The Guitar Gallery Forums - The Guitar Legacy of Matsumoku

Hello everyone,what a wonderful website, I am new (this is my first post) and I need some help, if you can shed some light on this EROS Guitar

I have heard conflicting things, I read that Eros was part of Eko, or people who worked for eko who made guitars from 68-72

I read that actually it had nothing to do with the Italians and was a name used by an importer of Japanese guitars, possible made in the matsumoku factory.

I read that it is mentioned in the Blue Book as a Japanese brand.
But EROS was also a sub brand of EKO guitars in Recanati, Italy

So could anyone help me more, and is it worth more than say £100 pounds.

Thanks

Pete.

I am new to all these Japanese guitars by the way, but I am falling in love with them, the build quality is high, and the Tokai`s and Arias and even the Grecos are really nice guitars.

any help would be brilliant


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I just stumbled over this interview with polly talking about having an EROS with all the strings tuned to A



POLLY: John's Telecaster is closer to my heart. It's on all my records - I used to nick it all the time. And don't forget my Eros Mark II (a funky Gibson SG copy). It was my first guitar. My dad bought it for 50 pounds from a guy who worked for him in the quarry because he though I might want to play it one day. He still calls it "his guitar." I tune all the strings to A. On my last tour my guitar roadie was talking about Gary Glitter, who he'd worked with. He said the Gary Glitter Band tuning was all strings to A, so I tried it out.

JOE: And I adopted that tuning for "Down By The Water," "C'mon Billy," and most of the really heavy songs. It's a brilliant song.

POLLY: Yeah, so fat and revolting. I just love the way the bottom string is tuned so low it flops like a washing line. I wrote "Long Time Coming" and "He's Just My Type" on it, but I don't want to go too much into the way I write because it spoils it for me. I don't want to sound too much like a hippie, but writing is a very spiritual thing, and talking about it can be disrespectful - not to me, but to the "writing muse," or whatever you want to call it. I can't see it as a technical process, a song either touches you or it doesn't. Everything we've talked about - guitar tones, putting it through little boxes - is just superfluous, and I don't like dwelling on it. At the end of the day, it means nothing.

still something dark and weird !
E-Ros (note the "-" !)was in fact an Italian brand by the Fuselli brothers .
As it seems they made some guitars (acoustic , Ranger-like) for Eko ,after the Eko factury burned down.Afterworths they continued to build the same range under the E-Ros brand name untill the early 70's .
I never seen a solid body , but there's a LP known , with the E-Ros brand name on it !Some state it's Japanese , but due to the tuners(IF original...?...)and the headstock shape it could/would be Italian .
The EROS brand was in fact a Japanese one(mostly imported in UK) , but can't tell you much about it .
So you've to look at the brand name on the headstock and then you'll see where it came from : E-Ros has always a triangular sign underneath & a crown above the E-Ros brand name !But that doesn't mean they're didn't imported Japanese guitars and sold them under the E-Ros label !!!!

Thanks, so it seems it has a murky past, I was looking to sell it but had no idea of its worth an history, its a great player, and now I am even more confused.

I dont think its an E-ROS, So does anyone know anything about the eros guitars, Japanese for sure, but where was it made, would it be matsumoku ?

there are many more questions than answers on a lot of older MIJ brands. It isn`t always black and white on the very well known companies either. At one point there were literally dozens of brand names made in Japan though I suspect there were not that many factories so learning who made what is not always easy. Guess some questions may never be answered.

Hi Stereohigh - as you'll have gathered from the responses, there were two Eros brands - or an Eros & an E (hyphen) Ros.

Eros (and Eros Mark II) was a UK brand owned by UK distributor/importer Rosetti (who are now Gibson's UK distributors) - who, at the time had a shop near Piccadilly Circus in London. It's quite probable the brand name was something to do with the little guy with the wings...

Like most UK importer brands, it looks like Eros guitars weren't just sourced from the one place, but some at least were MIJ and quite possibly Matsumoku, or Aria-associated. I had a cute little Eros Mark II LP copy, which still has its very own thread here:

http://www.matsumoku.org/ggboard/viewtopic.php?t=3021

Which I still think has a Mat or Aria connection.

Is yours the one which was on UK Ebay last week - I was watching that (with a view to bidding) & cleverly missed the end of the auction!

Anyway, it'd be cool to see some decent pics of it, & you might find the hardware & electrics provide some clues to its origins.

Jon.

Wow thanks for the info, yeah I did get it from Ebay, it sounds brilliant, but needs a bit of work, and the pick ups have been changed I think, so hard to tell, where it was from, someone has listed an eros, and say it was made in the same factory as old epiphones, this actually has an old epiphone pick up in, so it may be true, not sure.