'70's Acoustic El Degas's May Be Westone in Disguise!

[Barry]

I currently own 4 beautiful electric guitars produced by the legendary Japanese Matsumoku factory: 3 Westones and 1 Vantage. The workmanship is just superb, which is why they are becoming more and more collectible.

I am often on the westone.info site doing research and finally got around to looking at their listings for Westone acoustic guitars which were made in the 1970's by Matsumoku. And guess what? There are several models there which look suspiciously identical to some of the postings made here by our El Degas forum members!

In particular there are some which sport that unmistakable trapezoidal insert on the back such as on the El Degas M10,
http://www.westone.info/w40.html
http://www.westone.info/w1819.html
http://www.westone.info/mw40.html

and there are a few which show the thin vertical mosaic inlay up the back as well.
http://www.westone.info/mw30.html
http://www.westone.info/mw20.html
http://www.westone.info/w20.html
My GB25 has that feature.

To my eye the head stocks on these are also the same as many of the El Degas posts. However, all the models listed appear to relate mostly to Martin or possibly Fender acoustics, I don't see any based directly on Gibson models such as my GB25 (Dove) or the GB29 (J200 Jumbo).
BUT I have my suspicions that these are also Matsumoku made, just because of the age, the origin, and the quality!.

For those trying to get a better fix on the model your guitar is based on and the possible manufacturer have a look here ('70's and MIJ only):
http://www.westone.info/indexacoustic.html
Happy sleuthing!

[charles]

Some good detective work there, Barry. You're probably correct that some El Degas and Westone acoustics were both built by Matsumoku - it's no secret that the "major players" in 70's Japanese instrument production made instruments for just about every brand name in the era at some point or another... continuing on to today (some of the remaining factories still produce instruments with tons of brandnames on the headstocks).

But, akin to another couple of posts I've made (viewtopic.php?f=2&t=76&p=400#p386 & viewtopic.php?f=2&t=76&p=400#p400), the "El Degas", "Westone", etc brandname that's stamped, inked, or inlaid into the headstock is the ends; and the means is the company doing the actual manufacturing. Two different companies may have ordered and imported similar instruments built to their specifications from the same manufacturer, but I think the connection between them stops there. Great manufacturing certainly has its own "signature" - it's very cool to spot great Matsumoku instruments with all sorts of names on the headstocks.

Have a great weekend.

[Barry]

...Great manufacturing certainly has its own "signature" - it's very cool to spot great Matsumoku instruments with all sorts of names on the headstocks....

It sure is, "Uncle Mats" was the original white label manufacturer for people like Arai & Aria Pro electric guitars.
And the list of names appearing on other headstocks is as long as my arm! They even made well known names such as Epiphone in the 70's.
For a really good historical background on Arai guitars and the connection to Matsumoku (and potentially El Degas electrics) see this informative article scanned from Guitar Buyer magazine November 2006:
http://www.matsumoku.org/temp_pages/ara ... 2aria1.jpg
http://www.matsumoku.org/temp_pages/ara ... 2aria2.jpg
http://www.matsumoku.org/temp_pages/ara ... 2aria3.jpg
http://www.matsumoku.org/temp_pages/ara ... 2aria4.jpg