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Maton Goldline 750

A beautifully restored example of the rare Maton Goldline 750

Earlier this year I posted a photo of my black Maton Goldline EG75, which has become one of my favourite guitars. The great neck, fantastic pickups and of course the cool looks mean it gets a lot of playing time.  A few months ago I put an ad out that I was looking for some Maton pickups. I got a response from a lovely guy named Andrew saying he had some pickups from a Maton Flamingo along with a Bigsby. I thought it strange that a Flamingo would have a Bigsby (they usually have Japanese made Milton vibratos) so I asked him to send me a photo. What he sent was photos of a very trashed Goldline 750, with the Flamingo headstock.

Andrew had experimented with it over the years, routing it for humbuckers and stripping the paint. But thankfully he’d kept the original pickups and Bigsby bridge, so we agreed on a price and I bought the lot. I knew it had potential.

The Bigsby went on to my 60’s Maton MS500 (which will be featured in an upcoming story) as this Goldline will be looking brand new, which means it’ll be getting a brand new Bigsby setup. I handed it over to Matt’s Guitar Service and a few months later… this is the result.

Matt is easily one of the best guitar restorers I’ve seen. This guitar looks as fresh as the day it came out of the Maton factory in 1962. The gold and white nitro paint looks absolutely stunning… I know Maton Fyrbyrds are known as the coolest looking electric Maton, but I think this has them beat. To add the extra bit of gold, I got Matt to add a Gretsch-like gold guard instead of the red that it would’ve originally had. I’m so glad I did… it just looks amazing. Matt also found some original style knobs which suit it perfectly. His attention to detail is awesome.

As per the earlier EG75, the Goldline 750 has the german carve with the gold accents. Matt even used the original straight screws for the pickguard, plus drilled the little marker holes. Attention to detail, folks.

The headstock is why I was chasing one of these… I’d been drooling at that “enthusiastically” priced example on ebay for years, so I was stoked to finally own one. Matt got the gold Maton logo remade perfectly and even tracked down some NOS tuners.

Unlike my black EG75 which has the Maton branded Moody made Tri-sonic pickups, the later Goldline 750 has the Maton made Apollo black strip pickups which are quite different. The Tri-sonics are quite mellow and warm sounding, while the black strips are pretty spanky. Less jazz, more surf. Between the two, they’ve a great range of sounds.