The Guitar Gallery Forums - The Guitar Legacy of Matsumoku

I recently bought one of these and I have been working on it and just got it up and running. I bought it because I had seen other Shaftesbury guitars with a "steel reinforced neckplate" and I know that this is likely to be a Matt.

To be honest, I do not like low end copies and I simply would not purchase a guitar if the construction differed greatly from the original. For this reason, bolt on neck Gibson copies do not tempt me at all.

This one is set neck, mahogany body and neck, tone capacitors, 500k pots, typical Matt 3 ply neck construction.

Anyway - I plugged it in and for the first time I really managed Clapton's woman tone on the neck pickup with the tone rolled right back.

It is an absolutely glorious little axe.

The pickups are Maxon and 0nly about 8.5k ohms, but the tone is incredible. I think the thin mahogany body keps everything vibrant.

I reckon it is circa 1975 Matsumoku. Can anyone confirm?





I am relying on you Jon.

Graham

So where are the pics?

Graham,

Can you post pics of the headstock and back of the guitar?

_________________
MAA Member since June 29th 2009, taking one baby step at a time..... and failing miserably!

Hi Pierre

I have been doing a little bit of drop filling and tidying. I will get some more pics up when I have a bit more time.

Graham

Help! Not sure I can handle this level of responsibility!

Got your PM Graham, if I'd seen it sooner I would have chimed in! However that pic ain't much to go on, so let's see some nice, clear, pornographically detailed close-ups of everything...

I've seen bolt-neck Shafties with Steel Adjustable Neck plates & it would seem near-certain that these were Mat builds, however Rose-Morris, who owned the brand, seem to have sourced different models from a variety of different sources, not all of them even Japanese.

While I think we can be sure yours is MIJ, it's harder to say what factory built it. I have an old Shaftesbury flyer which shows a set-neck LP copy which I'm pretty certain is a Kasuga (these have really distinctively shaped & inscribed truss rod covers) and their fairly common through-neck Rick bass copy is from an as-yet unidentified manufacturer.

From what I can see from your pic the only potential clue is what looks like an italicised "Custom" script on the TRC which at the moment is making me think Kasuga - but a close up pic will verify this or otherwise. 3-part neck construction seems to be less common on Kasuga guitars but otherwise could point to Mat or Fujigen. I do have to say though that there are many members on here whose specific knowledge of Matsumoku instruments is far greater than mine, so I'm sure you'll get an accurate answer.

Anyway - all idle speculation until you get some better pics!

Jon.

Matts or Gakki??

Hmm, something about it doesn't "feel" Mat to me.

I now think you are right Jorg and it ain't a Matt.

Bassassin, I think is spot on - It's a Kasuga. I found a picture of a Kasuga classical guitar serial label in google images and there is a logo like a + sign with an arm missing. The machine heads on mine have this logo as well as a little Gotoh logo.

I'll probably have to move it on now as it is the only non Matsumoku guitar in my collection (I think!!).

I know I am a bit weird but if there isn't a particular theme to my collection then it ain't a collection.

Thanks for your input guys.

Graham

I can watch it for you.

Hm, seems I´m a dog in the manger

I own a Aria labeled Les Paul Deluxe - should be from 1975/1976.
Recently, it turned out (at the MLP forums) that there exists an exact identical model from Shaftesbury.
Slowly arises to me the question of who has built what and where

BTW: The construction of the neck and also the shape of the truss rod covers at those LPs are the same
as on the shown Shaftesbury SG.