JVLesPaul

Fantastic post with perfect historical review. Folks who wax poetically over early 70's bolt neck Matsumoku hollow's and semi-hollows as Gibson killers crack me up. Are they cool guitars? Hell yeah, I've owned several. But are they high quality superior vintage instruments? Not even close. Now the later built set neck Matsumoku Riviera, Casinos, and Sheratons were and remain super high quality guitars and are gaining a following and increasing in value. They really were truly hand made with superior construction techniques such as non-kerfed solid linings which is more difficult to apply and takes longer and more precision, but provides a stronger sides but less contact area of the top and back and subsequently better resonance per some expert luthiers. Matsumoku's own brand, Westone, produced similar quality semi-hollow guitars under the Rainbow model but these weren't produced until the early 80's and had a pretty short run since they were to go under a few years later. Somewhat ironically, even in the 60's when japanese import guitars were generally kitschy crap (sorry Teisco fans) Japan had luthiers capable of building Set Neck very high quality hollow body guitars. Check out Yamaha SA line. These things were built incredibly well and most still great players some 55 years later. The pickups were an engineering marvel as well with like a p90ish sound but rounder. They were actually a humbucker but with a large main coil and much smaller second coil so no hum but able to get single coil sounds with he best of them. I don't know if anyone stole this design and makes similar boutique pups now but if they haven't they should because those pups are amazingly versatile.