Shaw is made of cherry, not mahogany. By and large the body of these guitars used Michigan maple, walnut, and "ONLY 2" were manufactured using special order cherry wood.
In 1974 the Murphy-Shaw/Sunrise guitars were $550, the standard dealers price. The majority (85% produced) were built as custom orders for individual players and generally went for $700 to well over $1,000 (remember this pricing is from the mid-70's).
