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!
On the previous post I put a link to a video to show Homme's Maton but this video was erased so I replaced it with another one from the same concert but with the BelAire...
So here is the Maton, and even better you can see John paul-Jones playing a Manson bass mandolin (I didn't even know bass mandolins existed until 30 minutes ago... If you'd asked me, I would have thought of the ENORMOUS contrabass balalaika I saw last week played by a Russian street band, not of rock legend playing progressive stoner rock...).
Anyway, you can read a good article about Hugh Manson's guitars making here.
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!
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!
Harrison guitar set for auction: A guitar played by Beatle George Harrison in 1963 is expected to fetch more than £100,000 at a London auction. The guitar is an Australian-built Maton, which was loaned to Harrison whilst he was having his Gretsch Country Gentleman fixed.
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