The Guitar Gallery Forums - The Guitar Legacy of Matsumoku

From a standpoint of production what Matsumoku "lines" or brands are in the majority of examples or models one can find today? Which are the numerous names and which are more scarce?

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....right. They always crack in the end.

The top end Skylarks are very rare and the Aria top line PE, the Vantage 800 and 900 series are good to get... the list can be very long...... It`s really up to what you like....

I still like the 60 and 70`s Aria stuff.... I find them interesting....

Good luck hunting...

P.

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MAA Member since June 29th 2009, taking one baby step at a time..... and failing miserably!

By and large, Vantage don't seem to pop up as much as Aria Pro II, and Westone seems to fit in the middle there someplace. There's brands like Univox and Epiphone which I certainly haven't seen many of for sale and as Frenchy says, the Skylarks would probably be the most rare brand. Electra are region specific - the CONUS - but they are quite numerous...

For models rarity, I guess you'd have to say the likes of the APII PE 1000 Gerry Cott and ST1512, Westone Pantera X350MA (48 built), Vantage VA912, Skylark 2588 and the Electra X910, but that's just my limited knowledge showing; there's people in here with infinitely more knowledge than I!!

The more common would be the Westone Spectrum range, (Electra Phoenix was the same guitar, pretty much!) and the APII Cardinals seemed to be numerous a while ago, not so much now, though?!

There are many Matsumokus out there to hunt down, but if you're going to have a crack at the "rare" ones, then I hope you've got long pockets; the prices are creeping ever upwards!!

Apparently long pockets are in order for not as rare as well.....

viewtopic.php?f=35&t=7243#p47095

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....right. They always crack in the end.

Well, that color is a bit rare, but even the metallic purple 325 recently sold for $220 if I remember correctly...most Avengers are still usually in the $125-$225 range in the US on E-Bay, maybe ~$75-$175 local/private sales (with exceptions due to condition/completeness/etc.). They're out there. Not sure what the reason is for that particular one, it hung around for a while before that sale, and three others similar to it sat unsold through multiple auctions at the $300 mark (though that seller was a pretty poor communicator). We'll have to see if this one actually completes, or gets re-listed.

je

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...doing bad things to good Vantages since 1985...

1981 AV-320
1981 AV-320
1981 AV-325
1982 AV-320
1982 VS-695-12
1982 VSH-445
1983 AV-330
1995 VST 33 CE TBK

Hey Iceman--still catching up with the threads.

I think it will depend on geography to some degree. Last year when I was making the circles through music stores & pawn shops in central VA & NC, just about every Aria I came across was a second-run Aria Pro 2 RS Cat variant (Str@ variants). Most of them were lower-end, & all were neglected beyond considering them for resto-mods.

A lot of RS models were dumped around here in 1986-1987 when Aria knew the MAT plant was closing & they were clearing inventory for the "next phase" (where I live & the areas I was looking through for the most part weren't big high-end guitar markets).