Justin's Maton Messiah (GG-102) How to play

Hi. How're you doing?
It's Justin here.

In this little video clip today,
we're going to be checking out

this guitar which is my Maton Messiah.

It's my first Maton guitar
that I ever bought

It's probably my favourite.
I really like this other one called Jesse though

court jester, but this was my first one

this is probably
my nicest sounding acoustic, in fact,

one of the nicest sounding acoustics
I've ever heard, in my humble opinion.

So, I want to talk a little bit about it.

First of all, it's made by Maton

which is an Australian guitar manufacturer

They make extremely high quality guitars.

Definite worth checking out if you're in

the market for a guitar. There's the
little plug for Maton.

This particular guitar is the top end of

their acoustic guiatars before you get

into the custom shop stuff.

It has a triple A spruce top which

is the finest grade of spruce timber
that you can get for a soundboard

the top of the guitar,

which is usually made of spruce.

It has blackwood back and sides -
really lovely

It has a Queensland Maple neck.
It has gold Grover tuners

which are really high-quality tuning pegs.

It's got an ebony fingerboard
and ebony bridge.

It's got an AP mic electric system

so it has both the piezo here
and it has also a microphone

just inside the guitar there

which kinda helps just
liven up the sound a little bit.

Yeah, It's a fantastic guitar.

I had the pleasure of recording a bit at
Abbey Road studios

for a tribute to John Lennon

and when I went in there and sat down and

started playing this guitar

the engineering came
out of the booth upstairs

and came running down and went,

"what's that guitar? You know it sounds
perfect already and

and we haven't even
had to EQ it at all."

So even if it's not the greatest sounding
guitar ever

which I would like to think it is

It is at least an
extremely good sounding guitar

for some reason it records fantastically

you hardly have to EQ, drop a little bit

of the bottom end off
and that's it

it always sits in the mix real nice

Highly recommend these guitars

As you can probably see, for those of you
who don't know about this kind of stuff

this is a dreadnought
style of guitar

the smaller bodied guitars
like my Court Jester

which I am going to be
doing a video on soon

has a smaller body and they are better
for fingerstyle

This sort of dreadnought
are really good for

strumming and strummy fingerstyle-y
sort of stuff.

They tend to have quite a tight bottom-end

a good piano-like bottom end

it is hard to
describe those things you would have to

listen to it and judge for yourself what
name you would give it

The other type of guitar of course is
called a Jumbo guitar

I don't have a Jumbo but they're the ones

with really big bodies and they're better if
you are just doing strumming

This is a Dreadnought, really good for
that sort of thing

I'm just going to play you a couple of
demo-y ideas

bits of my own songs so that I don't
infringe copyright.

This first little bit is just showing you

getting a nice round bass note
with the strumming

they can sound quite separate
on a good dreadnought

[strumming]

That kind of sound, you know, you can get
a nice round bottom end sound.

The strings are really
thick on this guitar.

I really feel like it's a
strong well-made guitar

so I can give it a bit of grunt and hit
at it kind of thing

(not trying to hit it like jump on it or

anything it would definitely break)

but as far as the feeling
goes when I'm doing

hard fingerstyle, I feel like the guitar
can take it which is encouraging.

This style even...

I really feel like I can give it
a good thwack down

and I'm not going to do any damage.

Of course, it's great for regular
strumming as well it's a big fat sound.

It's not bad for fingerstyle.
I don't tend to use it

for fingerstyle a whole lot unless
I'm tracking my other fingerstyle guitar

the Jessy and I record this one as well
playing the same part and put it

just a little bit quieter underneath...

You can hear it's fine
for acoustic as well.

Ok, that's enough little demo bits,
otherwise just

check out some of the
other mini instructional videos

I've got up here where I use this
guitar and you'll hear it.

Let's have a look at some
closeup pictures of her

OK here we are starting
up at the headstock

You can see the Maton logo there
and the classic little keyhole

which is part of the
Maton signature, I guess.

OK, you can see a nice little
bit of Blackwood front there.

There's my Grover tuners,
in need of a bit of clean

at the moment, I notice.

Here we go. Maple Neck.

On to the front. We've got some very nice
little stylish inlays as well.

Not as cool as the ones on the Court Jester.
But they're pretty groovy still.

And here we go.

On to the body of the guitar.

Nice big bit of ebony there
and let me just

twist it around.
There you can see the blackwood.

Try not to get too much shine on it.

You can see loads of shine on it,
anyway, actually.

OK, it's a little bit bruised this one.
I've had it for a while and used it a lot.

There's the electric system.
Volume, treble, bass,

a mid-cut and a microphone volume.

And if we look just inside here,
hopefully, you can see it. Just in there.

There's a microphone that's covered in a

little bit of foam there.

That's the microphone that gets picked up

which you blend with the
piezo pickup because

there's of course a piezo pickup
under the strings as usual.

So this is Messy, her name is.

I've got Jessy and Messy and Mini.

OK this is the Maton Messiah.

I hope you like the little video.

See you for another one
sometime real soon. Bye-bye.