The Acoustic Black Widow

Welcome to the Acoustic Black Widow pages, a site devoted to a really great guitar that's definitely a sleeper in the vintage market. These guitars were made by the Acoustic Corporation, a company better known for their amplifiers, around 1972-73. It's defining feature is a red leather pad on the back that features a stitched hourglass pattern, similar to that found on Black Widow spiders. Very little info is available on them, but it's been noted that while most of them were made in Japan, there were approximately 200 that were made by Mosrite at the end of the Black Widow's production. These guitars are easy to identify due to the Mosrite parts used in their construction.


I bought my Black Widow in 2002 and was amazed by the lack of info available. The store I bought it from had apparently had it a long time and all I could get out of the grumbling store employee was "they were trying to be Rickenbacker". The only thing that mattered to me was that it felt really good in my hands. Before purchasing, I did a little research in books (mainly Tom Wheeler's "American Guitars") and on the internet. Finding out that some models were made by Mosrite, I made mental notes on what to look for the next time I stopped to look at it. When I was in town again I took a closer look at it and found that this was one of the Mosrite-made versions so I whipped out the plastic and took it home for $350. I've enjoyed this guitar so much that I decided to put my research together on a page for other owners and prospective buyers. The info here has been gathered from books, Usenet, the WWW, and Ebay auctions. Please note that the Mosrite model shown here has replacement knobs and an extra jack that was added by a previous owner. It's now wired in stereo.


I wish I could tell you that the Japanese-made version is a fine guitar in it's own right, but I have yet to actually see one in the flesh, let alone try it out. They do show up fairly regularly on Ebay, though. I encourage owners of Acoustic Black Widows (both versions) to send pics and info about your guitar. I'll add these to a database of serial #s.