Leadbelly did OK with a Stella 12. Paul Brett bought a Kay 12 string from Woolworths (major Kay outlet in GB) and used it a lot; Woolworths also used it a lot for advertising. Nobody said anything about Kalamazoo guitars - Robert Johnson used one! I've heard the flat tops are really good value if you find one. In GB, I've only seen Kalamazoo cello guitars - look like a Gibson 125 - small, black, no cutaway, sound and play really good. I had two that I wish I still had. I've been warned about Kalamazoo electrics with chipboard bodies where the neck tends to detach over time, but we didn't get them in GB.

All these guys with plywood Stellas should have tried the dreadful ply creations we had in 60s GB - the Egmond, a Dutch creation better suited to processing tomatoes than playing music - the Tatra, an eastern bloc secret weapon to slice the fingertips of westerners - the Antoria, a Japanese instrument of torture (actually, that's not fair because Antoria actually learned to make guitars, to the point where their Strats were preferable to the CBS ones in the early 70s).