The Vox V241 Bulldog guitar was introduced to the US market in the 1966 "Vox: It's What's Happening" catalog. A reprint of this catalog is available at North Coast Music.
The Vox Bulldog was designed to capitalize on the popularity of Mosrite guitars. During the 1960s, Mosrite guitars were popularized by "The Ventures," a guitar instrumental group that hits such as "Walk Don't Run" and "Hawaii 5-0." Ironically, Thomas Organ, the US distributor of Vox, signed an exclusive distribution deal with Mosrite guitars in 1968, but Mosrite declared bankruptcy before Thomas Organ started selling their products.
The V241 Bulldog featured a carved top and a three color sunburst finish. It also had three single coil pickups, a three way pickup selector, a single volume and twin tone controls. Looking at this layout, it is not hard to recognize that the Bulldog was also influenced by the Fender Stratocaster.
The neck featured the Vox "Double T" aluminum neck reinforcement system along with an adjustable truss rod.
The 1966 Vox "It's What's Happening" catalog described the V241 Bulldog as follows: "Ebony finger-board; nickel silver frets; two-way string damper; entire body and neck hand-bound; sunburst."
The 1966 US Vox price list indicated that the retail price of the V241 Bulldog was $399.90 USD. In today's dollars, the Bulldog would retail for over $2700 USD.
The V241 Bulldog guitar was produced for Vox in Italy by EKO in Recanati Italy. A decal on the back of each guitar states: "Made by Vox in Italy."
In 1998, Vox offered US made Vox reissue guitars based on the 1960's Phantom and Teardrop designs. At this time, a prototype Bulldog reissue was also produced for Vox, but they decided to not proceed into production with this model.
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