1974 Maton FG100
This was my first serious acoustic guitar, bought new from a shop in Canberra Australia for $312 without a case in mid 1975. Before this one I had Aria and Tama dreadnoughts that both had pretty bad intonation.
It was a really good high quality guitar that had a dark woody tone, much like the sound that Ian Anderson had on early Jethro Tull records. The photos here are from an ebay ad in 2011 because I only have one really bad photo of my old one.
It had a rosewood fingerboard and the back, sides and neck were red maple (source: Maton museum web site). This model at the time was a good bit more expensive than a CW80 but a lot less than a Messiah. It was a good intermediate-high level model and was discontinued in 1986. In 2011 a CW80 cost about $1800 and a Messiah cost $3500-4000, so if FG100s were still being made in 2011 they'd probably be about $2500-2800.
This model began production in the 1950s but was known as a HG100 at that time, and the design was different.
I sold it in Sydney in 1979 or 1980, a few years after I bought my Guild F50R. The Guild was much better and I had no need for more than one guitar at that point.
