In 1987 Matsumoku was purchased by the Singer Sewing Machine Co. If they lasted beyond that, it’s unknown at this time. The only brochure seen for Quests is from 1984.
Controls are volume and two tones, with the volume a push-pull coil tap. With an SN of C400578 this dates to March of 1894. This example has “Mark II” on the truss cover and is like the A-6TX but with a bound spruce top over a solid mahogany body. In the brochure were the A-6 of laminated mahogany and the A-6TX with a bound ash body. But included in the new line was the Quest Atak 6, kind of a take on the Ibanez Destroyer. These were a little more outré than the Westone/Vantage aesthetic, but why they felt they needed a new brand name remains a mystery. In 1984 MTI introduced a new line of Matsumoku-made guitars called Quest by Vantage. With heavy metal riding high, a taste for weird-shaped guitars developed. Anyhow, it appears that MTI began to sell Matsumoku-made Vantage guitars in 1982, at least. This may have been a proprietary brand name owned by Matsumoku because, while it was appropriated by SLM as its brand name in 1984, other Westones continued to be sold outside the U.S. In 1981 the Westone brand appeared in the U.S. This company would eventually bring Korg to the U.S. The Merson folks moved to Garden City Park on Long Island, New York, and became Musical Technologies, Inc. In 1982 Matsumoku took over production of the D’Agostino Bench Mark series.
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In 19 Matsumoku made the Washburn Wing and Stage Series guitars. In 1976 Unicord introduced the Westbury line, made by Matsumoku, which replaced Univox in ‘78. In 1975 the Merson part departed and the company became Unicord, Inc. Matsmoku also made the first Japanese Epiphones for Gibson beginning about this same time.Īnother brand associated with Matsumoku was Univox, promoted heavily from 1968 on by the company known as Merson Musical Products, A Division of Unicord Incorporated, A Gulf+Western Systems Company. When SLM changed its brand to Electra in 1970, the better models, at least, came from Matsumoku. Louis Music (SLM), including some, if not all, their late ‘60s Apollo line. Meanwhile Matsumoku was producing guitars for St.
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In around 1975 the luthier Nobuaki Hayashi managed guitar production and Arias became Aria Pro II. By the middle ‘60s the factory was producing Arai and later Aria Diamond and Aria guitars. One of the early brands produced by Matsumoku was Cortez for Westheimer Music, the name that eventually gave us Cort guitars. They began building guitars in around 1963.Įarly Matsumoku guitars display that tentative awkwardness shared by most Japanese guitars of the time, but the workmanship is almost always a notch up compared to, say, Teisco, Kawai, or Zen-On. They were located in an area with a long tradition of musical instrument making, so when the demand for guitars heated up in the early 1960s, it wasn’t so big a stretch to apply their woodworking talents to guitars. Matsumoku Motto (or the Matsumoku Industrial Co., Ltd.) was founded in 1951 to manufacture sewing machine cabinets. Later I found out that beauty was made by Matsumoku. Without taking their eyes off the Paul, they sold me the near-mint Endorser for three bills. The other was the most spectacular flametop guitar I’d ever seen, an Electra Endorser (recently profiled in Vintage Guitar Magazine). One was a ‘70s Gibson Les Paul and the boys started to drool over it. They were just about to close down when a car pulled up to the curb and out came two guitar cases.
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I was hanging out with Mac and Joe at the Axe Factory in Southwest Philadelphia (long gone) after work one evening. I first encountered a Matsumoku guitar (I didn’t know what it was at the time) back in the early 1990s. Vintage 1984 Quest Atak-6 MK II Electric Guitar
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