Guitar players couldn't always afford a Gibson or Fender guitar and they sought cheaper alternatives. Large manufacturers saw an opportunity to target that market and developed products to provide lower priced guitars. Very often they were sold through mail-order catalogues or department stores. In the search of reducing the cost of building guitars various techniques were experimented One was the use of fibreglass to mass produce guitars and reduce the cost.
Sometimes referred to as the "J.B. Hutto" model, due to the use of this type of guitar by bluesman and slide guitar artist J.B. Hutto, this Airline guitar ranks as the most sought-after Res-o-glass Airline thanks largely to its modern use by Jack White of the White Stripes. This model is often referred to as the Jetsons model (reference to the futuristic animation sitcom The Jetsons). Airline guitars were manufactured by Valco from 1958 to 1968, and many closely resemble other Valco-made guitars from brands including National and Supro. Back in the day, many products were marketed under different brand names in three levels: “Good” (Airline), “Better” (Supro) and“Best” (National). Airline sold through the Montgomery Ward mail order and department store retailer.
Guitars made of Res-o-glass - a type of fibreglass - like this model are the most collectable Airline guitars. The original Res-O-Glas fibreglass guitars were produced by the Valco Guitar Company primarily between 1962 and 1967. Valco manufactured these guitars under various names including their own product lines Supro, National, Atlas and Valco as well as several house brand names including Airline (Montgomery Ward) and English Electronic's Tonemaster.
The red plastic guitar body is made of two clamshell pieces (top and bottom of the body) called “res-o-glass”, a type of fibreglass. They were aligned and held together with a slotted rubber grommet strip, then long machine screws through the back and into the front. A narrow piece of maple runs down the middle of the body to anchor the neck, pickups and tailpiece. The Valco Airlines didn’t have a truss rod; instead, the neck was kept sturdy with reinforced steel and had a 3 screw pivot system to tilt the neck angle back and forth to adjust the action. These were covered by chrome plastic covers on the back of the body. Quirkier still, the guitar only had 20 frets.
As for the controls each pickup has a dedicated volume and tone knob, but a master volume control sits next to the input jack. The volume and tone controls are above each pickup, next to the selector switch labeled “Tone Switch”. While the pickups were made to look like large hum-buckers, they are actually single coils with a unique tone that became popular with the blues players. That is what modern players are seeking out these old guitars, like Jack White, for the growly single coil tone.
