Page from Yamaha catalogue, showing Takahiro Matsumoto MG-M signature model.
But during the mid-90's, Tak relied less & less on his MG-M. He seemed to have abandoned the Floyd histrionics too.
Tak Home > Guitars
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Very early on in his career, Tak got a sponsorship deal with Yamaha.
In the "Off The Lock" booklet, you can see him striding around in shoulder
pads carrying a Yamaha MG-M. Functionally, it's a fairly typical
super strat, hum-single-hum, Floyd Rose style trem, basswood body, maple
neck, 22 frets. But it doesn't look like a super strat, it looks
like a spaceship. Very futuristic. Very B'z. This was
a surprisingly affordable signature model guitar - RRP of Y75 000 for the
plain model, and Y85 000 for the graphic finish model (with slightly different
pickups). Other Yamaha signature model guitars tended to start at
Y120 000 and go up. AFAIK these guitars were never available outside
Japan. I don't know if they are still in production or not, but they
can still be seen occasionally for about Y60 000 or so.
Page from Yamaha catalogue, showing Takahiro Matsumoto MG-M signature model. But during the mid-90's, Tak relied less & less on his MG-M. He seemed to have abandoned the Floyd histrionics too. |
You can see an incomplete
list of some of his guitars on the official website.
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Photo of Tak & his signature Les Paul. The announcement on Gibson's site. More information on the Being Music Fantasy site. My translation of above information. What is different about Tak's Les Paul from a conventional Les Paul? Precious little. The pickups are a new design - "Burstbuckers" - made to Tak's specs, with the classic zebra cream/black bobbins. The electronics & hardware are entirely conventional. The finish is fairly radical - the top of the guitar is fluorescent "canary" yellow, all other surfaces are very dark brown, almost black. The yellow is taken from Ferrari cars. You can't see clearly on the photo, but on the upper bout, just above the fingerboard, the name "Tak Matsumoto" is written in black italic script. The other big difference is the price - it costs half a million yen. That's one fooking expensive guitar - a lot of money to pay for essentially a fluoro paint job. (Immediately after its release, Rhino - some cheap derivative manufacturer of unknown origin - put out a cheap and nasty copy of this guitar, but it was so nasty it didn't even have a set neck, just a bolt-on. Y15 000?? - maybe OK as a first guitar for a Tak wannabe?) It is fairly exlusive though, as only 90 of the Gibson Custom Shop guitars were built, and you get a special authorisation certificate signed by Tak himself. Now there's an interesting story about the Burstbucker. It turns out that Gibson is selling them to everyone now, and the new Gary Moore signature model Les Paul is also using Burstbuckers. As I gather, Japanese guitarists were getting custom wound humbuckers, they would have one coil with less turns than the other, kind of fucked up technically, but they liked the sound. They called them Burstbucker because they're supposed to sound like the handmade uneven pickups on early sunburst Les Pauls. Anyway Tak put them on his guitar, and then western guitarists going to Japan were trying them on other stuff too, and now everyone wants one. Kind of. I'm sure this is wrong, but that's life on the internet. |
