Operation: Maton Wedgtail

matonneck436b

This neck will live again! Some way, some how…

Before I joined my band Sixfthick there was a guitar player who liked to destroy axes. One of his victims was a Maton Mastersound (poor thing never knew what hit it! *sniff*) and by the end all that remained of this once proud rock beast was a neck, half a pickguard with a pickup still attached and two pieces of firewood that used to be it’s body. The neck was salvaged by Fred the drummer and kept in his garage and finally made it’s way to me upon the condition that I resurrect it.

I started thinking of what the body should be. An easy option would be to buy a Tele or Strat body blank but that didn’t really appeal to me. I wanted something a little more unique. It was around this time that Tym Guitar’s were building my TByrd bass, so I thought it would be cool to have a guitar version. I sketched up an idea and modernised it a little by sharpening some points to make it a little more SG-like.

tbyrd

I thought it turned  out pretty well. I was all set to give Tym’s the plans to make me the body until I saw a Maton Wedgtail (correct spelling!) at a rock ‘n roll memorabilia exhibition in Brisbane. I was amazed that this awesome looking guitar was a Maton.

WEDGETAIL1968

I did some research and found that they were one of the rarest and most sought-after vintage Maton guitars. Only 110 of them were made between 1968 and 1973. The originals were like the guitar in the photo above, with massive horns and a big Bigsby.

MeMeMe_maton

Here is Aussie band MeMeMe with a beautiful red Wedgtail.

In the 70’s the body was refined a little. I found a photo of a left handed 70’s example on a website and thought that the lefty body was PERFECT. It just looked so cool with the lower horner longer than the top one. Sort of like my Iceman or a Gibson Explorer (or a Mosrite). Plus the pickup selector sat where a Les Paul selector would sit. All that would needed to be changed is the position of the volume & tone knobs.

wedgetail_side

And here is an impossibly rare bass version… *droolz*

wedgetail_bass

I quickly sketched up an illustration to see how it would look with the Maton neck I had. I slanted it’s ass a little so that it wasn’t so square shaped and the guitar lent forward a little, like a Jazzmaster. I added a Bigsby, plus thought mini Firebird humbuckers would be good pickups for it. They’d sound great and would make the guitar look like a real vintage Wedgetail, which is what I wanted. I also took one tone knob off as I didn’t think I needed two, plus the area where the knobs are was pretty cramped. I was pretty frikken’ happy with the finished result!

tymwedgetail

Tim from Tym’s says he’s got a bit of time now to build the body, so I’ll keep you posted on it’s progress.