The Guitar Gallery Forums - The Guitar Legacy of Matsumoku

Just picked up a Shaftesbury Les Paul Bass copy of Ebay, and I have read that they have an association with Shergold guitars and a guy called Ned Callan, and I have also seen the occasional reference with Ibanez (Fuji Gen Gakki), Although I am unsure about that connection.

Missed out on buying this instrument about 17 Years ago. Closure!

cool! I love stories that have a long closure.

does it have a serial number? is it ibanez style?

I should also say that this is only the second one I have ever seen.

Not sure what Ibanez Serial numbers look like, but here is a picture of the neck plate which seems to be on loads of different names of Japanese instruments, is it possible that Shaftesbury can be added to the list of names made by Matsumoku, also the neck is made from 3 main pieces of wood much like my Westbury and Westones, I can see this on the neck as the paint has sunk over time.
Is this neck a feature of Uncle Matt construction?

Steel Adjustable Neck

Cleaned up nicely, Shaftesbury signature is a nice bit of MOP

Ibanez serials start with a letter month code, then two digits of year code, then a bunch of sequential digits.

After looking about on the Internet and this site a bit more about the "STEEL ADJUSTABLE NECK" neck plate, maybe this post should be moved to "Other Matsumoku Guitars" or possibly "Conrad, Lyle, Univox, and other Arai guitars"

It seems my lot in life to play devil's advocate.

This for the most part only applies to later models dating after about 1976 or so when serials became something more than just arbitrary numbers stamped on plates likely purchased by a number of guitar manufacturers. Before this Elger/Hoshino was no different than any other distributor and contracted with a number of manufacturers, many of which used the generic neckplates.

Using the generic neckplate as an indication a guitar's origin would not necessarily be concrete or without flaw.

Many of the b-shelf Japanese copies of the late 1960s and early 1970s bore neckplates such as this. Some with "Steel Adjustable Neck" and others with "Steel Reinforced Neck". No rhyme or reason to the two phrases either as some with the "reinforced" were attached to guitars with adjustable truss rods (well, adjustable to a point anyway).

The only way we could use this as an indicator is to prove beyond any doubt that a neckplate with a particular font, phrase, and text placement was used specifically by a single manufacturer.

agreed, sorry to be so unspecific. That format date code supposedly first appeared in 75, and changed to something else later on.

I am theorizing that any guitar carrying that date code came through Hoshino, even if it was made elsewhere. So fa I haven't found any contrary evidence.

Agreed that having other neck plates is little evidence though.

Is the 3 piece neck construction unique to Matsumoku?

Also the top is a 2 piece laminate and the rest of the body seems to be 2 pieces of wood sandwiched.

Although later on (later than 1975) most all guitars produced by Matsumoku were 3-piece (with some exceptions) there were also other manufacturers that used laminated necks. Kasuga, FujiGen Gakki, and Hoshino Gakki Ten were a few.

Here is picture of the messy electrics cavity.
The Capacitor reads EFCO 2067 0.47/10/100
[img]http://img57.imageshack.us/img57/774/mcav8xf.th.jpg[/img]

Or am I just clutching at capacitors now