Finally!
I played my recently completed Cowboy clone at a gig on Saturday and it was fantastic! I am so excited. Less time searching and more time for playing!
My guitar is a heavily modded Matsumoko-made Vantage Artist 800 VA-800 "Phantom". In the late 70's and early 80's, Matsumoko made some great guitars including Electra, Aria Pro II, Westone, Skylark, Epiphone, Washburn and more. Incredible bang for the buck!
http://www.matsumoku.org/models/vantage ... s/pg3.html
I chose this guitar because it shares many of the same characteristics as the Cowboy:
- 25.5" scale fretboard (as opposed to the 24.75 Ibanez Artist scale)
- maple/walnut thru-neck
- ash wings
The fretboard is rosewood as opposed to Cowboy's which was ebony. The fretboard is beautiful and the frets are like new.
The electronics are as follows:
- Dimarzio Virtual PAF DP196 (neck)
- Dimarzio Virtual Vintage DP410 2.2 (middle) - adjustable to 4 positions!
- Dimarzio Virtual PAF DP197 (bridge)
- on/off toggles for each pickup
- neck & bridge pickup have switches for HB series, single coil & HB parallel
- 3 volume controls (one per pickup)
- 1 master tone control
- every cavity is seriously shielded
The guitar plays & sounds great. Just a joy to play. It's lighter than an Ibanez Artist too! To achive the sound, I turn on all 3 pups and set them all for single coil. Interestingly, setting all three volume pots and the tone pot to 10 yields the perfect sound. I guess that maybe one master volume control may have sufficed... I have not adjusted the middle pickup at all - it seems perfect where it is now.
btw...my rig is now simply guitar -> amp ('68 Showman Reverb TFL5000D - it's a Twin head) -> 1x15 cab with a JBL M31-4 speaker. The M31-4 is a 4-ohm Fender D130F re-labeled for Peavey amps. My amp volume was set between 3.5 & 4. Plenty loud and crystal clean - just perfect!
Let's see if I can post pictures. If not, they can be seen here:
http://s1018.photobucket.com/albums/af3 ... %20Cowboy/
I played my recently completed Cowboy clone at a gig on Saturday and it was fantastic! I am so excited. Less time searching and more time for playing!
My guitar is a heavily modded Matsumoko-made Vantage Artist 800 VA-800 "Phantom". In the late 70's and early 80's, Matsumoko made some great guitars including Electra, Aria Pro II, Westone, Skylark, Epiphone, Washburn and more. Incredible bang for the buck!
http://www.matsumoku.org/models/vantage ... s/pg3.html
I chose this guitar because it shares many of the same characteristics as the Cowboy:
- 25.5" scale fretboard (as opposed to the 24.75 Ibanez Artist scale)
- maple/walnut thru-neck
- ash wings
The fretboard is rosewood as opposed to Cowboy's which was ebony. The fretboard is beautiful and the frets are like new.
The electronics are as follows:
- Dimarzio Virtual PAF DP196 (neck)
- Dimarzio Virtual Vintage DP410 2.2 (middle) - adjustable to 4 positions!
- Dimarzio Virtual PAF DP197 (bridge)
- on/off toggles for each pickup
- neck & bridge pickup have switches for HB series, single coil & HB parallel
- 3 volume controls (one per pickup)
- 1 master tone control
- every cavity is seriously shielded
The guitar plays & sounds great. Just a joy to play. It's lighter than an Ibanez Artist too! To achive the sound, I turn on all 3 pups and set them all for single coil. Interestingly, setting all three volume pots and the tone pot to 10 yields the perfect sound. I guess that maybe one master volume control may have sufficed... I have not adjusted the middle pickup at all - it seems perfect where it is now.
btw...my rig is now simply guitar -> amp ('68 Showman Reverb TFL5000D - it's a Twin head) -> 1x15 cab with a JBL M31-4 speaker. The M31-4 is a 4-ohm Fender D130F re-labeled for Peavey amps. My amp volume was set between 3.5 & 4. Plenty loud and crystal clean - just perfect!
Let's see if I can post pictures. If not, they can be seen here:
http://s1018.photobucket.com/albums/af3 ... %20Cowboy/
Last edited by mkaufman on Wed Jul 07, 2010 9:12 am, edited 2 times in total.
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