Can you tell us about your first Maton guitar and how you got one?

Well we started playing guitar around 1959, and we were looking for a good guitar. I remember my father going to a music shop, I think in Gunnedah in New South Wales. He brought home a Framus, a this, and a that. The Maton was a bit more expensive and we pestered him enough that we wanted electric guitars, so he came home with two MS500’s: A blonde one for my brother (Phil Emmanual) and a sunburst one for me.

I remember when he came in the house they were wrapped up in their plastic and came in this beautiful little grey and cream case. The thing that I remember the most was how beautiful it was to play, I was only five years old, and I remember how all the guitars I was playing to that point, hurt my fingers because they were cheap guitars. They had bad action and everything and the Maton was just a dream to play. I plugged it in and it sounded like the “guy on the record”. It sounded beautiful. We had a Maton amp as well that had one 12” speaker in it, you know 20 watts of sheer distortion! It was a good amp but we eventually blew that up and moved onto a Moody amp. I still have my Maton MS500 and it plays just the same as it always has. The folks here at Maton faithfully restored it for me.

In actual fact my father who was more a mechanic type guy, and when I wore the guitar out from playing it so much as a kid, he bought a fretboard and some frets and re-fretted it himself. He didn’t know what he was really doing, and to put a new nut on it he cut up an old toothbrush! So my nut on the end of the neck was a purple toothbrush! He just did it with a file and got it going so I could keep playing. Eventually my brother traded his on a Fender Jaguar. I decided to hang on to my Maton and I’m glad I did because I still enjoy even just to look at it, because it takes me back to my childhood. I thought it was such a big instrument. If you look at photos of me playing it when I was a kid, it looks like it’s huge. But now I pick it up it’s like a toy, it’s little you know.

I eventually bought some Fender Telecasters and that’s what I love to play. Now that I’m playing mostly acoustic I’m playing all Maton guitars now. Their new electrics are better than the old ones. I think the quality of what they’re doing has just risen and risen until it’s absolutely world-class and I’m proud to play them.

How many Maton guitars have you played?

Oh, thousands of them…I own….I don’t know how many I own! (Counts aloud using fingers on both hands) Hmm, I probably own about 25.

And you like them all?

Oh yeah, absolutely. When I tour in America, I do about three tours of America every year. Sometimes I’ll do like, a month on the east coast from Toronto right down to North Carolina. Then I’ll do Middle America, Wichita, St Louis, Oklahoma City, across to Colorado and all that, and I’ll drive. When I’m driving and not flying I can carry more gear. On my last tour of the east coast I had six Maton guitars on stage and it looked like a guitar shop! They each have a special sound, and I’m also one of these players that if I use a different tuning, I don’t like to be standing up there tuning on stage so I have other guitars with other tunings on them. They have the same pickup system, just a different guitar.

What do you tell other professional musicians when they ask you why you play Matons? The bigger brands must have tried to lure you over…

Oh absolutely, I’ve been woo-ed by everybody. I’ve been to the Gibson factory, and the Taylor factory, and the Larrivee factory. I would be a liar if I had said I hadn’t been wooed by every other guitar company. I do have other guitars, I love Gibson guitars, I love Martin guitars, Larrivee’s. I don’t own any Taylor’s but they are good guitars too. But I play Maton guitars because I like ‘em! I could afford to have anything but these guitars, there is nothing like ‘em. I found my voice in that guitar. I can pick up a Maton guitar and feel right at home straight away, where-as I pick up a Gibson or a Martin and it takes me a little while to get used to it and adjust myself to the instrument. With a Maton, I pick it up and I’m home.

I was having a conversation with John Larrivee, who’s a great guitar builder and who admires Maton guitars very much. John said to me “Building a great guitar is a no brainer, getting the pick-up right – that’s hard.” And he’s right. This is where Maton just leave the others in their dust. (Tommy’s voice rises with excitement as he talks about the sound of the Maton pick-up). You can plug a Maton guitar with their pickup system into anything and get a great sound in two minutes flat. That’s what I like. I see a lot of my peers carrying a lot of gear and doing stereo out, with two leads, and panning the mic to the right, and that’s all very fine if you’ve got time for all that. I travel and work so much that I want to get a sound like that. I have my reverb unit and my amp, a couple of DI boxes which send two signals to the PA. I just plug my guitar into the PA and everything is on board. If I want more mic, I turn it up, less mic I turn it down. I can plug it in a bang, I know that I’m gonna get a good sound (snaps fingers) like that!

You’re always a welcome visitor to the Maton factory, and it must give you a buzz seeing your photo on the wall as a young boy…

Well, you know what? I’m so proud of Maton because I’ve seen them grow as a company. When I first really got involved with them on a level of trying to help them develop the pickup and give them genuine feedback, being a person who’s out there, in the field, if you want to put it that way. I would call them all the time and say “look, you pretty close with the pickup its just not quite right with the bottom, or not quite right with the top end,” or whatever, and “it’s a little squarewave-y and you need to do this and do that”. When we were developing the pickup we had constant communication all the time. When they nailed the pick up and got the quality level to where it should be, I was the first to go out there and fly the flag for them. It doesn’t matter where I go in the world if I see Maton guitars I’ll go into the store and take it off the wall, and if I think there’s something not right with it, I’ll let them know. They’ve always been able to count on my honesty and my belief in them. If someone gives me something better I’ll play it, but in the meantime there just isn’t anything better.

That’s a big call Tommy. It strikes me that the 50-60 people that work at Maton are not just assembling nuts and bolts on an assembly line; they are all guitar lovers, at every stage of the process.

Yeah that’s right. It’s a wonderful thing and I enjoy very much to go and see them at work. I don’t get here that often but I enjoy coming here. I enjoy working on guitars myself. I carry tools with me, a neck (truss-rod) adjustor and all that kind of stuff. I carry spare saddles and bits of bone (for nuts) and quite often there’ll be people in America who have bought a Maton guitar because they heard me playing one and they fell in love with the sound of it, bought one, and they wanna show it to me. I may look at it and say “This guitar’s brand new, it’s wood, and it’s gonna move so don’t worry. The neck’s gonna move a little bit! So here’s what you do.” I show them how to tighten the neck or whatever, or I have a look at the guitar and say “ahh I can fix that for you in two seconds.” I enjoy that, I enjoy working on guitars. In fact years ago, back in the seventies I started a guitar repair business back in Sydney. I had a lot of people come to me for actions (adjustments) and setups and that sort of stuff. But nobody does it like these guys! The people who make the guitars are the ones who do it the best.