The Guitar Gallery Forums - The Guitar Legacy of Matsumoku

Hi everybody, I'm new to the forum and already in need for help...

I have the chance to buy a Matsumoku-made MIJ telecaster copy, apparently built in 1977. The present owner rebranded it with a Fender logo, but he recalls that when the guitar was new it was branded Vantage.
He then swapped the pickups and the bridge for Fender parts.

The guitar appears to have a 1 piece Sen or ash body, one piece maple neck, gotoh style tuning machines and the trussrod at the base of the neck, just like the Greco teles, but with a much smaller hole in the pickguard. On the neck plate there is engraved "Mastumoku E771200 Made in Japan".

Well, I've been researching for days on the internet to find some infos about Matsumoku teles from the 70s, but I did not find a single example of a guitar similar to the one I'd like to buy. The current owner bought it in 1978 in Italy (I'm italian too) and said to me that at the time it was considered a medium quality instrument, obviously quite cheaper than a Fender.

Can someone provide me with some information about the guitar? as anybody ever seen or played one? is it a good guitar ?

Thanks in advance for your help!

Here are some pics:

Hello palin911, welcome to the board!

To my knowledge, Matsumoku didn't produce teles under the Vantage label.
Furthermore, Vantage guitars were not available in Europe before 1980!!
1977 is definately too early for a Vantage! The first Vantage branded guitars were sold at the canadian market in 1979 (or maybe late 1978).

There has been a Vantage tele in the Samick years:
http://imageshack.us/photo/my-images/88/pg06s.jpg/
korean made - non matsumoku

I've seen several (matsumoku made) ARIA teles from the seventies.
This is my first idea, looking at this guitar, but I don't know if Aria has had letter prefix serial numbers in the seventies!?
Hope someone of the Aria guys here can shed some light on the serial number!

J.

_________________
All vantage-branded guitars were lower-priced instruments aimed at the beginner-to-intermediate market. It has no interest to collectors and very little demand among players! (www.allexperts.com)

thanks for the reply!

Well to me this guitar is a real mistery... I made some further research and found out that it looks a lot like a Westminster Tele, but with a big difference: as far as I know Westminster was a very cheap brand and their teles had a front load bridge, while this tele is a proper string trough body. From the pictures it does not seem like a cheap/plywood guitar... And the present owner assured me that the body is good solid wood..

I don't know about about Aria serials, but I confronted its serial with the one of my '78 Greco Stratocaster MIJ and they seem to share the same format: letter plus six digits, with the first 2 digits indicating the year of construction.

I read somewhere that in the early years Matsumoku did made guitars for Greco, but mine is just an ipothesis with no real evidence... Furthermore, I think that Aria Teles had the trussrod access at the headstock and with a funny trussroad cover, Gibson-like. This guitar does not have neither..

Any Aria expert around?

Hi Palin911, and welcome! I agree with Mozart: that Tele is not a Vantage. Therefore I moved this thread to the section 'other Matsumoku guitars'. Better chance someone can identify it for you here.

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

More likely to be an Electra, I reckon.... They did Teles, and very good ones too!!

http://www.rivercityamps.com/electra/2248wc.php

Hi Corsair, I tought about Electra too, but there are some major differences: the trussrod cover on the headstock covering the access to the screw and the input jack on the control plate, while the misterious tele has the input in the same position as the fender teles...

Hi palin911 !
I see that you are from europe - then "Vorg by Pearl" and "Luxor" are two other possibilities.
Both were produced by Matsumoku and were common in the late 70s here in europe.
These two brands offered very good strats and teles, .....and they have the truss rod access at the body side.

I'm fairly certain you can cross Electra off the list of possibles. Not ever seen any Electra Tele model with a single coil in the neck position, let alone the tube style as you see in this one.

Also, it seems like there are only about 7 or 8 Electras over on that side of the pond anyway.

It surely is a nice looking example of the style, whatever it may be.

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

Hey, pretty hard to give it an exact brand.
Matsumoku made Tele's under quite a few brands, over quite a few years, as far as I know.
IMO it could be a white label, or, Greco, Aria, Early Aria Pro2 etc, etc.
Here is a later Aria Pro2 (1980) TE-450 on Music Trade JV at the moment. http://www.music-trade.co.jp/Aria_80000197carte.html
looks like a nice Tele, at least your neck plate hasen't been changed to an F as hapens to a lot of them.
Cheers

_________________
My Guitars- http://matsumokuguitars.com/

Thanks everybody! I see that the mistery holds on... So I'm gonna ask you the decisive question...

Do you think it is a good buy? Because it does not come for cheap... The seller asks 600€, I think I could make him drop it to 550€, but it still is a lot of money.. Mainly because, having no exact brand, I don't think it is gonna be easy to sell it again... Furthermore, to restore it to original condition I'd have to reinstall the pickups and the bridge..

What do you think? Is it worth that kind of money?