Greco SE-500N - 3 piece

At the time this guitar was built Matsumoku was listening to exporters and distributors claiming they could max out the production lines with orders - Nobuaki was quite cautious about it and was still playing around with the Strat style concept to hone it and refine it to the Japanese players' requirements. Between 1972 and 1975 production demand met the wild proposals from the exporters and all the factories were flat out barely able to keep up with demand. 1973 often delivers some lovely oddities - some nice surprises that can only be defined as non-catalogue models even if they aren't sufficiently different to be pure custom shop "order made" models.

This beauty is an SE-500 when the SE-480 was still in the range. The difference is the adorable 1 piece top for the pancake construction. 2 pieces of Sen ash at the back and a luxurious single piece on top. Even the later SE-550, 600 and 800 models were mostly 2 piece tops.

We're not pretending this will have any effect on the sound, but there are those out there for whom a single piece body is a thing of absolute beauty. They tend to cost thousands of pounds, so let us offer a tremendous compromise and offer a single piece top for a much smaller price.

Everything else about this SE-500 is as you would expect - 3 deliciously bright and airy Maxon single coils, the satisfying DM30 selector switch and the lovely C-profile engineered construction neck with the 9.25 radius. Frets were always tiny and low on these, but this one retains more than most at this age. So slick, so easy and a many years to go before any remediation required. If you need a fat or tall fret on your neck, head over to the DreamBuild section.

This would make a superb donor for a DreamBuild, but some guitars arrive begging us to keep them standard. This is one such example.

This guitar is from the era before the better known Ibanez, Edwards (ESP) and Fender JV Strats - without this era, none of those would ever have happened. Back then, it was this or a US Fender and despite the incredible build quality and fantastic character of these "pretenders", they were a quarter of the price of the US original. Now they are less than a quarter of the price of a contemporary Fender - and that just seems wrong. But that's how it is. Take advantage of that while it lasts. Get this vintage MIJ beauty in your collection.