Maton Musical Instruments
Maton is an Australian manufacturer of guitars and other fretted string instruments .
The company was founded in 1946 as the Maton Musical Instruments Company by Bill May and his brother Reg. Reg was a carpenter and Bill was a jazz musician and instrument repairman, and he also had experience in working with wood. Bill also ran a repair and custom guitar making business for several years.
The name Maton is made up of the English words May and Tone .
history
In the beginning, Maton produced high quality instruments for students and professional musicians with the aim of offering a good price-performance ratio . The company also experimented with the use of Australian woods. In 1960 the construction of electrical instruments and amplifiers began under the name Magnetone .
Maton established himself early on in the Australian rock scene in the late fifties. The high price of imported instruments contributed to this. Maton guitars have been played by many well-known Australian rock and pop groups, including Col Joye & The Joy Boys . The company sponsored the first Australian manufacturer of instruments the band The Strangers from Melbourne with a full set of distinctive El Toro guitars and basses while the group in the mid-1960s in the television show The Go !! Show occurred.
Today, electric guitars from Maton u. a. Used by Josh Homme, guitarist and vocalist for Queens of the Stage Age and Them Crooked Vultures. The acoustic guitars are particularly popular with fingerstyle guitarists. The Australian guitarist Tommy Emmanuel is the best known representative of this genre. He plays a number of different Maton guitars and has been instrumental in the brand's popularity since the mid-1990s.
Web links
- Official website
- Maton feature with Tommy Emmanuel on youtube.com
- Maton Museum for serial number research
swell
- Test report electric guitar Maton MS500 50th Anniversary , from GITARRE & BASS, issue 2/2011, page 100