Jolana Rubin is one of the numerous semihollow Jolana guitars introduced during the second half of the sixties and the seventies. The first semihollow guitar in this line was Jolana Tornado, first introduced in 1963. Rubin guitar and bass were produced since the end of 1972 at Hradec Kralove and Horovice. Rubin was introduced together with Kolor model and they all (both guitars and basses) had the same semihollow body, which reduced the production costs. The difference between guitar and bass is in the neck scale and hardware, and the only difference between Rubin and Kolor models are headstock shapes. Kolor had all tuners on a side, and Rubin had a symmetrical 3+3 (guitar) or 2+2 (bass) arrangement.

The owner of the guitar (Jarmo Laine) says "Jolana Rubin is not actually very cheesy because it is quite nice player with low action and interesting sound (well,the circuit is so weird I have not discovered it´s logic yet). Surprisingly well made."

It seems that Jolana company started to change various small details in the design, each time giving the instrument a new name. In communist reality that seems to be reasonable, because the company could to say that in "this year we introduced a couple of new models", while not doing almost anything: you didn't have to fight for the market, you only had to report that you were working. Rubin was produced during the seventies.
Other (earlier) similar semihollow Jolana guitars were: Jolana Tornado, Jolana Special, Jolana Alexandra, and probably several others.

Here comes a photo of Jolana Rubin neck on Jolana Tornado body.


for more indormation on Czech guitar production, read this or even this.