This is a very special guitar given to me by my wife back in 2011.  She gave me this as a surprise to “celebrate” my 20 years since I started playing the guitar.  As some of you may know, I started playing the guitar on the 2nd Jan 1991, and I was hooked on it from the day onwards.

To make it even more special, she had the usual “Messiah” inlay replaced with my name 🙂  How cool is that!!!

This guitar is made by Maton (Made here in Australia) and it’s their  Messiah series of guitar.  From memory, prior to 2010/2011, the Messiah (EM100) series only came as a dreadnought.  As I have a 1998 Maton TE-1 (Tommy Emmanuel) acoustic for my dreadnought I’ve always wanted an 808-style guitar.  And as I liked the whole rosewood back and side tone of my TE-1, I wanted something similar too.  I previously had an 808 but with rock maple back and side – as nice as that guitar felt, it was just way too bright for me.

This guitar comes with “AAA” grade solid sitka spruce top, solid rosewood back and sides, mahogany neck with ebony fingerboard and bridge.  And it also comes with the AP5 acoustic pickup by Maton.  Full specs can be seen here.

This is also my first guitar with an ebony fingerboard.  I’ve been a huge fan of Matons since I picked up my first Maton in 1996 (EM-225).  Since then I’ve owned quite a number of Matons – some I have since sold.  For now, we have three Matons at home – the TE-1 and this EM100C 808 plus the EST-65C that I gave my wife back in 2007.

Anyway, back to this EM100C 808…  It’s a very nice playing gutiar.  Its neck isn’t as massive as the TE-1 (or even the EST-65C) but it is still slightly chunkier than the Taylor, Guild and Martin acoustics I’ve tried.  Speaking of other acoustic makers, I really like the Taylor range but something about the feel of a Maton’s neck that stops me from buying Taylors at the moment.

Like all my other Maton acoustics, this guitar uses the AP5 pickup system which I feel is one of the best out there.  I have yet to try their new AP5 Pro system but for now, I’ll stick with these.

It’s hard to describe how this guitar sound acoustically but it definitely have a more focused mids compared to the TE-1.  The TE-1 is very loud and in your face – that guitar covers a lot of frequencies whereas this guitar is very focused.  This is the best way I can describe it 🙂

If you are looking for the 808-bodied acoustics,  I highly recommend the Maton EM100 series of acoustics from Maton.  I also quite like the EBG808TE (Tommy Emmanuel) model and wouldn’t mind trying out the Australian EA-808 and the EBG808 Nashville models too.

As you can tell, I really like my Matons 🙂