The Guitar Gallery Forums - The Guitar Legacy of Matsumoku

Thanks fellas for the kind words.

It has been abit tough pin pointing the build year other than to say definitely pre 1976. The "open book" headstock era instruments seem to have a greater chance of hit-or-miss quality in some of the Electra lines. Many of the thinline jazz models tend to support that possibility, especially the PCM builds of the very early 70's.

Fortunately this was not the case with this particular guitar. It was a total of about 14 hours or so of driving, but worth every mile in the end. The amp has become my wife's new favorite as well though we are scared to turn it past about 4 so far.

Still, those 445's and 455's........ whheeeewww! Shivers me timbers just thinking 'bout them.

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....right. They always crack in the end.

Yup, that's a real beauty all right and definitely not what I meant to warn the OP about (namely those boltneck thinlines that were sold under so many different brand names).

Yeah.
To dub an FS a semi is shooting across target. What´s more it is an axe the weight of a lespaul approx. What it WILL do is present a very different array and flavour of sounds vs basicaly anything out there.
(Funny thing Willbo is that the 750 has a louder acoustic note than my 1000? Dunno why that is...)

For the OP tho....

Here´s a size comparsion for the sake of argument.
http://www.102983.org/gallery/albums/userpics/10003/12%7E17.JPG
As you can see an FS is more like a "regular solid" electric in size to say the least.(In this case my FS-1000 and the semi in case is my TA-70)

The TAs in turn are built quite differently vs a 335 or an FS for that matter and me myself have never owned anything but the highend ones - FWIW. I have worked on more or less all of them though,down to the elusive BnG TA.(As well as the korean built ones)
The TA,as compared to a regular ES-335,will lend itself to be used with more (read- HEAPS more) gain without getting soundwise mushy as a regular 335 will as the ante goes up. Some of this no doubt from the build itself,altho i for one at least can attest to the differences between for instance a 70 and a 100 as being rather slim,and some of it no doubt from the absolutely fantastic OEM MMK75 pickups.
As a still gigin musician i tend to be picky.like most of us,with pups and sound. Mostly ending up playing the pickup game-or swapin thereof more to the point. I´ve been down that route with the TA;s too but honestly to no real avail.
Between pups i´d say that i use them approx 50/50 rendering that i´m rather anal about match and match alike too. Although i to this day keep a SD Phatcat in the neck of my 70...TBH...in many ways the novelty of that has all gone...and my 100 sure still stocks the OEM 75s. Absolutely fantastic pups for anything but full blown metal.
It should be mentioned that i routinely equip all of my humbucker guitars with treble bleeds though


Some of these guitars mentioned are rather scarse though as is noted. If and when they show up for sale,as the market seems to be climbing for them even with the economy being what it is,be forewarned that it most likely will be top dollar involved-being jap guitars. Not silly...but seing what has happened just in a few years for the upper end Mats expect to superseed a thousand US and then some for the more elusive ones. Still worth every penny though.
Some of the really elusive ones...expect 5 and 6 times that amount. Easy.

It´s come to the point where for instance the Daion Mk XX;s are basialy blowing the soundbarrier as of current. Lately 3000 bux for good ones seems more the rule than anything,and that figure just seems to be climbing. Not that long ago some of us frowned as the broke the 2k barrier.
Daion also marketed a semi. The Headhunter and TBH....if i were to pick between a TA-100 and a HH? I dunno...i just dunno. They within reason cater to different things kind of,the Daion in case being more "heavy metal" than the TA even.

Has to be said though. Guitars like the TA-100,U-100,FS-1000 aso aso are NOT a dime a dozen. In the yrs i´ve been at it i have all in all seen 5 TA-100 for sale,and that includes japan.

FWIW btw. An FS is NOT an apprentice or beginners guitar. Just take my word for it,and that much for the tonal qualitys of it. It places MUCH demand on the capacity/knowledge of the player at hand.

From an experimental point of view, concerning semi's (playing around with pick ups, push-pull pots and whatever) I'd recommend obtaining one or two early 90ies Samick made Vantage 635V's. There's plenty of them, they're cheap, and they're pretty true copies of Matsumoku's Vantage VSH's. Construction, measurements and feeling of the neck are about the same. These fall behind on hardware (the parts you want to change out anyway).

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http://www.GuitarDir.com has been hacked by some mindless fool, destroying years
of gathering info on guitars by non-commercial guitar lovers. Why?

Funny,i was just meaning to ask you Kees. Seems they´re plentiful in France for some reason?

That fail in hardware dept holds true for many early,as well as later,Korean builds IMO. That does not detract from the build itself though.

Exactly my point . Yes, I've seen some in France too. Here in Holland one can buy them for around 100 - 150 euros. Guess they sold a lot of them in Western Europe in the early 90ies.

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http://www.GuitarDir.com has been hacked by some mindless fool, destroying years
of gathering info on guitars by non-commercial guitar lovers. Why?

There's a pretty sunburst near me selling for under $300. I haven't played it yet to check it out & compare it against my 445.


je

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...doing bad things to good Vantages since 1985...

1981 AV-320
1981 AV-320
1981 AV-325
1982 AV-320
1982 VS-695-12
1982 VSH-445
1983 AV-330
1995 VST 33 CE TBK