Ch0jin
November 25th, 2008, 03:00 AM
…..or another new guitar story :)
Compared to the story behind how my first Maton guitar arrived at my place, the tale describing how I came to be looking across the room at my second Maton is a corker. But that’s a yarn for another time. Right now I thought I’d share with you a bit of a review of my fourth guitar.
As I’ve mentioned all over the place already, it’s a Maton BB1200. Made in Australia in 2005, its number 31 of less than 90 ever made. Coming as it did, directly, and I mean airline luggage stickers and everything still attached directly, from a prominent Australian country music artist’s band member, it was setup really, really well. The action is a might higher than my solid body, but it plays, well, it plays like the tool of a professional musician unsurprisingly enough. The BB1200 is a semi hollow body style of guitar with twin F holes. Maple body and cap, rock maple neck with a rosewood fret board. It’s not an unusual combination of tone woods by any means, but what makes it special, to me anyway, is that it’s actually an Australian grown, Queensland maple body. So the wood ‘grew up’ (pun intended) in the same state I did. I don’t care what part of the world you’re from. That’s cool.
It’s got mother of pearl dot inlays and the Maton logo in the headstock is also carved from mother of pearl, which frankly impresses me quite a lot. The original Maton humbuckers were replaced with “loads” of aftermarket pickups chasing a particular sound according to the guy I bought it off, until that is, he settled on Brierley B90’s. Wound by a guy from Adelaide by the name of Mick Brierley they are P90 style pickups in a humbucker size format with cool nickel covers. If you look closely you can see the pole piece adjustment screws are in the middle of the pickup cover, not the top or bottom like humbuckers, that’s the telltale sign. Looks like humbuckers, sounds, well I’ve not played a guitar with regular P90’s before, but I can say that compared to the Duncan ’59 and JB in my solidbody these things sound as good as if not better. I’m thinking better actually. I tend to spend a lot of time using the neck pickup on all my guitars and damn this thing is good. Overall output is lower than the Duncan’s, so I had to bump a few settings on my amp or give my pedals volume a nudge if I was using one, but wow do they deliver. To give you some vague idea of the sound, these pickups were selected to cut through a live guitar mix that includes two vintage Gretch’s and a Tele. Actually that probably doesn’t help does it.
The first time I played this guitar at home though, I didn’t get it. I wasn’t exactly disappointed, it was more like seeing a movie that was supposed to be amazingly funny, and even though you had some laughs, not really getting what all the fuss was about.
But then I figured it out, and it all changed.
I approached this guitar as if it was some kind of fragile heirloom. I played quite conservatively and with a light touch. I had the amp volume down low, and I was using my Peavey Ultra 112 combo, as a combo, with the 12” Sheffield. This is not, as many of you probably already know, the way to play a semi hollow body guitar.
Another Corona perched on the amp I decide to do a little reconfigure. I shut all my windows, direct some warmed up tube goodness into my 40 year old Vase 4x12 quad that, not irrelevantly, was also made in not only my home state, but home town, dialled in a big dose of reverb prodded the amp for some rocking crunch, and Bam! You could not wipe the smile from my face.
These resonant semi hollows are amazing! Standing up against my quad, just turning from side to side, adding or subtracting from the angle of guitar to speakers, totally changes the tone, as does my distance from the speakers. It’s almost organic the way the soundwaves from the speakers interact with the guitar.
The second mistake I made, after lack of volume, was my delicate touch. Once I started to dig in with both hands I was rewarded in spades. Big, fat, snarling crunch from the bridge pickup and a sound that redefined smooth and creamy overdrive. For me anyway, from the neck. As a colleague said to me the other day, “Man, you gotta spank P90’s”. He was right. I love that it’s not a carbon copy of tones from the SD JB and ’59 PAF in the solidbody. It’s absolutely every little bit as cool, maybe even better, but it has a completely different voice. I mean, of course it does right, it’s a single coil P90 style pickup compared to Humbuckers, I expected that, but what I didn’t expect, was how well these pickups in this guitar compliment my other Maton, they both sound wickedly good and both are equally rewarding to play and explore.
Hardware wise it’s not exactly stock. The guy I bought it from told me he’d had the tech upgrade a bunch of parts to improve tone and playability. Obviously the pickups as I’ve mentioned, but also the jack and the pots. In doing so he also had it rewired for “simplicity” by retaining the 3 position toggle on the horn, but disconnecting one pot leaving a master volume and tone. The disconnected pot was ditched and replaced with a heavy duty metal 2 position rotary switch. I have no idea what I’m going to do with that switch though, the dude was right, it sounds perfect the way it is. The volume rolls off in a slow linear fashion as does the tone and it’s the only one of my guitars I’ll play with the switch in the middle for both pickups it sounds so balanced.
Matons default Grover tuners disappeared for the uglier looking, but massively more practical Sperzel locking tuners. The E even copped a Sperzel “D-Thing” de-tuner. I can see why people rave about Sperzel locking tuners. After years of messing around winding strings around posts the “old” way, being able to just poke the string in, turn the dial, yank maybe half a turn on the peg and be in tune must be heaven for a gigging musician. The “D-Thing” took me a bit of working out, and I do question whether it’s worth all the messing around just to be able to tune from E to D easily, I mean it’s not hard to start with. Maybe it’ll grow on me.
As you can see in the pictures the metal “BB1200” logo plate is missing revealing the truss rod adjustment. I’ll be replacing that shortly, as well as the tail piece. For some reason the guitar has been strung up –over- the tail instead of through at some point and it’s worn off the chrome. $50 to pretty up a guitar that retailed for $3999 is fair I think.
It’s got a few war wounds. Not a surprise after four years on stage, but the finish has stood up very, very well. There are a couple of little scratches and a few more on the back, but as you can see from the pictures, considering I haven’t even tried to polish it yet, it’s looking pretty good.
Since I started writing this I’ve also had a long play through a JMP1 Marshall rig with a Sovtek Quad and it was crunchy heaven. I definitely plan to drag it to the guitar shop and punish some Marshall amps in the near future.
Well I guess that’s more than enough. Thanks for hanging in there :rockon:
Pic 1 (http://www.flickr.com/photos/ch0jin/3054929429/)
Pic 2 (http://www.flickr.com/photos/ch0jin/3054928847/)
Pic 3 (http://www.flickr.com/photos/ch0jin/3054928513/)
Pic 4 (http://www.flickr.com/photos/ch0jin/3055764796/)
Pic 5 (http://www.flickr.com/photos/ch0jin/3055764252/) It looks like it has gold hardware in this pic. It doesn't but it'd look cool I think.
Compared to the story behind how my first Maton guitar arrived at my place, the tale describing how I came to be looking across the room at my second Maton is a corker. But that’s a yarn for another time. Right now I thought I’d share with you a bit of a review of my fourth guitar.
As I’ve mentioned all over the place already, it’s a Maton BB1200. Made in Australia in 2005, its number 31 of less than 90 ever made. Coming as it did, directly, and I mean airline luggage stickers and everything still attached directly, from a prominent Australian country music artist’s band member, it was setup really, really well. The action is a might higher than my solid body, but it plays, well, it plays like the tool of a professional musician unsurprisingly enough. The BB1200 is a semi hollow body style of guitar with twin F holes. Maple body and cap, rock maple neck with a rosewood fret board. It’s not an unusual combination of tone woods by any means, but what makes it special, to me anyway, is that it’s actually an Australian grown, Queensland maple body. So the wood ‘grew up’ (pun intended) in the same state I did. I don’t care what part of the world you’re from. That’s cool.
It’s got mother of pearl dot inlays and the Maton logo in the headstock is also carved from mother of pearl, which frankly impresses me quite a lot. The original Maton humbuckers were replaced with “loads” of aftermarket pickups chasing a particular sound according to the guy I bought it off, until that is, he settled on Brierley B90’s. Wound by a guy from Adelaide by the name of Mick Brierley they are P90 style pickups in a humbucker size format with cool nickel covers. If you look closely you can see the pole piece adjustment screws are in the middle of the pickup cover, not the top or bottom like humbuckers, that’s the telltale sign. Looks like humbuckers, sounds, well I’ve not played a guitar with regular P90’s before, but I can say that compared to the Duncan ’59 and JB in my solidbody these things sound as good as if not better. I’m thinking better actually. I tend to spend a lot of time using the neck pickup on all my guitars and damn this thing is good. Overall output is lower than the Duncan’s, so I had to bump a few settings on my amp or give my pedals volume a nudge if I was using one, but wow do they deliver. To give you some vague idea of the sound, these pickups were selected to cut through a live guitar mix that includes two vintage Gretch’s and a Tele. Actually that probably doesn’t help does it.
The first time I played this guitar at home though, I didn’t get it. I wasn’t exactly disappointed, it was more like seeing a movie that was supposed to be amazingly funny, and even though you had some laughs, not really getting what all the fuss was about.
But then I figured it out, and it all changed.
I approached this guitar as if it was some kind of fragile heirloom. I played quite conservatively and with a light touch. I had the amp volume down low, and I was using my Peavey Ultra 112 combo, as a combo, with the 12” Sheffield. This is not, as many of you probably already know, the way to play a semi hollow body guitar.
Another Corona perched on the amp I decide to do a little reconfigure. I shut all my windows, direct some warmed up tube goodness into my 40 year old Vase 4x12 quad that, not irrelevantly, was also made in not only my home state, but home town, dialled in a big dose of reverb prodded the amp for some rocking crunch, and Bam! You could not wipe the smile from my face.
These resonant semi hollows are amazing! Standing up against my quad, just turning from side to side, adding or subtracting from the angle of guitar to speakers, totally changes the tone, as does my distance from the speakers. It’s almost organic the way the soundwaves from the speakers interact with the guitar.
The second mistake I made, after lack of volume, was my delicate touch. Once I started to dig in with both hands I was rewarded in spades. Big, fat, snarling crunch from the bridge pickup and a sound that redefined smooth and creamy overdrive. For me anyway, from the neck. As a colleague said to me the other day, “Man, you gotta spank P90’s”. He was right. I love that it’s not a carbon copy of tones from the SD JB and ’59 PAF in the solidbody. It’s absolutely every little bit as cool, maybe even better, but it has a completely different voice. I mean, of course it does right, it’s a single coil P90 style pickup compared to Humbuckers, I expected that, but what I didn’t expect, was how well these pickups in this guitar compliment my other Maton, they both sound wickedly good and both are equally rewarding to play and explore.
Hardware wise it’s not exactly stock. The guy I bought it from told me he’d had the tech upgrade a bunch of parts to improve tone and playability. Obviously the pickups as I’ve mentioned, but also the jack and the pots. In doing so he also had it rewired for “simplicity” by retaining the 3 position toggle on the horn, but disconnecting one pot leaving a master volume and tone. The disconnected pot was ditched and replaced with a heavy duty metal 2 position rotary switch. I have no idea what I’m going to do with that switch though, the dude was right, it sounds perfect the way it is. The volume rolls off in a slow linear fashion as does the tone and it’s the only one of my guitars I’ll play with the switch in the middle for both pickups it sounds so balanced.
Matons default Grover tuners disappeared for the uglier looking, but massively more practical Sperzel locking tuners. The E even copped a Sperzel “D-Thing” de-tuner. I can see why people rave about Sperzel locking tuners. After years of messing around winding strings around posts the “old” way, being able to just poke the string in, turn the dial, yank maybe half a turn on the peg and be in tune must be heaven for a gigging musician. The “D-Thing” took me a bit of working out, and I do question whether it’s worth all the messing around just to be able to tune from E to D easily, I mean it’s not hard to start with. Maybe it’ll grow on me.
As you can see in the pictures the metal “BB1200” logo plate is missing revealing the truss rod adjustment. I’ll be replacing that shortly, as well as the tail piece. For some reason the guitar has been strung up –over- the tail instead of through at some point and it’s worn off the chrome. $50 to pretty up a guitar that retailed for $3999 is fair I think.
It’s got a few war wounds. Not a surprise after four years on stage, but the finish has stood up very, very well. There are a couple of little scratches and a few more on the back, but as you can see from the pictures, considering I haven’t even tried to polish it yet, it’s looking pretty good.
Since I started writing this I’ve also had a long play through a JMP1 Marshall rig with a Sovtek Quad and it was crunchy heaven. I definitely plan to drag it to the guitar shop and punish some Marshall amps in the near future.
Well I guess that’s more than enough. Thanks for hanging in there :rockon:
Pic 1 (http://www.flickr.com/photos/ch0jin/3054929429/)
Pic 2 (http://www.flickr.com/photos/ch0jin/3054928847/)
Pic 3 (http://www.flickr.com/photos/ch0jin/3054928513/)
Pic 4 (http://www.flickr.com/photos/ch0jin/3055764796/)
Pic 5 (http://www.flickr.com/photos/ch0jin/3055764252/) It looks like it has gold hardware in this pic. It doesn't but it'd look cool I think.