The Guitar Gallery Forums - The Guitar Legacy of Matsumoku

i'm really curious to hear from anybody who has ever owned a Ripper, was it great, sucked, so-so or what? i played one several hundred yrs ago when i was a teenager and now i'd like to know if it would be worth my time to look for one.
thanks

I don't know the Ripper but IMHO anything you enjoyed a hundred years ago as a teenager is defiitely worth re-experiencing.

It's not jsut nostalgia- when I was young I thought I was 'just a kid' cause that's the way people treated me, but later in life I find my taste wasn't bad- Gilmour, Page, and Hendrix turned out to be greats, and so did Uncle Matt guitars- and some others too.

i have one. its great. . the necks a bit clunky, but it sounds great.

Rumor has it that the late Tommy Bolin (replaced Ritchie Blackmore in the late '70s) played one onstage with Deep Purple. He also played an Ibanez Destroyer (Explorer copy).

Eric

hey thunderbyrd... i have one but i can't really tell you much about it as mine is still in pieces.... it arrived as a frankenstrat and i have been slowly tracking down the missing parts to rebuild it as the ripper it once was....

there is a bicentenial eagle ripper on ebay right now... but the guy wants a lot of money for it

http://cgi.ebay.com/UNIVOX-EAGLE-FENDER ... dZViewItem

it is item number 7361789662 if the link doesn't work

I have this as an Aria Pro II... also in frankenstrat quality. Are the humbucker stock on the Univox version... my Aria came with single coils stock (and no humbucker routing underneath).

Btw. if someone is interrested in the linked guitar... I would ask the guy to check if the humbucker are stock... some "very good" condition guitars, turn out quite different when the pickguard (or some other cover) is removed. Still I think it's too expensive for a seventies Strat copy.

the humbuckers on the featured guitar appear to be stock ie cream coloured with chrome frames and a plastic see-through cover with holes punched for the magnets... this is the only configuration that the ripper came in to my knowledege (i would still like to get a set of these humbuckers if anybody has them... mine are a mismatched set from other univox models

the only thing i don't like about this design has to do with the body... there is very little body material between the neck humbucker and the neck pocket... and this is usually broken away... at least it is on my guitar

also, someone mentioned in a different thread about the ripper that new 5way switches don't fit the univox three way mounting holes neccesitating modification to the pick guard..

as for price, this same guitar without the fancy carving tends to go for 350-400... at least the last half a dozen few eboink sales have

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