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Hi. How're you doing?
It's Justin here.
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In this little video clip today,
we're going to be checking out
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this guitar which is my Maton Messiah.
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It's my first Maton guitar
that I ever bought
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It's probably my favourite.
I really like this other one called Jesse though
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court jester, but this was my first one
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this is probably
my nicest sounding acoustic, in fact,
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one of the nicest sounding acoustics
I've ever heard, in my humble opinion.
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So, I want to talk a little bit about it.
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First of all, it's made by Maton
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which is an Australian guitar manufacturer
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They make extremely high quality guitars.
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Definite worth checking out if you're in
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the market for a guitar. There's the
little plug for Maton.
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This particular guitar is the top end of
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their acoustic guiatars before you get
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into the custom shop stuff.
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It has a triple A spruce top which
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is the finest grade of spruce timber
that you can get for a soundboard
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the top of the guitar,
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which is usually made of spruce.
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It has blackwood back and sides -
really lovely
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It has a Queensland Maple neck.
It has gold Grover tuners
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which are really high-quality tuning pegs.
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It's got an ebony fingerboard
and ebony bridge.
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It's got an AP mic electric system
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so it has both the piezo here
and it has also a microphone
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just inside the guitar there
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which kinda helps just
liven up the sound a little bit.
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Yeah, It's a fantastic guitar.
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I had the pleasure of recording a bit at
Abbey Road studios
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for a tribute to John Lennon
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and when I went in there and sat down and
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started playing this guitar
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the engineering came
out of the booth upstairs
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and came running down and went,
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"what's that guitar? You know it sounds
perfect already and
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and we haven't even
had to EQ it at all."
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So even if it's not the greatest sounding
guitar ever
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which I would like to think it is
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It is at least an
extremely good sounding guitar
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for some reason it records fantastically
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you hardly have to EQ, drop a little bit
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of the bottom end off
and that's it
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it always sits in the mix real nice
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Highly recommend these guitars
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As you can probably see, for those of you
who don't know about this kind of stuff
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this is a dreadnought
style of guitar
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the smaller bodied guitars
like my Court Jester
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which I am going to be
doing a video on soon
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has a smaller body and they are better
for fingerstyle
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This sort of dreadnought
are really good for
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strumming and strummy fingerstyle-y
sort of stuff.
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They tend to have quite a tight bottom-end
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a good piano-like bottom end
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it is hard to
describe those things you would have to
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listen to it and judge for yourself what
name you would give it
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The other type of guitar of course is
called a Jumbo guitar
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I don't have a Jumbo but they're the ones
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with really big bodies and they're better if
you are just doing strumming
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This is a Dreadnought, really good for
that sort of thing
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I'm just going to play you a couple of
demo-y ideas
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bits of my own songs so that I don't
infringe copyright.
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This first little bit is just showing you
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getting a nice round bass note
with the strumming
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they can sound quite separate
on a good dreadnought
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[strumming]
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That kind of sound, you know, you can get
a nice round bottom end sound.
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The strings are really
thick on this guitar.
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I really feel like it's a
strong well-made guitar
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so I can give it a bit of grunt and hit
at it kind of thing
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(not trying to hit it like jump on it or
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anything it would definitely break)
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but as far as the feeling
goes when I'm doing
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hard fingerstyle, I feel like the guitar
can take it which is encouraging.
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This style even...
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I really feel like I can give it
a good thwack down
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and I'm not going to do any damage.
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Of course, it's great for regular
strumming as well it's a big fat sound.
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It's not bad for fingerstyle.
I don't tend to use it
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for fingerstyle a whole lot unless
I'm tracking my other fingerstyle guitar
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the Jessy and I record this one as well
playing the same part and put it
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just a little bit quieter underneath...
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You can hear it's fine
for acoustic as well.
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Ok, that's enough little demo bits,
otherwise just
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check out some of the
other mini instructional videos
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I've got up here where I use this
guitar and you'll hear it.
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Let's have a look at some
closeup pictures of her
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OK here we are starting
up at the headstock
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You can see the Maton logo there
and the classic little keyhole
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which is part of the
Maton signature, I guess.
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OK, you can see a nice little
bit of Blackwood front there.
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There's my Grover tuners,
in need of a bit of clean
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at the moment, I notice.
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Here we go. Maple Neck.
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On to the front. We've got some very nice
little stylish inlays as well.
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Not as cool as the ones on the Court Jester.
But they're pretty groovy still.
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And here we go.
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On to the body of the guitar.
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Nice big bit of ebony there
and let me just
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twist it around.
There you can see the blackwood.
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Try not to get too much shine on it.
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You can see loads of shine on it,
anyway, actually.
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OK, it's a little bit bruised this one.
I've had it for a while and used it a lot.
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There's the electric system.
Volume, treble, bass,
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a mid-cut and a microphone volume.
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And if we look just inside here,
hopefully, you can see it. Just in there.
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There's a microphone that's covered in a
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little bit of foam there.
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That's the microphone that gets picked up
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which you blend with the
piezo pickup because
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there's of course a piezo pickup
under the strings as usual.
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So this is Messy, her name is.
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I've got Jessy and Messy and Mini.
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OK this is the Maton Messiah.
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I hope you like the little video.
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See you for another one
sometime real soon. Bye-bye.