The Guitar Gallery Forums - The Guitar Legacy of Matsumoku

No marks, no indication of where she was made. I believe Aspen was largely an acoustic importer from Uncle Matt in the 70s?

This guitar lacks the refinement of my other Matsumoku guitars, for example, the headstock looks like 2 (or three) pieces of wood, the binding looks terrible in certain areas and the neck is bowed and needs a little work. However, I do believe someone refretted this guitar poorly, and may have redid the binding poorly as well. However, definitely has some nice features too.

She's heelless set neck, so it looks like a neck through. ORIGINAL VINTAGE DIMARZIO pickups came installed. Really thick body and some nice tone. Can someone help me identify the wood on the top of the guitar? is that maple?

These turn up badged as Hondo (sorry!) and are Korean, likely to be from Samick:

http://vintaxe.com/boards/viewtopic.php?t=1789

A lot of the pics are gone from the thread because it's a couple of years old, but there are enough to confirm. A post at the bottom of p.2 has a link to pics showing the original model no, inspection & country of origin stickers - which he confirms as Korea.

I had a very similarly-constructed Hondo Les Paul copy, obviously very closely related - set-neck, carved top (all maple as far as I could tell) and it was an excellent guitar, apart from the weak & feedback-prone pickups. These were unbranded chrome cover 'buckers, not DiMarzios.

Jon.

thanks man... perfect

Have to agree on the Samick thing , headstock is exactly identical to my Artist Series Les Paul copy