factoids

Material:
The top was either spruce or flamed maple. The maple top was solid maple (about 1/4 inch).
It's said that the guitar has a through-body maple neck, but it's hard to tell from the construction. It's very possible it is actually a set neck as there is a seam where the neck joins the body. Plus we have seen a couple necks floating around that were left over from the factory closing. So....Really not sure at this point.
If your guitar has a flamed maple back it is plrobably a maple laminate. However, if you have a flamed maple top, you do indeed have a solide peice of maple there.

Tail Piece (bridge):
Here's a problem area. The guitar originally came with a single wrap-around style tail piece (aka Les Paul Junior). It did not work well so they switched to a similar style with cut groves for the strings. This was much better, but still lacked individual string intonation.
It's pretty common to find these guitars with replacment bridges installed. Check out a fine replacement bridge here.

Frets:
Like many European guitars it has a zero fret. The strings ride on the fret rather than nut.
The idea for zero fret was actually developed by Framus. The material available for the nut in the early 50's was of poor quality so they solved the problem with the zero fret. Other builders also adopted the idea.
The frets on this guitar are very small. If you like big fat frets then this guitar is not for you.

Pickups:
The pickups are sealed humbuckers designed by Bill Lawrence. They sound GREAT!
And you can get all kinds of great tones with the 6-way rotary switch.

Inlays:
The inlays are cool and one of the distingushing features of the guitar. If you are wondering what they were smoking when they came up with those inlays. They are derived from the scroll on the headstock. Check out the photo's below.
And did you ever wonder where those inlays came from? Check out the banjo photo!

Here are two 74's with different contol covers. Most we have seen are like the one on the left. Why the large covers like the one on the right? Our theory is that this is probably a very early production prototype. There seem to be very few around with these larger covers. It could be that the guitar was originally going to have 4 volume/tone controls, but they settled on 2. This guitar is also thicker then than those with the smaller control covers and the body appears to be a single peice of wood rather then the sandwich type that is most common.
There is a guitar of simile construction on Photo Page 8.

Here's an interesting piece of information, or maybe I should say a theory of mine.
Some of you may have noticed that some Akkermans have smaller oval shaped pickup rings while others have larger square rings.
We believe the larger rings are there to hide a flaw. It appears that when they routed the pickup cavities, they routed in the wrong location....too close the the bridge. They had to fill a portion by inserting a small block and then fabricate larger rings to hide the error. You can see this in the photo on the right.
I have come across 3 Akkermans with larger rings and all have this little filler inserted in the pickup cavity. There was a certain period in 1974 where the guitars had the larger rings. They started production with the smaller rings, and then they appeared for a while with the larger rings, and then back to the smaller ones.
Guitars are made in lots so they must have made a batch and then discovered the problem at assembly.
I think it's pretty safe to say this is why some of the guitars have the larger rings.
If you have one of these guitars. Have a look at let us know if it has that little block inserted.