The Guitar Gallery Forums - The Guitar Legacy of Matsumoku

Hi Guys !

There showed another CG Winner Guitar up on Ebay, and the seller provided some info. Here is the translation :

Clarence Griffith Winner (C.G.Winner), was an american luthier. He was a close friend of Leo Fender, with whom he also worked until the beginning of the eighties, when Leo Fender founded G+L. Around the same time, Winner also founded his own enterprise. He created own collections of guitars, mostly inspired by Gibson. They were produced by Matsumoku of Japan (Aria Pro II, Vantage, Ibanez). Unfortunately Winner was a bad salesman, he refused to invest any money in marketig and advertising, so his guitars ware only known to insiders without a realistic chance on the market. Only a few years later Winner hat to give up his business. In the US C.G. Winner Guitars are well known amongst vintage-collectors, in Germany they are mostly unknown.

This is only the translation, not the results of my own research or my opinion.

Greets

Oliver !

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Hmmmm. With Ibanez lumped in there and the source being an eBay listing the credibility and accuracy of the information is somewhat questionable.

Would the seller be willing to cite the direct source of of the information?

Hearsay, A.K.A. "someone told him" naturally excluded.

Miscrediting Matsumoku to Ibanez is a fairly commoon and oft-repeated error. Understandable since Matsumoku was a subcontractor to Hoshino who supplied Ibanez- although Fujigen made all of those, other Hoshino brands like Crown very probably do include some MAtsumoku-made instruments.

I don't discredit that account for that reason, it seems to have some very interesting inside info (like the non-marketing genius of Winner). What remains unsaid to me is whether Winner subcontracted directly to Matsumoku for their guitars or whether they came through Hoshino or Arai, like Crown and Conrad did. This is a question that remains unanswered for many small brand like this, I wish there were a way of finding out. I wonder if Hoshino or Arai would be willing to say whether they were distributors for those brands?

Sorry to be so tough. I am hard on third hand info. Unless a credible source can be cited I am not inclined to buy into it, but am more than willing to entertain the idea.

These forums and site are quite often used to establish fact. Anything that is not stated as unproven or unverified quickly becomes urban fact. This is how nearly every Japanese guitar was made by Ibanez before this site appeared.

I am not that familiar with Hoshino, but Conrad was an independent label contracted to the same manufacturers (at least in part) as Aria, but not obtained through Arai. A few of the Conrad models more closely resembled those offered under the Ibanez lable as well, the Lucite being one example.

I would very much like to track down the source of the C.G.Winner info though.

Agreed- all it takes is one person to make an inaccurate statement and it gets repeated over and again.

Very interesting that Conrad wasn't through Arai. Do we know of labels besides Aria Pro and Aria that came from Arai? I assumed they acted as a distributor for brands other than their own, but maybe I'm mistaken

I've also read the info in de the ebay ad, and mailed the seller but he does not respond.

Electrics anyway: Aria Diamond, Aria, Aria Pro II, and Shiro.

Hi,

Read your posts, and just wanted to say that i own C.G. WInner country guitar made in 1989. It has great sustain, and sound, its copy of Martin. sure would like to know more about Winner acoustic guitars, but cant find anything on web.