This vintage Maton El Toro Bass looks at first glance similar to the Danelectro Longhorn, although perhaps slightly beefier in shape. It's certainly beefier in construction having a solid Honduras Mahogany body rather then Danelectro's masonite front and back stapled to a pine frame. The El Toro Bass has a medium scale length of 32 1/2", and were produced by Maton in Australia between 1968 and 1973. According to Maton's website the El Toro bass had serial numbers from 001 to 077, which doesn't quite tally with their claim that only 45 examples were made. The example being sold on eBay has serial number 072 making it one of the last ones built, and I'm guessing dating it to 1973.
1960s Australian pop band The Strangers were Maton endorsees and used the El Toro bass plus matching guitars as can be seen in the You Tube clip below.
This bass is currently listed on eBay with a starting price of US $850.
Based in Melbourne, the Maton Musical Instrument Company was founded in 1946 by Bill May and is Australia's longest running and most successful guitar manufacturer. They pioneered the use of many Australian wood species in guitar construction.
The guitar we see pictured above is a Maton Gold Line 750. It is of set-neck construction with a slab body featuring a German carve appropriately - given the model name - picked out in gold. Apparently only 210 examples of this model were built between 1962-1963, before the design evolved into the better-known Maton Fyrbyrd.
This guitar is in superb condition and is currently being offered for sale on eBay with a Buy It Now price of $5000 (US Dollars).
For more on Maton and other guitars from down under, see Australia's own always excellent guitarnerd blog.
Here's something for your erudite readers... what is this, and who made it?
This pic is a screen grab from "Salt and Pepper", a 1968 movie starring Sammy Davis Jr and Peter Lawford. Sammy visits a groovy London club and showboats his version of Hollywood groovyness.
AND, just for reading this far, check out THIS link!
All bests, and THANKS!
Colin Griffiths Vancouver
Edit: Bertram has pointed out that it looks to be a Maton, and that we looked at the Maton Big Ben Bass over a year ago - you'll notice the similarities! - G L Wilson
Guitarz - The Original Guitar Blog - now in its 10th year!
guitarz.blogspot.com: I can only assume that when the "Astro Cows" inlay work for this Les Paul-style guitar was designed, the inspiration was the old children's nursery rhyme: "Hey diddle diddle / The cat and the fiddle / The cow jumped over the moon / The little dog laughed to see such fun / And the dish ran away with the spoon", and in particular the line about the cow jumping over the moon.
I discovered recently a cool guitar website - for some reason another one from Oz (it seems that down there to is the right place where to combine guitar passion and Internet).
Being Australian, Guitarnerd released a few interesting posts about vintage Maton Guitars, the historical Australian guitar company (I was actually trying to know more about the guitar Josh Homme played with Them Crooked Vultures on a cool concert on French TV (you'll remember that I presented here his other favorite guitar, the BelAire MotorAve)).
The last post of Guitarnerd from which I borrowed this picture is about he Big Ben bass, that is one of the coolest thing I ever saw! I won't copy this post, so the best is that you go there and read it by yourselves...
NB: There are a lot of blogs STEALING content and bandwidth. If you read this anywhere else but on guitarz.blogspot.com then you are reading a blog that STEALS content. Please support original bloggers!
RSS
