Help identifying guitar

Hi Everybody,
I just joined this forum after my wife bought me this $15.00 yard sale special. The neck plate has Matsumoku 2050704 Made In Japan on it. I believe maybe it is a Westone Paduak II. It appears that the two tone controls were removed and the input jack moved to the second tone control position. The yellow paper is where one tone control was and the green paper is where I believe the input jack was originally. The pickups have 53 stenciled on the back of them. From the little information that I can find I would have thought they would have 45 on them, plus they are black and in the pictures I have found they are white. Anyway, any help in identifying this guitar and if anybody knows the correct wiring, pots, etc., I would really appreciate it. I am going to try to get the paint off and restore it. Thanks for your help.

Bruno


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Great score - It looks like a Paduak to me. Well done!!

Hoax

Looks like a Paduak that someone sprayed black. I personally like the MMK53's better than the MMK 45's. I'm sure you could make a few bucks on the pickups alone if you wanted.

I've seen them with black pups before, they did them with both.
How many wires you got coming out of the pups? and what colours?

Only looks like 3 in the pics. If you want a set of 45's 4 wired up I;ll swap you for the 53's.
That's if you want to restore it. You'll need PEQ conrols, hence a 4 wired pup.
If you don't want PEQ a pull/push switch does the same thing. Series/parallel switching.

Quite a rare guitar

To me thats a fab buy, well worth restoring.

I'll echo what's been said already BrunoB. That's a terrific score!
Underneath all that ugly black paint is less ugly Paduak
Enjoy!

.... only marginally less ugly!! Great score; restore it!! Keep the 53s in it as they may well have been OEM!!

Great find. I am certain you will find some nice wood underneath the black paint. Good luck with the restoration and thanks for the pics. Keep us posted on the progress.

corsair wrote:.... only marginally less ugly!! Great score; restore it!! Keep the 53s in it as they may well have been OEM!!

Better than a pointy thang!

Not if they only have 3 wires??

The pickups only have 3 wires. A white one, a red one, and the bare one. I'm a little electronically challenged. So did the Paduak II have 4 wires and the tone controls were push/pull for series/parrael? Is that the PEQ that Westbone was referring to? Thanks guys.

Bruno

Looking at yours it's obviously been messed with.

PEQ worked on a stacked pot turning from centre(series) to fully clockwise(parallel)
Turning from centre to anticlockwise acted like a normal tone control. They had a centre detent.

It seems most likely your pups have been changed as you've only red + white plus common.
Here's a link.
http://www.westoneguitars.net/wp-content/uploads/2011/05/071.jpg

You can have the same effect with a pull/push control but no gradual change, gradual change didn't work all that well anyway. Still can be done though with a stacked pot. Pull/push is just an option but you'll need 4 wires plus a bare(sheild, common,earth)

Wow, what a great find. Excellent price :!: :!: I didn't know they had 53's in 1982. Should be a very cool project, have fun with it.

BrunoB, in case you haven't seen it already here is a link to some info on our website: Paduak

And concerning restoring the PEQ, it occurred to me that Paul Reid Smith uses a similar 'varitone' type of system which might serve as a replacement. I've only come across it in trying to sort out a customer's botched attempt at installing some EMG's. We do have one working PRS in the shop with the same circuit but I've never installed one. Anyone have any direct experience with this control? Damian?

Barry wrote:BrunoB, in case you haven't seen it already here is a link to some info on our website: Paduak

And concerning restoring the PEQ, it occurred to me that Paul Reid Smith uses a similar 'varitone' type of system which might serve as a replacement. I've only come across it in trying to sort out a customer's botched attempt at installing some EMG's. We do have one working PRS in the shop with the same circuit but I've never installed one. Anyone have any direct experience with this control? Damian?

No direct experience, but I believe it uses a rotary switch to move through series and parallel modes on the humbuckers.

The Seymour Duncan website has a fabulous collection of wiring diagrams for just about any configuration from the simple one knob to the supremely complex and ultra-flexible.

I wired my strat using a hybrid of a couple of their diagrams - first tone knob controls neck and middle, second controls bridge (where you desperately need it but where Fender has not seen fit to allow for 60+ years), and a push/pull on the second tone to turn the bridge pickup on or off. So I can have all 3 pickups on at once (5-way position neck/middle position + pull-up on tone knob) or bridge and neck (5-way neck position + pull up on tone knob) like a TELE. And with the push/pull down, the 5-way is just a 5-way. I never really liked or used the bridge pickup on strats until I put a tone knob on it. Pretty neat IMHO.

Sorry to hijack the thread.

The original type 'varitone' was just a rotary switch going through different capacitors. BB King style 335.
Don't know about the PRS switching. Presume 'varitone' would be something similar??? or it'd be a phase switch.

I've got an axl bass that has tone controls with centre detent. They seem to work similar to the peq controls. Next time I get the cover off I'll see if I can get any more info on them.

$15? You got a deal my friend.

If you're into wood grained, coffee table looking guitars, then refinish it. The black does look bad.

I quite like the black . Sort of 1970s MFI unit look (that is possibly Anglocentric)

What about the chip in the fretboard? Is that an easy fix?

The neck is not chipped. I think somebody had solvent and grime on their finger and touched the neck. It is like a fingerprint that took the varnish off and stained the neck. I will see if I can get the stain off.