The Guitar Gallery Forums - The Guitar Legacy of Matsumoku

Q&A, discussion, and information for the labels covered by The Guitar Gallery (Specifically and exclusively guitars made by Matsumoku up to 1987)
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 Post subject: Quest Guitar
PostPosted: Mon 02 May 2016 04:47 PM 
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I have this old Quest that my brother bought years ago and later gave to me. It's a really nice guitar and I've had it for almost a decade now but I know next to nothing about it!

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I believe it's a Matsumoku guitar but I hardly know anything about it. A guitar tech told me it was probably an '80s-era Japanese clone, and after some Googling I doscovered that Quest was associated with Matsumoku. But this model doesn't appear in the Quest catalogue photos I've seen. There's not much info on Quest guitars out there!

If anyone knows anything about it let me know. It has some interesting features - like the coil splitting I've seen on a lot of similar guitars (took me a while to figure out what those switches did when I was younger!). It also has two outputs for some reason? They both work and I've never understood why there are two.


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 Post subject: Re: Quest Guitar
PostPosted: Mon 02 May 2016 06:54 PM 
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That looks like a nice instrument, you're right, and it certainly smacks of Matsumoku with the neck thru made of multiple pieces of wood!

Outputs could be for stereo, like a Rickenbacker, perhaps? The guitar itself looks like a riff on a BC Rich of some sort - I'm not terribly familiar with the BC Rich range - but with styling cues all of its own; very salubrious!!

No, I'm afraid there's very little known about Quest... at one stage they did seem to be an offshoot of Vantage, but other than that, I don't know anything; hopefully one of the other lads will!!

Have you lifted the pickups out? IF you haven't yet, could you? If we knew what was printed/stamped on the baseplate, we'd maybe know a little more!!


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 Post subject: Re: Quest Guitar
PostPosted: Tue 03 May 2016 09:15 AM 
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Interesting guitar and I've seen that odd profile somewhere before (here I think) but I cannot remember what the origin was. Frenchy would likely know if he's still around, he has one or two Quest models IIRC.

The double jacks are a new one on me. A peep in the control cavity wiring might give us a clue as to whether you indeed have a stereo output or simply an optional jack-in point.

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 Post subject: Re: Quest Guitar
PostPosted: Wed 04 May 2016 03:17 PM 
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Barry wrote:
The double jacks are a new one on me. A peep in the control cavity wiring might give us a clue as to whether you indeed have a stereo output or simply an optional jack-in point.

Here's a pic of the wiring. I know next to nothing about the electronics side of things so hopefully this helps!

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Corsair wrote:
Have you lifted the pickups out? IF you haven't yet, could you? If we knew what was printed/stamped on the baseplate, we'd maybe know a little more!!

I haven't. I was planning to restring/clean up a bunch of my guitars this week, so I might as well take a peep under the pickups while I'm at it. If I do I'll post pics!


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 Post subject: Re: Quest Guitar
PostPosted: Wed 04 May 2016 03:29 PM 
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Also, I recently found an old ebay listing for a Quest bass that looks really similar to my guitar:

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It's the same shape and looks like the same wood type, and you can't see in the picture but the listing also said it had two output jacks, like mine.

Mine has no visible serial number and the lister for that bass said it didn't have one either. They seemed to be under the impression it was a prototype.

I do know that there's at least one other guitar like mine though - I saw a picture of one years ago on a forum somewhere (it looked like the same model, with that same shape, except the wood was red at the sides), and it was also a Quest with the same logo. I can't find the picture anymore however. I think it was just posted on some forum somewhere, and there wasn't any info about it.

The closest I've seen besides that is some old BC Rich's with a very similar, but not identical shape. I always assumed whoever made mine was taking some stylistic influence BC Rich, if not making a direct copy.


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 Post subject: Re: Quest Guitar
PostPosted: Wed 04 May 2016 08:40 PM 
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Thanks for the picture of the control cavity. From what little I can tell from here, it appears to be a case of dual mono outputs. That is, you have the option to jack into either one, or, both simultaneously if you wish, and send each signal to a separate amp.

I think I'm only seeing a hot wire and a ground so it isn't a stereo feed, but you could still conjure up some interesting sound effects. This arrangement could be useful perhaps on a very large stage allowing you to "spread" the sound over a wider area without need of a huge Marshall stack or the like.

I'm curious as to what the mini toggles do. On this vintage era guitar they would normally be split coil and phase reversal. But some dual output wiring allows you to split the output from the neck and bridge, sending the signal from one to one amp and the other to the second amp. I don't think this is the case here though.

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 Post subject: Re: Quest Guitar
PostPosted: Tue 10 May 2016 07:22 PM 
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I'm fairly certain the mini toggles are for coil splitting, at least that's what it sounds like to my ear.

Also, as per the suggestion I lifted out the pickups and took a look underneath. As it turns out, there's something written there which looks like it could be a serial number:

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As far as I can tell it says either "E2910" or "EQ910".


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 Post subject: Re: Quest Guitar
PostPosted: Tue 10 May 2016 07:54 PM 
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Any identifying numbers relative to the pickups will actually be on the underside of the pickup, not in the cavity routing. That number is likely a manufacturing instruction relating to the finish to be used. :wink:

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 Post subject: Re: Quest Guitar
PostPosted: Tue 10 May 2016 07:57 PM 
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Ah, that makes sense haha. I did check the underside of the pickups themselves and didn't see any markings


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 Post subject: Re: Quest Guitar
PostPosted: Sun 16 Oct 2016 04:51 PM 
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Yep... nice Quest !!! :love:

Here is mine !

https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B_V3MJ ... sp=sharing

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