Matsumoku Frontman I

The person at the front of the show needs an instrument that really stands out. David Rusan put the Cloud into Prince's hands. Auersfeld too. Didn't do any of them any harm! Bono looked better with Waller's green Gretschercaster than he did with a standard Gretsch. Göran Malmberg was single-handedly responsible for Waterloo winning Eurovision 1974 (in my mind). But back in sleepy Norfolk and scaling this inspirational stuff down to what makes the most sense and money is in fact an issue, and cheques are not blank, we set about deciding what our particular Frontman needs instead of a pair of Peavey EXPs and a (admittedly beautiful) Tokai Love Rock. At the time, his guitarist was rocking a salmon pink Gibson and an iridescent PRS so we had some headroom. Our Frontman stood at the front of a fair few bands and covered a multitude of styles - always the vocals and waving the microphone stand around, but still a guitarist - the Frontman does the intros a lot. The few gigs I saw to get the measure of the man revealed he's only at home to the bridge pick-up and its volume control. The man needs an Esquire. So much more timeless and adaptable than a LPJr and a Kramer puts too much pressure on him from guitarists in the audience. They are all EVH-heads and demand a lot. Keeping Prince in mind, I sourced a very special Esquire from the workshops of Toshio Moridaira - a tenuous but nevertheless bonefide link to Prince as his HS Anderson MadCats came from him. Hohner was later. Out came the Bill Anderson pick-up (I know, sacriledge) and off came the rather generic tremolo (this Esquire was routed for a vintage tremolo - this concept eventually evolving into the Bill Lawrence BTOR range). Our Frontman likes a super skinny neck and they don't get much skinnier than 1980's Nagano.