Wine coloured LP bolt on

[mondo]

Hello all. I picked up an ElDegas LP copy that weighs a ton. I traded a 50 dollar lamp for it at my friend's vintage shop. I just filed down the frets and adjusted the neck as it was bowed not warped. I replaced the bridge saddle with a spare and replaced the knobs on it. I took it to practice and saw that there was another almost identical ElD on the rack with the same wine red colour! The body on the other one is about 1/4 inch thinner than mine and is much lighter. When I pulled off the neck on mine I see that the body has a nice thick 1/2 inch maple cap and the neck is one solid piece of mahogany with a rosewood fretboard. The inlays are raised slightly but don't seem to affect playability. This thing was obviously played a lot over the years and I suspect it's from the early 70s. That's just a guess. It plays nicely and the bridge pup is nice and bright sounding compared to the darker gibson pup I have in another LP copy I modded. It sounds more vintagey. Anyway this guitar is fun to play and I'm going to record with it in a few weeks. I prefer it's tone to my Agile LP set neck with Gibson Studio pups! That's funny how a guitar that cost less than the pickup on my other guitar will sound better. I'm going to keep my eyes out for more EDs for sure!
Any info on this would be appreciated. Especially what kind of pickups "dimarzios?" they used on these and if it was a Matsu. I'll send some pics when I find my camera.

[charles]

Good score.

Sounds like yours is probably a 70s MIJ model, I might be able to comment further when you post photos.

We suspect a lot of these to be Matsumoku's but we cannot be 100% certain. Forumite Barry knows a lot about "Uncle Mats" so hopefully he'll make an appearance here .

[mondo]

It is definitely MIJ because that's stamped into the neck plate. It was a funny coincidence to find an almost identical one sitting at my jamspace. I like mine better as it's heavy and solid. I'm a fan of heavy LPs. Noswiss cheeze holes for this guy. I want a slab of mahogany with 1/2 inch of maple on top! The only thing I don't like is the thin neck. I like the 1959 necks or even the 50s LP necks. But for 50 bucks I can't squawk too much! I'm going to go play this thing now.

[mondo]

Another thing this thing sports is fret nibs on the neck binding! That is not something you typically find on a cheapo knockoff. There is no binding on the headstock just on the fretboard and on the top. The bridgeposts are the skinny ones you find on Gibsons too so I can't replace the bridge with the wilkinson style unless I tap out the post holes. I'm not going to put a lot of cash into this but I will get a new bridge and new pots for it. I like how the pickups sound so I'll leave them alone. The gotoh tuners are likely not original but they seem to be tight and it stays in tune as well as any of my grover equipped LPs.

[Barry]

Hi Mondo. Sounds like you have yourself a good quality instrument there, but it's difficult to tell much from that one fuzzy picture. From what you describe it may in fact be a 70's Mats-made guitar, most of the other good quality Japanese makers like Fuiji Gen and Kasuga came along sometime later in th 80's.
As you've noted there are high quality finish items and materials which set this apart from run of the mill knock-offs.

Without seeing the headstock I can't comment much on the tuners, but it was typical for Matsumoku to use Gotoh hardware. So if it looks original it probably is. And when you do your next string change pull out the pickups and have a look at them to see if there are any identification markings. I'm assuming these are PAF style, possibly Dimarzio's or made by Maxon Japan.

p.s. The original knobs would have been Gibson gold "top hats". I'd get rid of those Hi-Fi knobs right away!

[mondo]

The pickups have the number 290130 inked on the bottom of the base plates. No other discernable markings are visible and both pups are identical other than the mounting rings. Both pups are the same height. All of the wiring in this guitar is grey including the pickup leads. The tone caps are green chicklets and the grounding is on bus wire. The caps seem to be nice and big compared to other knockoffs.

As for the headstock, it is a lawsuit copy of the Gibby open book. The ElDegas insignia is inlaid in some kind of abalone or MOP. I can't tell if it's real or synthetic. I'm sure this guitar had a different set of tuners at some point as there are extra screw holes on the back. These tuners look newer than the rest of the guitar like they're from the 80s.

Pulling the pickups out I can see the nice thick maple cap on top which is at least 1/2 inch thick which seems to explain why this guitar has a nice bright tone. There is some Japanese writing scribbled in the neck joint cavity too.

[mondo]

I meant Pots when I said it had big "Caps".

[Barry]

Sounds good from what you've described.
With the exception of the machine heads (tuners) all appears to be original.
Play 'er and have fun!

[Frenchy]

Hey Mondo Congrats on the guitar!

50$ for one of these is a great deal. I have one in the same color, you can compare it to yours.... Here is the link:

http://www.eldegas.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=1&t=153

Cheers!

[mondo]

That wine red one you have is in really nice condition! I think it's the same one as the one at my Jam Space. There are very subtle differences between them. The headstock has a slightly different logo. On yours each letter is independent. On mine the letters all connect and the inlay is some kind of pearloid or abalone. The truss rod cover on mine has 2 screws and is a 3 ply. I think mine has a slightly thicker body. I compared it to the other one and it's about 1/4 inch thicker but it weighs a couple of pounds more which is a good thing as far as I'm concerned but others hate heavy LPs and want them under 8 lbs. I have no idea what kind of pickups are in mine. They are probably PAF knockoffs as they are much less hot than the modern Humbuckers I have made by Gibson. Nice and vintagey with a lot more treble and less muddy. You have to turn up if you want to put hair on the chords!

Does yours have a maple cap? Now I want to learn more about this thing. I am having fun playing it.

[mondo]

I just had a practice with the ElD and it was a nice surprise. I ran it through a tricked out '72 Traynor YGL3a head with a detuned Avatar 4X12 cabinet pushing 2 Celestion V30 speakers. I got a pretty close approximation of Ron Asheton from the Stooges tone on the song Search And Destroy on the high gain! Very bright and chimey. The bandmates were impressed with my 50 buck guitar sound. I'm going to record some tracks on saturday with it. I also tried out the other wine red one that was at the space. It played nice but it had a much more overwound tone with less definition of the notes. It was a bit muddy and less articulate which I find to be the case with most modern humbuckers wound over 11-12 kilohms. It would be a good metal guitar for chunky rhythm playing.

[charles]

Glad the new axe is serving you well.

[mondo]

Correction, the tone of my ElDegas is very much like James Williamson from Iggy and the Stooges album Raw Power. Ron Asheton had switched to bass on that album. I saw a recent interview with Jim Williamson where he talked about his unmistakeable sound being due to the low DCR of the bridge humbucker in his old Les Paul running through a cranked amp. This ElDegas has low output PAF type humbuckers set around 7 k ohms. I just recorded 4 songs last night and did all of the rhythm and some of the leads with this El Degas. The other guitar tracks were fleshed out with an Agile Goldtop LP with p90s that I modified. Everyone loved the sound of the ElDegas at this session and could'nt believe that this was a fifty buck guitar. I just shake my head when I think about people shelling out 2 to 5 grand on a guitar just for the logo on the headstock. I'm a keep my eyes out for more ElDegas guitars as mine is a real gem.

I am still very curious to know how one can tell if a guitar was made at the Matsumoku factory. Any info will find welcome interest here!
Thanks everyone.

[Barry]

...I am still very curious to know how one can tell if a guitar was made at the Matsumoku factory. Any info will find welcome interest here!

You're not alone. We've been trying to establish a link for a long time but so far, nothing positive, only a strong suspicion and a gut feel.

[mondo]

Well wherever it was made is really not the point. The important thing is that there are very nice sounding and playing guitars available for a small fraction of the price of a big name Guitar like Gibby or Fender. I love Japanese guitars from the 60s to the 80s and kinda take pride in not playing some overpriced piece of hardwood. I like my Korean made Agile Les Pauls too!
You would be amazed to learn that I blindfolded my good buddy who is a stalwart Gibson LP guy and plugged him into our combined stable of Humbucker Equipped Les Pauls and had him play each one a few times without being able to see which guitar he was playing. He prefered the sound and feel of my Agile AL2000 upgraded with a gibson 490T bridge pup to his own Gibson Studio!!! That Agile retails for less than 300 bucks new. He was pretty shocked when I pulled off the blindfold to see that he was holding his own Gibson which he was actually being critical of and saying it lacked tonal depth, whatever that means. Hahaha! Marketing is just manipulation to make money off suckers and people seem to love being duped because they buy into all the hype and mythology around stuff like exotic tonewoods and alnico magnets that were blessed by a witch doctor on the full moon.