Matsumoku Junior

Price

£725

We have a soft-spot for the simplicity of a single pick-up guitar, but also enjoy versatility. A single pick-up guitar needn't be the compromise you expect - OK, you're not going to be Wes Montgomery on this, but roll the tone back, adopt the Keith Richards strum position and there is more to this than meets the eye - and that is before you play with the push-pulls. This was a Korean Maison Junior - Maison were a very highly regarded small Korean manufacturer taking advantage of the stampede out of Japan in the 1990s. Not imported here in large numbers, you could be forgiven for hearing about them for the first time. They are solid, good quality guitars and beg for an upgrade. Out came the generic P-90 and in went a TV Jones PowerTron Plus - the hottest most vicious pick-up available from TV Jones. We hit the high gain channel and lost a few hours discovering how incredible this pick-up is. On a clean setting, we needed to take action. Action was taken with the addition of 2 CTS push-pulls - one to split the humbucker into a single coil, the other to give us both coils but in parallel. The coil split provides a very angry punk sound - tameable with the controls, but this is for those who don't want country twang, and don't need refined Marvin. In parallel, we calm things a little; add a tiny amount of scoop, and achieve a less aggressive tone but with no loss of presence.

So many Juniors and their ilk are compromised for intonation - playing chords up the neck requires a little string bending occasionally to sound vaguely in tune. The addition of the Hosco adjustable bridge solves this issue very well and takes nothing from the tone (despite having plenty to spare!). At the other end, we have fitted a set of very premium Gotoh SE-770 - lovely high quality open back tuners to give a nod to unaffordable Gibsons, but indicating to Gibson how good an open back tuner ought to be on an expensive guitar. We have designed 2 scratchplates for this guitar, and the lack of neck pick-up makes swapping from one to the other a matter of minutes - just a few screws. We can't decide which one we like the best so include them both. The guitar looks, feels and plays as new - it probably could do with a few signs of life - over to the next owner for that. The weight is 3.95kg, 8lbs 11oz. This was an experiment - we used this guitar to test some crazy ideas, and however much we love it here, it really should go to someone who will use it properly.