Maton Deluxe (Jazzmaster)

A rare precursor to the modern Mastersound reissue… the Maton ‘Deluxe’.

On my recent visit to Adam Cole’s workshop, which I talked about in my last story, I noticed some guitars that he had hanging on the wall. One that caught my eye was a white Fender Jazzmaster looking guitar with a red tortoiseshell scratchplate, cream P-90’s and a black Fender headstock with a big Maton ‘M’ logo on it. Unfortunately it was hanging about 6 metres off the ground so I couldn’t snap a photo of it with my iPhone, but I asked Adam what the story was. He said that when he was gearing Maton up for making the Mastersound reissue, they needed to test out their new CNC machine. This was before they’d created the CAD drawings for the Mastersound, so instead they used a Jazzmaster CAD file which was at hand. These were never meant to be developed as a production Maton model… just used as test beds for the new electric guitar division machinery. They ended up making 6 Maton Jazzmasters, one of which Adam still has and another which is this sweet looking red example.

Where Adam’s used P-90’s, this one uses Mastersound pickups. The stop tail piece and tune-o-matic are the same on both.

The headstock logo is different though. Where Adam’s has the big ‘M’ found on Fyrbyrds and Flamingos, this one has ‘Maton Deluxe’.

It’s a beautiful piece of work. The neck has a ebony fret board on a stunning birds eye maple neck, fitted with the Fender-correct Kluson tuners.

I didn’t get a chance to play Adam’s, but I’m figuring it would’ve been pretty sweet. In any case, it’s in interesting insight into the development of the reissue Mastersound.

Thanks again to Adam for sharing this info with guitarnerd, and Raul for the great photos.