The Different Strummer

Back in the early 1990s I did a few “guitar shows” for my son’s primary school classes, basically a show-n-tell with half a dozen guitars in various shapes and colors.  I’d conclude with “Swamp Thing,” the then-popular TV show theme adaptation of the Troggs’ classic.

At the end, I’d ask the kids which was their favorite guitar.  The verdict would vary except one of the finalists always included the Bond Electraglide.  Dead cool black carbon graphite and LEDs.

Yeah, man, LEDs!  I confess I was probably drawn to the Bond for much the same reasons as those kids!  I mean, what’s not to like about a unibody molded carbon graphite guitar with pressure switches read on LED displays and without frets.

Rewind that.  “Without frets?”  Curiouser and curiouser.

The Bond Electraglide was one of those weird bursts of genius in guitar history that turned into a weird bust.  The Bond in question was a Scotsman named Andrew Bond.  Bond’s original idea was for the fretless fingerboard, which he dubbed a “pitchboard.”  In a Guitar Player product review at the time we learn that Bond originally put one on an acoustic guitar way back in 1972.  For me the pitchboard is the most troublesome feature of the Bond.  Instead of inlaid metal frets, the pitchboard consists of a succession of triangular structures where the angle point serves as the tonal point of contact with the string.  Or the “fret.”  The theory is that this greatly reduces friction and thereby increases your playing speed, I think.  The feel of this design is sort of like a scalloped fingerboard.  My problem when I try to play one of these is that for some reason I have trouble navigating.  I keep overshooting the note I’m aiming for because I don’t feel the metal fret.  Maybe it’s just me.

Well it probably wasn’t just me, because, as you probably know, the Bond Electraglide didn’t take the guitar world by storm.  But then there are those LEDs.  The electronic controls on the Electraglide were designed by one Dave Siddeley.  Basically, those three rocker switches are on-offs for the three pickups, color coded red, yellow and green.  The bridge and neck pickups are humbuckers, with the middle unit being a single-coil.  The top three push-buttons on that five-button assembly are for volume, bass, and treble.  To set the level you hold them down to set from 0 to 10.  The two lower buttons switch the humbuckers in and out of phase.  Now, let’s review.  There will be a test.

1. We may have uncovered another problem with the Bond. While the controls are not difficult, there’s a lot of button pushing to do.  While staring at an LED screen.  Sort of like driving and texting.  You end up kind of figuring out a sound you like and sticking to it.  But the LEDs sure do look cool.

One other person involved with the Bond was Dave Stewart, guitarist with the Scottish duo The Eurythmics.  The guitar does have a look that went with that band’s sort of disco-y, high-tech, New Wavey style.  The Bonds were made in Scotland and distributed in the U.S. by Unicord, the company that did the Univox brand back in the day.  The Bond Electraglide was introduced in 1984 and dropped by the wayside in 1986.  They were pretty pricey, with a list price of $1,195 for a stoptail, $1,295 for a vibrato version.  They came with a transformer box, locking strap, and hardshell case.

The Bond Electraglide provides a great example of how you can overthink things when it comes to guitars.  Guitar players are notoriously conservative blokes.  Give us a threeway switch and a couple knobs.  For the more adventuresome, make it a fiveway!

Then again, those primary school kids who rocked out to “Swamp Thing” are part of the generation that today walks around with its nose in a cell phone, texting and driving.  There was a reason they always picked it as one of their favorites.  Maybe the Bond Electraglide was just way ahead of its time.  Maybe if we added a detachable cell phone to work the controls the Bond Electraglide the next big thing, complete with a dead cool black carbon graphite unibody and brightly colored LEDs.  It’d make your heart sing, it’d make everything…groovy.

Fretless Wonder from MyRareGuitars.com

Vintage 1984 Quest Atak-6 MK II Electric Guitar

I first encountered a Matsumoku guitar (I didn’t know what it was at the time) back in the early 1990s. I was hanging out with Mac and Joe at the Axe Factory in Southwest Philadelphia (long gone) after work one evening. They were just about to close down when a car pulled up to the curb and out came two guitar cases. One was a ‘70s Gibson Les Paul and the boys started to drool over it. The other was the most spectacular flametop guitar I’d ever seen, an Electra Endorser (recently profiled in Vintage Guitar Magazine). Without taking their eyes off the Paul, they sold me the near-mint Endorser for three bills. I walked out like the Chesshire Cat. Later I found out that beauty was made by Matsumoku.

Matsumoku Motto (or the Matsumoku Industrial Co., Ltd.) was founded in 1951 to manufacture sewing machine cabinets. They were located in an area with a long tradition of musical instrument making, so when the demand for guitars heated up in the early 1960s, it wasn’t so big a stretch to apply their woodworking talents to guitars. They began building guitars in around 1963.

Vintage 1984 Quest Atak-6 MK II Electric Guitar

Early Matsumoku guitars display that tentative awkwardness shared by most Japanese guitars of the time, but the workmanship is almost always a notch up compared to, say, Teisco, Kawai, or Zen-On. One of the early brands produced by Matsumoku was Cortez for Westheimer Music, the name that eventually gave us Cort guitars. By the middle ‘60s the factory was producing Arai and later Aria Diamond and Aria guitars. In around 1975 the luthier Nobuaki Hayashi managed guitar production and Arias became Aria Pro II. Meanwhile Matsumoku was producing guitars for St. Louis Music (SLM), including some, if not all, their late ‘60s Apollo line. When SLM changed its brand to Electra in 1970, the better models, at least, came from Matsumoku. Matsmoku also made the first Japanese Epiphones for Gibson beginning about this same time.

Another brand associated with Matsumoku was Univox, promoted heavily from 1968 on by the company known as Merson Musical Products, A Division of Unicord Incorporated, A Gulf+Western Systems Company. In 1975 the Merson part departed and the company became Unicord, Inc. In 1976 Unicord introduced the Westbury line, made by Matsumoku, which replaced Univox in ‘78. In 1979 and 1980 Matsumoku made the Washburn Wing and Stage Series guitars. In 1982 Matsumoku took over production of the D’Agostino Bench Mark series.

Vintage 1984 Quest Atak-6 MK II Electric Guitar

The Merson folks moved to Garden City Park on Long Island, New York, and became Musical Technologies, Inc. (MTI). This company would eventually bring Korg to the U.S. and still exists. In 1981 the Westone brand appeared in the U.S. This may have been a proprietary brand name owned by Matsumoku because, while it was appropriated by SLM as its brand name in 1984, other Westones continued to be sold outside the U.S. until the end. Anyhow, it appears that MTI began to sell Matsumoku-made Vantage guitars in 1982, at least.

Which finally brings us to Quest. With heavy metal riding high, a taste for weird-shaped guitars developed. In 1984 MTI introduced a new line of Matsumoku-made guitars called Quest by Vantage. These were a little more outré than the Westone/Vantage aesthetic, but why they felt they needed a new brand name remains a mystery. But included in the new line was the Quest Atak 6, kind of a take on the Ibanez Destroyer. In the brochure were the A-6 of laminated mahogany and the A-6TX with a bound ash body. This example has “Mark II” on the truss cover and is like the A-6TX but with a bound spruce top over a solid mahogany body. With an SN of C400578 this dates to March of 1894. Controls are volume and two tones, with the volume a push-pull coil tap.

The only brochure seen for Quests is from 1984. I own two and both are from mid-1984. If they lasted beyond that, it’s unknown at this time. In 1987 Matsumoku was purchased by the Singer Sewing Machine Co. and guitars were not in their future. It’s not clear if production ended immediately, or if they limped on until 1989 or even into 1990. At some point in the early 1990s the Vantage brand was transferred to the Samick company in Korea, mainly Gibson and Fender inspirations, sold by Music Industries Corporation of Floral Park, New York. These were certainly produced from 1995-97, and probably before and after.

Active sales of the Vantage brand have since ceased. Music Industries now rents instruments. I love the Quests, and many other Matsumoku guitars, but nothing is as sweet as that first kiss…er, Electra.

Matsumoku’s Atak Gains The Ad-Vantage (Vintage 1984 Quest Atak-6 MK II Electric Guitar) from MyRareGuitars.com