Maton Flamingo

Small, thin body with a very severe cutaway on the treble side. Thin set neck with Fenderish headstock. Possibly all maple.

Two single coil pups in metal casings. Tone and volume control. Toggle switch that looks like a small chrome tank turret for each pup and in-between position.

Originally had vibrato tailpiece with a large thick Bigsbyish arm. This was removed and lost when the bolt holding it on broke.

Refinished (poorly by my brother) decades ago. Once a kind of scarlet, then (I think) a blechy green and finally a dark transparent varnish.

This was my first electric when I was a teenager. I played it through a cheapo transistor amp and a cheapo but effective fuzzbox made by a company that also handled bbq equipment. It actually sounded great that way, very big thick distorted tone on the neck pickup.

Then I lost the fuzzbox and played it clean (early 80s when being rockist and guitar-heroic was an embarassment) but still pretty much liked what I heard, especially played with a slide. Again, the neck pickup is very creamy (almost like a hollow body). The inbetween position has a pleasant Gretschy twang. The bridge pickup is pretty characterless on the higher strings but can give the lower strings a rich spy movie twang. All up the clean sound suffers from inconsistency.

It can't compete with my Strat as a normally played guitar but it still makes a rich sounding slide guitar. I keep it in standard tuning and bring it out for songs that my lap steel can't quite get to. The 6 rating is for the fact that outside of this application there's very little I find useful about the sound.

This was originally a cheap guitar for the teen market in Australia's 60s guitar band boom. The vibrato was always a little too loose feeling (compared to a Bigsby's intentional stiffness) and now has been decomissioned (you don't need it for slide playing). The pickups have aged pretty well and give out a creamy mellowness. The neck is easy to play but marred by my brother's inept refinishing job (it's slightly but noticably lumpy here and there) which unfortunately extended to the fingerboard which time has injured. Basically, it has lasted longer than its makers intended but not as well as a more sturdily built instrument like a Fender or even a different model Maton from the same time (I've played a 60s Ibis and Sapphire which were both great). It is currently enjoying a dignified light-duty grazing retirement which asks only that it moo now and then.

See above. Time has not been kind to this budget model Maton.

Actually, I did have to call Maton about this one. It was borrowed for a VERY LONG TIME by a friend and recently returned to me minus a lot of the bits. The good folk at Maton were patient with me and supportive, selling me some parts that, while not stock (for a guitar that hasn't been made since 1965!) but compatible. They wished me luck which indeed I had with the person I took it to for some reconstructive surgery. So they are high in my estimation.

I've been playing since the 70s and my main electric guitar is a 2005 American Series Strat which puts this gentle old rocker of a Maton into shady obscurity as far as build and sound quality go. The Flamingo, however, has too much sentimental value for me to even consider parting with it. No fresh faced snapshot could deliver so much immediate warmth. I can't remember hearing what it was like as a new guitar but what it has retained or has matured on it (that neck pickup!) is pleasing. The only replacements for this are considered vintage and don't have its history with me. It's thus irreplaceable.

20 something frets (i seldom go past 15 anyway). I got this guitar in 1974 for Aus $70. My first elctris. Single V/C, single tone. 3 way selector. Now fitted with seymor Duncan humbunckers, new machine ehads, original tremelo (i dont use it though), new frets. I have resprayed it twice. Still have all the original hardware in a box somewhere.

New pickups good. It now has a GK@ midi pickup attached, and runs through a Roland guitar synth. I still use the guitar sound as well though. I play in a church band every week with it. It looks wierd, but feels great. I can play it all day and not get tired. Rating is for now - original a bit thin. Hard to remember though. The sounds now is heavily processed, crate pre amp, boss floor unit, acoustic simulator, and roland guitar synth in parallel.

The action was always good. The finish is a bit road weary. I have worn it down to the wood where my belt buckle goes. It is rock solid in every other way.

I have had it for 30 years now, play it every week, and it still feels great. Never had it repaired.

Maton is just up the road (Victoria Australia). I have an acoustic electric of theirs as well. They have done a bit of work for me in the past. It was all good.

My guitar was made in 1964 in Melbourne Australia. It only has 21 frets (bit of a pain sometimes) and originally came with two single coil pickups. It has a single cutaway body which is very thin and light. It is a strange looking guitar but always gets attention when I play it in public. Originally it was plain white with a red pickguard but I was in the studio with it and the engineer stood on my lead and ripped the socket out of the guard breaking it into several pieces. I have a clear perspex pickguard on it now. Originally it had a tremolo which I removed and replaced with a LP style bridge. I replaced one of the pickups with a Seymour Duncan mini-humbucker (it fit into the hole in the original pickguard) and changed the machine heads with a vintage-style set. I redid the wiring and changed the pots but kept the original pickup selector. It came with the original case but it is falling apart and held together with gaffa tape. It looks awful and needs some restoration but that really doesn't bother me. The ratings that I have given it apply to it as it is now.

In all honesty with its standard features this guitar sounded great but was not practical as it went out of tune very quickly and as soon as you switched on the distortion it fedback something shocking. The original pickups do sound great without distortion especially if you are after the retro sound. I really wanted to use it on stage though and with the new bridge and machine heads and new pickup (I changed the wiring and the pots as well) it is truly a superb guitar. The SD really rips clean or dirty. I am not a sound freak and whatever sounds good on the night sounds good to me and I can always get a good sound out of it. I play mostly rock style and love to crank it up with some delay and flange on it. I play through a Marshall stereo rackmount setup and the Maton combines well with the SD and gives the sound some nice retro colour.

By the time I got this guitar in 1979 the standard hardware had stopped functioning properly. Some of it was due to the treatment it had received but it wasn't an expensive guitar when it was new so the hardware wasn't great quality. The bridge/tailpiece was terrible and the machine heads were totally stuffed. Having said that I think it was probably quite well finished when new for a guitar of that price range. By far the outstanding feature of this guitar is the action and neck. I think this is the reason that Maton have stayed in business so long. Even for an inexpensive guitar like the Flamingo the neck is superb. I can honestly say that I have never played a guitar with a better action or neck and anyone who plays it is totally amazed by it. Because of this I give this guitar a 10 rating even with the other problems it had.

This guitar is 36 years old and has survived some rough treatment and still the neck is great. This guitar will survive for at least another 36 years. I have used it live heaps and (unfortunately) it has been knocked over and dropped quite a few times. The finish is deteriorating but you can only see wood in one place and it was like that in 1979 when I bought it. I didn't use it live really until I fixed up the hardware because in its original condition it wouldn't stay in tune and the intonation kept going out. I have used it (by accident - left my other guitars at home) a number of times without backup. With the new machine heads and bridge it really stays in tune. In fact a couple of times I went 2 months without playing it and it was still in tune when I pulled it out of the case.

I have dealt with Maton on a number of occasions to get background info on this guitar and on other guitars and they have probably the best Customer Service I have experienced. I rang them up to ask them for a replacement cover for the neck adjustment screw and ended up faxing a picture of my guitar with the serial number. They were able to tell me when it was made (1964) and how much it sold for originally (can't remember that sorry). They even faxed me a copy of the original sales brochure. The replacement part only cost 5 bucks too.

This was my first guitar and I learned to play on it (that means I have been playing for 21 years). It was also made the year I was born so I have a real soft spot for it. If it was stolen I would be very upset but I guess I would replace it with another old Maton. I am proud to own Maton guitars being Australian and also have an EM325C acoustic. I was pretty chuffed to see a whole wall of Matons in a shop in Rome, Italy and really hope that they can do well overseas. Personally I think their acoustics shit on the Takamines at the same price range. If I can ever afford to get myself an 'expensive' electric I think I will try and buy one made by an Australian luthier. We have some great guitar makers in Australia and some of them are just working away in small workshops out in bush but really producing some great guitars.

1962, made in Melbourne Australia. 24 frets, 1 volume knob, 1 tone knob, 3-way selector knob, 2 hideous prehistoric humbuckers, big chunky coil-mounted whammy bar. Everything on this guitar is stock, nothing has been changed or done to it since 1962 to the best of my knowledge. No idea what kind of wood the thing's made of, but it's pretty heavy for a small thin solidbody so it's not balsa. Candy apple red with white face plate, the finish is holding up surprisingly well and it looks cool. Single cutaway, overall the body shape is kind of like a big kidney bean. Neck is pretty fat, and of a piece with the body of the guitar. The years haven't been too unkind to it, but it ain't no Gibson. The nut is plastic and the machine heads are cheap & nasty beyond your worst imagineable nightmares. Together with the pseudo Bigsby-style bridge, they make the thing almost impossible to tune for more than 20 seconds. In terms of features the guitar is, er, a piece of history (i.e. interesting junk), but that's not why I love it......read on.

I play mostly 60s garage rock in my band, but also go in for ultra-lo-fi bedroom studio reel-to-reel experiments in the vein of early Residents, early Devo, Sentridoh, that kind of thing. I use a Boss Turbo Overdrive, Boss Super Distortion Feedbacker (what a gimmick THAT pedal is....but the distortion sounds great) Boss Digital Delay, ancient Vox Wah-Wah and the whole rig goes through a Laney Pro Tube Lead 100. Clean, you get a tinny rattly chunka-chunka-chunka from the bridge pickup (slightly weedy, but not bad if rhythm is your thang; it reminds me of Sterling Morrison's choppy efforts on the Velvets' first 2 albums), a surprisingly rich jazzy sound from the neck pickup, and with both of them it sounds OK but I prefer one or the other.....more character that way. The clean sounds are pretty fine considering it's such a trashy guitar, but distortion is really its forte. Again, the bridge pickup is a bit anaemic: nice buzzing, cutting distortion with plenty of attack, but a little soft and you get feedback problems if you try to compensate with volume. I tend to use this setting for studio work more, where I don't have to worry about loudness. But the bridge pickup is a killer. You get this big, wet, throaty roar, sounds like a swarm of killer bees, not unlike Ed Kuepper's SG tones on the first Saints album (I'm Stranded....any aspiring punk has to check that one out). I love that sound, it's really distinctive, really turns heads (or flattens em) and I've never been able to get anything like it from much more reputable kick-ass guitars (Les who???) Overall this is a surprisingly versatile guitar, and the fact that you can't tune the bastard doesn't really bother me coz I kind of like my music all twisted and bent out of shape.

No idea about how this thing was originally set up....like I said, it's probably all original and I've never done anything to it, even though the hardware is crusty as hell and it snaps crackles & pops like a shortwave radio. Pots are noisy, pickup selector is loose, nut is worn.....no doubt it could benefit "musically" from a bit of tweaking, but for what I do with it, it suits perfectly. Also I like the fact that it really offends serious humourless axe purists, and I wouldn't want to change a thing. Fortunately the input jack is tight as a drum and strap buttons are fine.

This guitar has been to hell & back and it just hangs in there....it's been gigging with me for about 12 years on and off, gets chucked around and casually abused, but never lets me down. I guess that's partly because I don't expect a lot from it in the way of technical excellence - but still, I do make fairly rigorous musical demands of it, and it meets them every time. I also have a 73 Telecaster Deluxe, which I use for more conventional playing, and it is a worthy beast - but I don't have the same affection for it as I do for the Maton. If you happen to be Al Di Meola, or some coked-out Steely Dan session player, then this won't be your main instrument. But if you like to explore the outer reaches of fucked-up sonic mayhem (while still remaining faithful to some kind of rock & roll ethos - we're not talking Stockhausen here), then get hold of a Maton Flamingo if you see one. (Incidentally Maton have just released a new solidbody electric, a reissue of the old Mastersound, with revamped features. It's supposed to be pretty nice; I played one in a shop the other day and it felt a bit lightweight but you never know......we could be about to witness a Maton electric renaissance).

None of this applies.....I did call Maton a few months ago to ask about their new solidbody electric and when it might appear, and they were very helpful and chatty. I got this lovely 50-year-old Mum on the line who really knew her shit. They seem approachable but I haven't had to deal with them regarding the Flamingo.

No further comment.....