Mann 70's-ish LP copy

[JohnnyCanuck]

This is my latest project, my wife bought it years ago and I decided to clean it up, learn about it (many thanks to the fellas at ibanez vintage for the help) and play it. It's the lawsuit version, I believe the pickups have been changed, the tuners were and I just put on hopefully close to originals on it, and the orignal case, which was covered in mud I cleaned up after about 4 hours of scrubbing carefully looks pretty good too.

[VintAxe]

Hey JC.

I don't know much about MANN guitars other than they were distributed by Great West out of several Canadian cities. They had a distribution center in Vancouver so it is likely your guitar came from there if you purchased it in BC.

I checked your Les Paul copy against the LP's pictured in my 70's MANN catalog and yours appears to be a much higher quality instrument. Yours has nicer binding, inlays, and top. Also, there are no maple fretboard versions pictured in my catalog. So, I don't know for sure who was supplying MANN guitars, but yours does have a mid 1970's Ibanez look. Could the guys at the Ibanez forum tell you who actually built the guitar? It appears to be a top of the line model for a MANN.

[mrblanche]

Yes, I can almost hear the drool hitting the floor over at the Ibanez collectors site. And I imagine the PM machine was going full blast with offers.

[JohnnyCanuck]

they did make some maple necks, the Mann name seems to be the most obscure because they were distributed in Canada, a pretty small market. They don't appear to be that collectible compared to the actual ibanez LP copies but I still like it and it really is a nice sounding and nice playing guitar.

[Bassassin]

Hi - I saw your post over at the ICW board - your guitar has a "Steel Adjustable Neck" stamped plate, and it's about 99.9% established that these were exclusive to Matsumoku guitars.

The serial numbers on most of these plates appear to be random so it's unlikely to be dateable through that, but this probably puts it pre-1976, because dateable serials on Mat guitars started to be adopted from about then.

Also it's got an "open book" headstock profile, again, from about '76 or so, Japanese copy manufacturers mostly changed this on export guitars, because of legal threats (the so-called "lawsuit") from Norlin Gibson.

Early 70s Japanese LP copies were often quite inaccurate in their detailing - for example you find position markers up to the 17th fret, round-cornered fretboards, necks that stand very high above the body and so on. As production continued the designs got more accurate - and yours has none of those early features, which to my mind would suggest it wasn't made before 1973.

That's probably as close as it's possible to date your guitar without anything that would tie the specific design to a date - like a catalogue, or even a receipt!

You might find some help at the , try posting in the Other Matsumoku Guitars section - I'm pretty sure I've seen guitars very similar to yours, with different brands being discussed there, & someone might have a more exact idea of dates.

Jon.

[JohnnyCanuck]

thanks so much, I've been printing off items like this as I get them so that when I pass the guitar along my my kids will have an idea of what it is, so many helpfull people!

[JohnnyCanuck]