Quest ATAK V

i love matsumoku guitars but was shocked at how good this guitar is. if you can live with the shape (which balances perfectly) this is close to perfection. quest branded gotoh tuners too

beautiful neck very much like a tele or strat, frets well dressed and surprisingly narrow gauge, beautiful piece of maple. stock pickups were a huge surprise they are absolutely superb, i have a selection of fine pickups in my other guitars sd jeff beck dimarzio megadrive but these vantage ones put them to shame, the wiring is great too, pull the pot for coil tapping with out of phase in the middle this is the closest i've ever got to having a strat sound in a 2 humbucker guitar

matsumoku this was only made for one year in 1984 the build and finish are excellent and the quality of the wood very apparent. i spent an hour setting it up and putting some extra springs in the trem. it plays superbly, easily as good as my old us tele

this is utterly bombproof, i bought this for my collection not having high hopes, however this has turned out to be my main guitar and honestly the best electric i've ever owned. like my beloved fender super champ i will never part with this it's a classic

sadly matsumoku one of the world's greatest guitar factories is no more

this is a staggeringly good guitar which unfortunately is extremely rare. if you see one buy it you will not be disappointed. despite it's looks it plays like a tele, you can get that fender twang but then engage the humbuckers and you have a huge rock sound. it is very versatile and beautifully made. i hope i see another one sometime for a backup

made in 1984 (the only year the guitar was made)
made in Japan
22 fret solid top H/H one tone one volume
passive Gotoh pickups
cant really tell body/fret board/neck woods type, gonna say maple for fretboard/neck
finish is a canary yellow, and i absolutely love it
body style is like something from outerspace, its got horns like a strat, but the back is almost like a stealth but flipped around and more of a U shape
bridge is string-thru body with a fixed bridge
tuners arent stock, i dunno what they are, they have a cursive R on them
it came with a case

i play Death Metal, Power Metal, Speed Metal etc and it suits me wonderfuly, the pickups give a bit of hum, but thats fine with me. i use a VOX AD30VT amp with a Cry Baby from Hell
the sound of this guitar is absolutely AWESOME!
at first i was thinking of changing the pickups, but i absolutely love them!
the guitar has a wonderful bright sound when run clean, and a bone shattering crunch when distorted, even with half gain

got the axe without strings/fine tuning keys on the bridge, the pickups were handed to me, cause they were ripped out durring some party aparently, same with the volume and tone knobs/pots
in the condition that i got it in, it sucked, but now its a diamond

it was in the house of a party animal, this guitar was beat on till it bled, then took some more beatings
it can easily withstand live playing, the hardware that i put on personaly will hold for a lifetime, the finish has been beat on, the guitar its self has been used as a hammer apparently
the strap buttons are solid, and on the back of the guitar (i love that) id do a show with this guitar and not have a backup, never broke a string, its never dropped out of tune, or anything negative

i doubt Quest would even know what this guitar is, seeing it was only made in 1984, and just for that year.

ive been playing for 11 months and this is my second guitar, my first one was a Peavey Raptor 1 and my newest guitar is a Ephiphone SG custom edition

if this guitar was stolen or lost, id break down and cry, go to my buddies uncle and buy one off him =P

ive compaired this guitar to a Dean V (not really sure of its quality) and this guitar (Quest Atak 5) kicked some serious tail!

the only thing i wish this guitar had was a floyd rose, but i dont think you could fit it on the body (the main body is pretty small)

this guitar is freaking awesome! i'd say it would be good for anything, anyone and it looks sweet to boot!

I found this guitar in a pawn shop(bought it of course).One of my definate favorites from the first site.Japanese guitar from the 80's. It has one of the coolest body shapes Ive ever seen(kind of like the flying V/dreadnought/warlock,but more like a U than V on the bottom),its like a U shape on the top of the body too.It has 24 frets.It came with a whammy bar.The colors are awesome too,the bottom is black, then toward the middle it sort of fades to like a dark red to solid red and it fades more to a lighter and lighter red, then to the top , it fades to a dark orange and at the tip top it fades to an orange/yellowish color(darkest,darker,dark,mid dark,middle,dark light,light,lighter,lightest in flame colors).

It has great sound. It's great for people that play like metallica, korn,slipknot,3 days grace,atreyu and bands like that.

It has good pickups.good chrome tuning pegs,everything is good.

This guitar will probably last a long while.The finish is great(flame colors).I can depend on this guitar.

Doesnt need repaired. I dont know nothing bout the warranty.

This guitar has the great look and performance to go with it.

Made in Japan, i believe that these things were made in mid 80ties.
Tuners are non licking gotoh-type tuner with Quest mark on them.
The neck is made of one piece with no separate fretboard, it has 22 frets. I'd say that the neck is average thick. It's a bolt on neck.
There are two humbuckers with a 3-way switch. It's got one tone and one volume knob. Both are push/pull switches. I believe that originaly there was only one push/pull swicht. I changed the original pickups to Steve Morse Dimarzios and decided to keep both push/pull switches. The original pickups were also very good, the had no make marked on them.
The bridge is a stringthrough body type. I think that this is one of the reason why the guitar quite loud acoustic sound.
The Body is x-sheped with curvy edges, extremely cool! The colour is ferrariyellow. The paint has some cracks near the neck joint, i've seen these cracks on some pictures i've seen of these things, so they might be quite comon. The body is quite light, but i have no idea about the wood. The finish is beautifull.
It comes with a shaped (weirdshaped) case with quest logo on it, cool.

As i said the acoustic sound is quite loud even if the body is light. The Morse pickups have a strong and full sound. The original picups were no toys either. With the two push pull switches this thing is very verisitile from funk to heavy.

Excelent, the neck joint has a strange construction wich i haven't seen on any other guitar. When the frets stop at 22nd fret and the neck pickup is virtualy connected to the neck the bottom of the neck continues under the neck pickup. This brings the body further away from the neck and you can easily reach the higher frets on the board. The action and setup is good, easy to play.
The only problem is a little fretwear.

It seems that these things were made from quality parts, still working after about 20 years.

EXCELENT! I've had the beauty for about 3 years and have played with it quite alot. The only problem with it is that you relly need to have attitude to go on stage with it, well that's no problem... at least it's not the guitars problem. But what i love about it is the fact that you can play almost any kind of music with it and still sound and mostly look cool, from heavy, to funk, to anything. If it were stolen i'd star desperatly looking for another QUEST ATAK V. Coolest guitar i've ever had (even cooler than my Jem 7RB).

Year: who knows
Frets: 22
Top: Solid
Controls: 1 volume 1 tone (push/pull switch for coil-tap)
Pick-ups: 2 split-coil humbucking pick-ups (factory stock)
Body wood: who knows
Neck: ebony-like material (some ebonized wood copy of ebony)
Finish: burst (yellow-orange-red-black-nice)
Body style: warped mutation of a cross between a flying v, an explorer, and a jackson styled strat, kinda weird but cool
Bridge: fixed, strat style bridge, no tremolo
Tuners: stock non-locking quest tuners, stays in tune fairly decent
Neck/Scale: seems to be a standard scale as a strat, fatter, wider neck than a strat with jumbo frets, but comfortable
came wit a beat up hard case, hey, I bought it for $90 canadian when I was 13 years old and I got 4 extra sets of strings, what can I really say, right?

Actaually, I haven't picked the thing up in about 3 years because it has been sitting in it's case, disassembled, waiting to be reconstructed and repaired (a hole where a screw bolted into the neck on this bolt on neck guitar became stripped, 2 parts from my own misuse and negligence, and 2 parts it was in rough shape when I got it) but serving from memory when I last played it when I was 16, it sounded good, but then anything sounds good when you're 16. I used it through an old Fender Eighty-Five amp for three years, the last two years doing gigs 2 nighta a weekend nearly every week, and it sounded good, and was very versatile for what I wanted from it, considering my abilities and needs. It could actually give some decent tele tones in single coil mode and cool sustain in hum mode. Not nosiy at all, if memory serves me right and I played it without a backup ever, but then how many guitars can you afford at 16 years old, especially if your budget only allowed for the $90 you had to put forth to buy the guitar in the first place. Variety of sounds was good also, could eek out a decent randy rhodes sound which was passable, and all the way to the other end of the music spectrum a pretty good CCR/ country rock sound. I tell ya, that little coil tap switch used to come in handy a whole lot. Again for $90, what can I say eh?

I imagine that this was a fairly inexpensive guitar to buy brand new, considering this guitar had 3 previous owners by the time I acquired it, that I knew of. This makes my opinion in this area to be a highly rated on. The burst finish looked cool and the guitar seemed to be balanced well (the headstock didn't hit the floor as soon as I took my hands off the neck, to put it that way). The guitar stayed in tune quite well and it played well also, as I remember. The older friend I bought it from had it set-up as well as could be I imagine since he had owned many guitars besides this one and this guitar was coincidentally his first guitar as well. Nothing seemed to far out of whack or banged up. My limited knowledge now, let alone what I knew then makes it difficult to say too much, but I did like this guitar a whole lot. Stayed in tune well, sounded great and punchy (and versatile), looked far out and felt quite solid. Put it this way, I liked it!

It played live for 2 full years nearly non stop, two night a weekend, every weekend on average and never quit on me until I decided to quit IT. The hardware seemed intact. Tuners stayed in tune well and the pots were never scrathy. Saddles were a little dirty, but that's to be expected. Finish wasn't worn when I bought it and never did while I used it. I depended on it and had peace of mind (maybe because I didn't have anything else or I didn't know any better, I dunno, he he).

Can't say anything against them even if I did need service. No one seems to know where this company came from and no one ever recognized the name (actually, anybody who reads this who does have any info on this company, or owns a guitar such as I've described, I'd appreciate it if you'd drop me a line). Never came into contact with customer support.

Anybody who sees this guitar ANYWHERE, BUY IT or let me know where you saw it. If you have one already, HANG ON TO (or sell it to me hehe). I abused mine, regret it, want another and can't find one anywhere. It was a great little guitar. Great to look at, fun and comfortable to play, a great little back-up, and always gets a double take from anyone who's never seen one before, especially if they see it in the case! I've been searching for another and I really hope I find another. I own a Fender Super Strat Deluxe, a Gibson Les Paul Standard, a Fender standard tele, and an old shitty mansfield strat rip-off, and 3 ovation acoustics. To be honest, if I were to find another in great shape, I'd use a Quest over all these (on stage that is!) The great thing I found with this guitar was that it was so cheap that I didn't care if I had use it for batting practice to keep drunks off of the stage or dropping it because it was so cheap, yet felt terrible about dropping it at the same time because it sounded so great at such little cash. Wish I had the know how to put it back in shape for the stage. After all, what amateur like myself wants to take a 2 or 3 thousand dollar guitar on stage which is a wonderful instrument when you have to worry about getting it wrecked when you can have a little machine like this that'll serve the same purpose and sound passable in omparison to the big names. The way I look at it, unless you're making $10,000 a gig, use a cheapo if it serves your purpose and gets the job done. If it stays in tune, plays good, sound good, works fine and is cool to look at, what more do you want....for 90 bucks?