Vintage Koontz Archtop

[Ol' Fret]

Congrats - Koontz was an independent mind among the archtop guitar makers!


ABM's almost hundred-years-old history remains amazingly hazy to this day. In Germany, nebulous stories are more often than not deliberate, and excite some folks' curiousness regularly ... So here, in a summary, my own research:

ABM was very likely founded by Johann Müller (born in 1903), called "Zwienlhans", in Schönbach, in the 1920s. Johann Müller was busy in the brass instrument production; some well-known brass instrument makers existed in and around Schönbach, and some world-renowned ones in the nearby larger town Graslitz. After the expulsion of the Germans in Schönbach in 1946, Müller was able to slowly establish a new company near Nuremberg, supplying growing plants like Höfner and Framus with brass guitar parts.

Müller and his son Horst designed their own products until the late 1970s, including some wonderful, high-quality tailpieces, of which the most elegant and unfussy as well, IMO, is the "V-tailpiece" used by Artur Lang. Since the early 1950s the company's US export has always been a pillar. When the demand for German designs dropped, the next ABM owner, Dr. Klaus Müller, decided to supply more and more the dominating US guitar manufacturers, of course, with their own designs.
Dr. Klaus Müller sudden death in 2007 compromised the future of the ABM company. It was absorbed by the JoWo Berliner Schreibfeder GmbH , a company with a very nebulous history. It's website is almost always defunct, no information, defect report. JoWo traces back to the first German manufacturer of dip pens, Heintze & Blanckertz, founded in Oranienburg near Berlin in 1842. During WWII they made also parts for the V1 flying bomb, the mother of all cruise missiles. After the war, the Red Army confiscated the plant and appointed a trustee. In 1949, it became property of the GDR, the nationally owned enterprise VEB Schreibfedern. After the downfall of the GDR, the next Treuhandgesellschaft (trust company - compare Vintage German Archtops - Page 4 (jazzguitar.be) ) dumped the rest of that VEB to JoWo - like so often nothing precise about the transition can be found out.

Bottom line: though ABM's actual website Made in Germany since 1930 - with Passion and Precision (abm-guitarpartsshop.com) tries to tell parts of its history, unfortunately, the company seems no longer to be what it once had been with Johann and Horst Müller at the helm - a creative ideas factory with outstanding own guitar hardware designs.

[Hammertone]

That's an amazing find! Super interesting to see this. Looks like Guild used some of these designs right?

Guild had their own designs, and they were made by ABM.

Is that the 1281 on the Super Patrick?

Yes. Despite discontinuing the Model 1281, ABM was perfectly happy (probably still the case) to make them on a custom-order basis. All it takes is money. A couple of members here have done so for their custom Heritage guitars. ABM was unable to get the patterned brass plates that were previously offered as an optional feature, and the execution of the design is slightly different from that on the original 1281, but they are still great tailpieces.

Left-to-right:
-"Short" version of the 1281 found on some Koontz guitars- not sure of the Model number
-regular version found on Koontz guitars, without and with added wood panel
-late version with added wood panel - note the shorter cross-bar, different metal pattern, and holes instead of open slots for strings
-last version (no metal pattern) with and without insert