The Guitar Gallery Forums - The Guitar Legacy of Matsumoku

recently i came across a pair of Ventura hollow body electrics at a nearby swap shop and i am quite tempted to bring home at least one of them.

anybody know if they are made by Matsumoku or who may have produced them?

they give a "serial number" as 7891, not sure what that number actually indicates, probably from a label inside

Hi Mike.
If you do a search here you find a few references to "Ventura", some of which are 335'sh Gretsch'sh looking thingys. Is this what yer lusting after?
They look like they should be an OK guitar. I think the consensus is that they are Mats made?

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yeah, i checked a few of those older threads. these are not the "gretchy style"

i grabbed a pic of the guitars in question…

Probably Matt made. Check to see if the neck pocket is sound. These sometimes need shims as the design is week in the area.

Ooooh, I can see why you're interested.
If the neck pocket turns out to be a weak spot though, you could be looking at possibly laying in a centre support, à la ES-335.
Hope that isn't needed.

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these were both set neck guitars.
i went to have a look in person the other day and the one i wanted was sold already (the hard-tail with all original parts)

the other one had many non-original parts
i noticed a good amount of chipping in the finish around the neck join, so it may need some real work done on it.

still played nicely. it had a rather large chunky neck.
there was no label to be found on the one i looked at
with the full finish on the back of the neck i could not tell if it had the commonly found 3-piece neck of earlier Matsumoku productions
and with so many changed parts, it was hard to say who was the manufacturer originally

not a bad guitar for $349 they are asking
the replacement part are worth nearly that much; new bigsby, locking tuners, switch and trim ring, pickups and rings, knobs and i'd guess the electronics too...