Vestax D'Angelico NYL-2

[Gitterbug]

I bought a wine red Vestax NYL-2 with ebony tailpiece from Ivor Mairants in London around 2010. This one was from 2006 IIRC. It appears that Terada still made these guitars for Vestax during the years of the rights confusion. At the time Mairants had left a wonderful NYS-2 which was well beyond my budget, and a couple of greenish turquoise NYL-2's, which to my eye looked like poison. I would have preferred the metal stairstep tailpiece. Eventually, I realized that my Emperor Regent is a perfect 17" archtop for my modest needs and swapped the D'A against an ES-175 59VOS. Never regretted.

I'm not sure when the D'A brand was relaunched for real in the US, but they had a huge stand at the 2016 Musikmesse in Frankfurt. An American jazz guitar luminary, whose name I won't reveal here, was appalled at what he saw there.

[citizenk74]

[QUOTE=daskren;1194081]

From a Vestax catalog:

Attachment 82025Attachment 82026Attachment 82027 I have an NYL-2 Natural Yellow - best guitar I ever had.

[ARGewirtz]

I'm not sure when the D'A brand was relaunched for real in the US, but they had a huge stand at the 2016 Musikmesse in Frankfurt. An American jazz guitar luminary, whose name I won't reveal here, was appalled at what he saw there.

The "new" D'A guitar company was relaunched in 2011 after John Ferolito Jr. and couple of his friends acquired the D'A brand name rights from John's father, who had originally acquired the rights from GHS strings back in the 90s. Prior to this latest company launch there were multiple manufacturers who built their own versions of a D'A-style guitar under the D'A name. Some of those guitars were quite good, including my own DJArgus Excel, that was designed by the now defunct Argus guitar company in Japan, built at the old Matsumoku factory, and distributed by Vestax.

[John A.]

The "new" D'A guitar company was relaunched in 2011 after John Ferolito Jr. and couple of his friends acquired the D'A brand name rights from John's father, who had originally acquired the rights from GHS strings back in the 90s. Prior to this latest company launch there were multiple manufacturers who built their own versions of a D'A-style guitar under the D'A name. Some of those guitars were quite good, including my own DJArgus Excel, that was designed by the now defunct Argus guitar company in Japan, built at the old Matsumoku factory, and distributed by Vestax.

There were three launches of the US brand under the Ferrolitos. The first was in 2005, and lasted for ~3-years (I have an EX-DC with a 2005 serial # that I bought in 2011). At that time, GHS Still owned the trademarks and licensed them to Ferrolito Sr, who had formed a company called D'Angelico.
This company eventually bought the all the trademarks from GHS in 2009 (you can find this history in the public records of D'Angelico's suit against Vestax). They stopped production right around then, and started again ca. 2010-11, with some models re-designed (sort of) by Bill Comins.

They stopped production again shortly after (less than a year, IIRC), then re-launched production in 2013 (with PR fro this starting in late 2012). I think Ferrolito Sr owned the company through the first two launches and Ferrolito Jr took over somewhere between launches 2 and 3. Prior to Ferrolito Sr. taking over the brand, GHS licensed the brand to a few different makers. According to the lawsuit, they didn't license it to Vestax. Rather, the person they bought the trademarks from did _after_ he sold them to GHS. Ferrolito/D'Angelico's claim was that Vestax never had the right to use the name because they were granted this right from someone who didn't have it in the first place. US courts agreed with this, which is why there are no Vestax D'A's sold in the US anymore.

[carlescountry]

Just remember that Vestax ordered the D'A guitars from the Terada factory and Vestax distributed them. When Vestax went bankrupt, D'A Japan became distributed by Crews in Japanese territory. The design and qualities of D'A Vestax and D'A Crews are the same.


As far as I know, they haven't made any more D'A in Japan since a few two or three years ago (D'A were on the Crews website before and they're not anymore). Perhaps this will make D'A Vestax and Crews increase in value.