Before I start a war here, I am NOT trying to drum up the value of the guitar. It is whatever it is. I am an Electra/Westone guy mostly, and we had our yearly electrafest celebration and I won this guitar as one of the prizes. I am not a vantage collector (at least not yet). I just want to know what this is! It isn't in any catalog - the
TD-X 38 is the closest I have seen. Tom Presley was at the show, one of the chief designers of Electra and Westone Matsumoku guitars - and was the VP of St. Louis Music - and in charge of the Alvarez line as well. Tom spent months at a time in Japan at Matsumoku and later when product was moved to Korea (he assisted with that). He knew their designers personally.
Tom saw this and stated he though it was a prototype or possibly a transition guitar. There is nothing that says where it is made. He said it very well could have been made with some parts made by Matsumoku, and some in Korea. He said when it went down with Matsumoku that companies frequently had a bunch of parts from Matsumoku that found their way into guitars with the rest being made in Korea. He said it happened at Westone. He said the bridge is basically a bendmaster with the fine tuners (a Matsumoku bridge) - very much like the ones on my westone spectrum LX and FX. It had a string lock - although it was not like the Westone products (it also had the clamps missing, so was just the shell). This is VERY CLOSE to a Vantage TD-X 38 model - color, look, shape, everything but the pickups on this model are three on/off/on switches (one for each pickup, the bridge humbucker being a single, off , humbucker switch, and the singles appear to be low output, off, higher output - but not humbucking). The pickups look sort of like EMGs but are not active, and in the corner there is (or was) a greek omega symbol in a red triangle - those were the Vantage pickups. The T38TD is the same except it has a 5-way style switch. This isn't a converted or modified guitar, because the guitar has no pickguard - and the finish is stock and in good shape.
I decided to make the guitar all that it could be. I removed the stock bridge pickup and put a replacement in it. I removed the non-functional string lock. I got a missing fine tuner from a good friend down under (very hard to find). I had to get a replacement bar, a 6mm black floydrose bar works perfectly. I decided to remove the non-functional lock and put in locking keys. I am waiting two strat sized humbuckers to arrive (dual-bladed), that will be wired single, off, hum on their switches along with the new one already installed. Now without the lock, it needs string trees - and I have some roller ones ordered (not yet arrived). I did a ton of setup work - including some fine dremeling in the trem route so that it would float properly. Now it looks and plays great. I will keep the stock pickups for it, but the new ones - well - at least the new one I installed so far is a LOT BETTER. Oh yeah, it had 250K volume pot (original) I changed to a 500K. Here it is, tell me what you think - prototype? or does anyone know of a model produced with this wiring? I am pulling my own image from my photobucket.
Thorny