Hillel was seen playing this guitar in his early years, with his band Anthym, when he was around 18 years old. According to the Behind The Music VH1 2002 documentary, he received his first guitar at age 13 as a bar mitzvah present, but that was a completely different guitar (model and make unknown at this moment)
Hillel got the Musicraft Messenger guitar from Alain Johannes, who played alongside Slovak in early bands like Anthym and What Is This?
I had a Musicraft Messenger, which was kind of rare. Mark Farner [from Grand Funk Railroad] used to play one. It had an aluminum neck going all the way through the body. It was red, with a Bigsby on it, and I gave it to Hillel. That’s what he played in those early years, until he got his Strat.
Forgotten Heroes: Hillel Slovak
Specs
Musicraft Messenger is a hollow body guitar featuring a distinct, sharp Florentine cutaway and a red finish (cataloged by the manufacturer as “Rojo Red”). The guitar is structurally unique because it has a magnesium-aluminum alloy neck that extends completely through the hollow body as a continuous center block.
It is equipped with a set of DeArmond single-coil pickups, and Hillel’s guitar in particular was also fitted with a Bigsby vibrato tailpiece.
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