Founded in 1946, Australia based guitar manufacturer Maton has grown to be a recognizable brand around the world. It’s mostly thanks to the quality of their instruments, but big name artists like Tommy Emmanuel also played their part in promoting the brand. The company now has an extended line of acoustic instruments, which include parlor-style small bodied guitars like the EMM-6.
This week’s featured parlor guitar is from the Mini Maton line, which includes small bodied 6-string and 12-string acoustic guitars with different tone wood variations. This entire line was developed with the help of Australian artist Diesel, and the company credits him for the expansion of their Mini line, saying that his inputs were valuable in coming up with the designs of each model. The EMM-6 in particular caught our attention with its distinct Maton appeal, woody cosmetics and all solid sapele body.
The Maton EMM-6 is also called Maton Mahogany Mini, and as the name implies, it features an all solid sapele mahogany body, crafted into a compact parlor style shape. This straightforward tonewood combination is expected to give this guitar a warm tonality that complements the emphasized mids of small bodied guitars. The result is cutting tone that works great for fingerstyle folk and blues players.
The neck is crafted from mahogany as well, and topped by an ebony fingerboard. It features a shorter scale length of 22.7″, while the nut width does not stray too far from standard at 1.736″. Interestingly, the neck joins the body at the 15th fret, a distinct configuration that makes the neck look longer, and allows for easy upper fret access even without the cutaway. According to Maton, the neck helps in the tone department by adding smooth glassiness to the overall sound.
Other features of the Maton EMM-6 include ebony bridge, Laser Cut Rope Design sound hole rosette, 12″ fingerboard radius, Black Grover Rotomatic tuners, and it has a black pickguard with the “M” logo in gold. Finally, the EMM-6 is stage ready with its built-in Maton AP5 Pro pickup system
The Maton EMM-6 is not yet widely available in the USA, but Ive seen some being sold online for under $1500. For more information, you can head over to Maton.
