The Electra Forums

hi everyone, it's great to be here. I am a big fan of Matsumoku guitars, I would like to share something, the mightiest guitar in my collection, the Westone Monark! I sure am overly dramatic over it but in the city I live in, this is one of those guitars seen as some kind of legendary machine, the real metal mojo.
it's been trough hell and back, this thing. it's banged up but it seems ok, straight neck and all. I will need to bring it back to life but I don't know how it works. I had never repaired a pickup system this complex, perhaps somebody here can give me a hand? does anybody have a wiring scheme for this guitar?

I want to customize it by sacrificing tone controls, I want independent volume knobs for the humbuckers and a global volume knob (Gretsch-esque). how would I do that?

allright, that being said, here's the guitar itself, thanks for reading and looking!

First off, congratulations, the Monark is not only a superb guitar, but a quite rare one. In that spirit may I please urge you that since you're lucky enough to find one that has not been messed up, learn to appreciate what this guitar has to offer rather than trying to remake it into some other guitar it was never meant to be.

First off, those pickups- late generation unbalanced MMK45's (the 'rail' is just a decorative cover), arguably the best humbuckers made by anybody at any time, and while there are finally a few high-end customs that follow the unbalanced pattern that tom Presley developed, most pickups do not- and so they lack the excellent tone definition and lack of volume cut.

Second the wiring: this thing already has the coolest custom wiring rig ever developed, stock. Pull the volume knob and you coil tap the humbuckers. Pul the middle tone knob and you activate the middle singel coil, which adds the complex overtones of an overwound single coil (aka 'strat tone'). Pull the bottom tone knob and you reverse the phase polarity of hte bottom humbucker, giving the 'duck quck' of out-of-phase which is so useful. Depending on what combination you push and pull, the 3-way is transformed into a different set of 3 tones that are very useful in performance- I like to pull the bottom two out, myself.

That wiring harness offers many more tones than you suggested. May I suggest that if you want a master volume, use a volume pedal- you can get excellent Morley volume pedals for cheap on ebay these days. And (with all due respect for Gibson fans) IMHO the dual-volume wiring rig is a compromise designed to deal with the fact that balanced humbuckers (unlike the Monark's) don't give much tone difference between bridge and neck, so they try to make up for it by offering two different volume settings so the two pickups can be used as a low-gain rhythm and hi-gain lead. Lots of guitars are wired that way, if you like that IMHO you ought to play one of those instead of rewiring this one.

But all that aside, the Monark is really one of my favorite guitars. The shape is not only cool but extrenely ergonomic, it has an excellent neck with great frets, and some of the best pickups ever made in one of the most innovative wiring rigs anyone has come up with. IMHO the MOnark is one of Tom Presley's masterpieces.

Yours looks pretty original except for the non-original knobs, but I don't mind that. It probably has no serial number, right? I have a white Monark that way, don't know the reason except I'd agree it probably is late 84 or 85. That Bendmaster FT is an excellent bridge, the top of the line at the time.

What's wrong with it now? It uses the same wiring diagram as the Electra Phoenix X189 and X185 and X199 (and the Dynasty). I'd be glad to offer whatever help you need in returning this thing to its original glory.

At the risk of raising the ire of various gearheads, there's kind of a parallel between Electra guitars compared to other generic Fenders and copies- and between old-school mopar muscle cars compared to Chevies. Chevies are always popular, and they always get customized- people want to 'stand out' and 'go fast' so they hot rod them up. Whereas mopars are much less popular, but if you want to go fast- restore them to stock. There's no custom chevy that has the soul and mighty power of a Hemi Barracuda for instance- why woudl you want to put ugly wheels and prom lights on it?

So it's a bit of an old school/new school thing, and I'm definitely in favor with a guitar liek this to leave it stock. Now, if you want to jazz up that strat, put different pickups in it, rewire it, go for it! There are a million strats, and jsut about any custom wiring is better than original. Not so with the Monark. THink of it as the Hemi Cuda of guitars and you've got it about right.

Hope that helps, let me know if we can help you with this baby.

now that's a man who knows what he's talking about.
I got this guitar on a estate auction for $150, I felt it was worth three times more. When I saw it I thought it was some kind of holy grail of mean guitars, I had an instant blood pressure spike.
The way I see it, this is like my own DMC12, not that I have one, not that it even compares to it from a performance standpoint, the Monark just has that timeless edge, not the classic/retro of a Gibson flying V (or the jackson/Dean wannabe's) but some kind of "ahead of the curve" feel, 'post-modernist space age' even.

I know what you mean. I have been giving too much relevance to the 4-knob gibson setup. if the output of the pickups is as diverse as they aparently are, then volume controls are kind of useless. I suppose that when pickups be coil-tapped and phase reversed, tone controls probably come in very handy. brilliant.

risky statement there, how could those pickups compare to, say, PAFs?. can´t argue with you though. I can't wait to try this out myself.
hey, who's Tom Presley? I thought this guitar was entirely R&D'ed and built in Japan.

that's like 15 different achievable tones. a powerhouse. Hard to believe Gibson hasn't really changed a thing since the 60´s. Nevertheless, while the Monark's scheme seems impressive in theory, I do wonder. I have faith though.
I like being neutral. following your advice, I plan to set this guitar up as close to the original specs as possible. I think I can get the wiring diagram of the Dynasty on the Westone pages.

just to make sure on some points:
- can't touch the paintjob, can I? it looks a bit dull now and dents are a plenty.
- I don't have the tremolo arm. regular synchro trems seem to fit it. what to do?

thanks for the info, X189player. hope you can stick around a bit longer to see how things turn out.

This might seems a bit obvious, so forgive me...
I'd drop-fill all the dents and dings with cyanoacralate - super-glue. The kind advertised as gel. Let it dry naturally, with no acelerator. Then take a razor-blade. I run it over a sharpening stone to get a little 'bur' [microscopic] on one side of the blade. Put about 2 layers of masking tape on each side of the blade, leaving a space open in the middle. Use that as a scraper over the super-glued dents, the tape will protect the surrounding finish, and take down the glue to about a few thousandths. Sand out with some 800 and feather it in to the existing finish. Use some 1200, and even 2000 grit if you really get in to it. Then clean the entire body really good with naptha (zippo fluid, really) and buff it out on a buffing wheel. If you don't have access to one, you can pick up a pawn shop bench grinder for chump change and put a buffing wheel on one side. Buff it out plain, and then with some automotive swirl remover. It will shine like new, and from 1 foot you won't even see the dings, let alone feel them.

Markymayhem, great ideas
couple questions, is that gel translucent? even if it doesn't solve the chipped paint issues, it will at least seal them up. the naked wood makes me very uneasy.
I take it the naphtha is like common paint thinner. isn't it corrosive? it could damage the lacquered layer of the body, couldn't it?
about buffing, does it work on the guitar body like it does on a car finish? I mean for achieving the shine, would I actually have to apply polishing creams? ...wait, that must be the swirl remover you talk about.
thanks for the tips again.

X189player, I got a question for you. I checked beneath the pickups and I noticed that the bridge unit has four threads, but there was a green cable loose, severed at 1/2" away from the pickup. I can't see where the green cable is supposed to be soldered to the pickup, if at all.
There are three slugs in the pickup and there is a white, a red, a black, and a shield thread soldered in. the black and the shield are interwined, I think the red is the coil tap and the white is the hot output.

does the mystery green cable have anything to do with the phase reverse functionality?

BTW, I found a number printed in the wood beneath the neck pickup cavity
98-1.750
-------

I forgot to clarify that, the main problem with the guitar right now is that the wiring is messed up. There is no sound, I found several cables are lose inside. pickups seem in ok condition but I can't be sure until I do some soldering first. I will not do any mods here.
another small issue is that THIS diagram shows a green cable on the Bridge pickup, the same cable seen in the picture above, but I have no idea where it should be soldered

(selfnote: check out the Pagebucker MOD for schematic reference. compile MODs pamphlet.
selfnote2: I just found out my 60s noname "videocaster" is actually a Westone mystery model! take photos, share here!)

I could be WAY off base here with the green wire, but it is possible that it is the ground for the baseplate of the pickup, it might go where the earth connection is. [edit - just looked at the wiring diagram. I don't think the above statement is correct. Wait for someone who knows WTF they are talking about ]

The gel superglue is clear and dries clear if you don't use any accelerator, and don't get the blue Krazy brand. You can even color it with lampblack (useless here) or any other particulate color. You might consider getting a chip of paint from inside the pickup cavity, or some other unseen area, grind it to dust and use a toothpick to mix a good glop of the superglue with some of the dust. Perfect color match! And you'd be supprised how much working time you get with superglue when you're not actually gluing two thing together.. Naptha is NOT paint thinner! Paint thinner will totally F things up! Naptha is a petrolium product, also used as zippo fluid. It has a very low solvent action, and evaporates SUPER fast with zero residue. It's safe to use on poly, nitro, bare wood, rosewood and ebony [as in greasy grimey fretboards] and just about anywhere else on a guitar, as long as you use common sense. Don't soak the guitar in it or pour it all over, use a rag with some naptha on it and you'll be just fine. I've used it on everything from 50s Silvertones to 90s epiphones and everything in between - so have many others. It's a tip I picked up in a forum somewhere, and believe me, I was VERY aprehensive the first time I used it... As for buffing... You do need a compound for the final buff or you just won't get that 'new car look' There's all sorts of guitar buffing compounds... Waste of good $$ in many cases. I've had good luck with colegate toothpaste [really] for the first round, and cheapo automotive swirl remover from autozone for the final buff... The process I laid out is exactly what helped restore my first guitar to like new shape after it sat in my parents basement for 10 years, with cats peeing on it and younger relatives knocking it over and denting it, plus green frets and a black maple fretboard. As always, I forgot to take any before pics...

thansk but, according to the schematic the green cable is nessesary to operate the phase reverse switch. if only I could know where it is soldered to...

gotcha, I used something like that to clean up the hardware of a 1967 Teisco guitar. I get lost with the names and brands... it's silly. it feels greasy but it removes dust, rust and stains. right after it dries is when I apply the polish substances and proceed with the buffing, right?

tooth paste? that's interesting. when it dries out it does feel like one of those polishing substances used on furniture and mirrors. I do in fact have that kind of polish cream. should I do the toothpaste and then the polish cream too? hopefully it won't be overkill. and then goes the car polish/swirl remover cream, right? each substance buffed up like in THIS VIDEO, am I right?
this is very exciting, if it works as well as you say, I will do that on all my vintage guitars. thanks for the tips markymayhem.

You're right, that wiring is messed up. It looks to me like someone has swapped out the original pickups and wired replacements incorrectly. Which is odd, because the covers look correct- maybe they swapped the coil covers too (but why? who knows why people do what they do). YOur pickups aren't MMK45's and don't look like any pickup I've seen on an Electra or Westone (although I could be wrong, too).

So I think what's happened is that someone's swapped pickups in that use a different order for the color codes. From looking at mine (in agreement with the Dynasty diagram on the Westone site) I can see that the stock MMK45's had two wires plus shield for the neck and three wires plus shield for the bridge pickup. White is always hot and red is always coil tap, and where there's a seperate green wire that's the ground (allowing the white and green to be reversed by the phase reverse switch). On the neck pickup the shield ground also serves as signal ground. This also supports the replacement pickup theory as there shouldn't be a green wire to the neck pickup, and definitely no black wire!

I'd definitely double-check where those leads are soldered into the harness- the shields go directly to ground, the reds shoudl go to the coil tap switch (on the volume pot). The white and green from the bridge pickup should go to the phase reverse switch (on the lower tone pot) and the white from the neck pickup should go to the middle tone pot.

As cool a guitar as this is, and since the wiring appears to be tampered with, can I suggest you might want to consider swapping in some original MMK45's? I'd keep those pickups with the guitar just in case, but MMK's are really sweet pickups and it would restore the color coding back to normal. Let me know, I'm sure I have at least one spare set around for just such an occasion- I like seeing great guitars like this get restored to original condition.

It's not uncommon to see pickups stolen out of these guitars- back then people considered japanese guitars junk, so when one showed up that sounded superb people thought nothing of stealing the pickups to put in some other guitar, unfortunately.

Otherwise, if you stay with the present pickups, you'll need to figure out where the existing cable is wired to. If it is wired like the original, then green and white should go to the beginning and end of the pickup coils, and the red one should connect to the lead that goes between the two coils. (in a 'traditional' color scheme, there's a red and black wire on either ends of one coil, and a green and white on the other. red and white are connected together and a coil tap lead is attached there, and the green and black wires become the signal hot and ground for the whole pickup). As it stands, I wonder where the black wire on that cable is attached to the harness?

You may find it useful to remove the whole harness from the body cavity, even if you leave it hanging on the pickup leads.

Here are some pics of my Monark for reference:

you are right, the bridge pickup in my guitar is not an MMK45, but the neck pickup is. the bridge pickup I took a photo of is in fact a Yamaha SE-300H from the same year of manufacture as the Monark. they might actually have been swaped back in the 80s and for some specific reason, whatever it could have been. It was probably done by the same guy that changed the knobs, and that kind of tells me the guy knew what he was doing to the guitar.
Since this is not wired up and sounding, I don't even know if my neck MMK45 works. how much would you sell the set for, and how much for the bridge unit alone? do you perhaps have a spare tremolo arm for this guitar?

thanks for the wiring tips. I am studying the Dynasty scheme in detail, I am also using the Jimmi page MOD scheme to compare and clear out doubts. I still don't get the green cable issue. In case I can't afford your pickups and I have to stick to what I have, tell me something: there are three solder lugs in the pickup bottom, RED/tap is on the right, BLACK&shield on the middle, WHITE/hot on the left. where does GREEN solder to?


if you have time, can you spill some details on who Tom Presely is/was? I can't find anything on the internet. why would he be involved with the development of this Japanese guitar?

BTW, our guitars are a bit disimilar. they seem to have aged quite differently, like wines I guess. you guitar has plenty of dings and dents too, what is your thinking in regards to restoring the body finish? Also, I notice your guitar doesn't have any inscriptions in the neck pickup cavity, unlike mine. does that number,98-1.750, tell you anything?

Just to confuse things a bit, I looked at two guitars equiped with MMK45's that I have handy and a spare set of MMK45 pickups I have. The spare set is color coded as X198 says but the guitars (an APII TS350 and a Vantage VP750[i think]) are coded red white black and brown. The TS350 is from 77, the serial number on the Vantage is gone; they used a sticker. Did the color coding chnge over time?

Zaiten, since your bridge pickup is a yamaha, you may want to check what information yamaha has. There may be a forum for them also.

There are many here who know more but I believe Tom Presly was a guitar designer who worked with SLM on the design of several of the more inovative Electras.

good lead. I was able to find some more info. SLM (Saint Louis Music) made guitars for local distribution in the US during the 70s. they came up with the Electra brand for a line of Ampeg copies; they were mostly focused on the beginner market. they hired Tom Presley to supervice manufacturing of pickups and electronic parts. That was during the start of the lawsuit era, so they began importing bodies from Japan, from Matsumoku. SLM renames the line of guitars to Electra-Phenix, this is in early 80s. later after they change the line to Electra Westone and eventually wholy embrace Matsumoku's Westone brand.

The guitars seen at this period are the likes of Dynasty, Spectrum, and Dimention. All of this guitars were fitted with american made pickups, electronics, and wiring schemes some of which were designed by Tom Presley, like the MMK45 pickups and the push-pull knob configuration. (Some reports make mension a "Kazuo Yairi" character who was a friend of Tom). SLM drops all other guitar lines to solely distribute Westone guitars. In 1984-85 Matsumoku reaches their plateau of guitar excelence with guitars like the MONARK.

unfortunately, the story turns ugly from then on. by 1987 the Matsumoku factory is taken over by Singer, who promptly stops guitar manufacturing and ends a dinasty of guitar making.

I wonder who this Kazuo guy was.

Actually there's errors in that story, many inaccuracies have sprung up around Matsumoku. For instance Singer was involved with them long before they built guitars, when they built cabinets for sewing machines. By the 80's Matsumoku was owned by parent company (Japan Steel I believe)- they were a small part of a larger facility which manufacture auto parts.

Why they closed in 86 or 7 remains a mystery, and as a fire destroyed plant records, we're likely to never know. Sounds fishy, no? Personally I always wondered if SLM's decision to stop buying from them had a part of it, as SLM was a major client. I also wonder if Matsumoku's tendency to spill SLM innovations (mainly by Tom) over to competing brands such as Aria Pro may have been behind SLM's decision. THis is all conjecture though.

Tom Presley was an innovative designer who developed the H-S-H configuration in the 60's. He was hired by SLM to design guitars when the end of the 'lawsuit era' meant no more copies- the idea was that Electra would offer wiring and other custom configurations that at that time were only available as custom wiring for rock stars, and that they did.


The wiring and pickups were not made in the USA, but in JApan at Matsumoku (we guess that MMK is an abbreviation for Matsumoku). I wouldn't say the Monark is the apex of Matsumoku's work, although it's certainly a fine guitar, the X199's are even better- set neck, for one thing. The Rock and Jazz strad are also arguably better guitars, and you'd better look at all the Aria Pro and Washburn wing series, etc etc.




On a yamaha pickup? I have no idea. who made them? Do you have color code and wiring details for Yamaha pickups? You could figure this out by taking the pickup apart and seeing where the leads are, and applying this info:




In other words, Green is signal ground (not shield ground), white is hot, red is coil tap. All assuming that shielded cable is correctly attached to the rest of the harness, like this:




I'd disagree with you on this point:



Just because he knew how to throw away the original (very hard to find) knobs and put on trendy black tele barrel knobs doesn't say much for his mechanical ability, any more than a sports car owner who throws away the original cast rims and replaces them with shiny trendy wheels from a glossy magazine ad. Pimping your ride doesn't guarantee a classic.

Likewise if he knew what he was doing, why doesn't the guitar work? It looks to me like he did a halfway job soldering the pickup in, got the colors wrong, and gave up because this wasn't the guitar he cared about. A real pro (or a knowledgeable amateur like us) would never chop off the pickup leads at the pickup, she'd de-solder the leads where they join the harness- that way you can solder it in seamlessly.

Here's my guess: somebody had two guitars, a Monark and a Yamaha. The Monark sounded better because it had better pickups, but the owner was too chicken to play the thing onstage, or even in front of anyone, because it's such an extreme shape. (And don't get me wrong, I don't dare play mine onstage either- mainly because everyone instantly says 'Shredder Guitar' and expects you to be a virtuoso. I'm not a virtuoso-yet, but when I am I'll get up there with my Monark for sure...) So they decided to cut out the bridge MMK pickup, because they wanted it for its intense distorted lead, and put it in the much more boring and sedate Yamaha body. Since they weren't really intending to play the Monark anyway, they never bothered to sort out which pickup lead went where.

If I understand you right, the two dots on the Yamaha pickup are lugs to solder the wires to the pickup? If so, then solder the white to one and the green to the other. If there are only two connections, I doubt this pickup supports coil tap, in that case leave the red wire unconnected. Or maybe it does, and your labels are describing the pickup terminals, not the wires. In that case you could try attaching the green to ground along with the black wire, but that's going to kill the signal entirely if you try to phase reverse it.

For a pickup to support coil tap and phase reverse (which is not common in stock pickups, and I seriously doubt the Yamaha did this) you need (at the pickup) three terminals plus the shield ground (i.e. the back plate) for a total of four terminals. IF you don't have that, the pickup doesn't support both coil tap and phase reverse. Since coil tap is a more common feature, I'd suspect that first.


The way to tell which lug is which on a pickup with unknown wiring is either to remove the tape and look where the leads go, or to disconnect the wires to it (or try deselecting it at the 3-way switch, that shoudl work unless it's miswired), then measure the resistance witha voltmeter across all the combinations of pairs of terminals. probably some combinations will read zero, two of them might read 7k ohms or so, and one combination will read 14k (jsut guessing the numbers- the max could be anywhere from 7 to 20) the important thing is which set has highest resistance. That's the pair you should attach the green and white leads to (again, assuming the shielded cable is correctly wired into the harness). If you can get a reading that's half that max value, then it's going to be between each of those other two with a third- and that's the coil tap. It's very possible the pickup is not wired for coil tap though, most aren't . (if not, you can always remove the tape covering the windings, and solder the red wire to where the wires from one coil go to the other- most likely there's a joint there.)

You could also try connecting pairs of terminals to a hot and ground lead attached to an amp, and see which combination works. My guess is it's the two round ones, but maybe not. Try it and see.


MMK45 pickups show up on ebay and typically sell for maybe 30$ to 50$ each (people don't really know what they are). I'll have to dig through my parts stash and see what I have and what I paid for it, and you can have one for what I paid- I'm not a dealer, I just like to help see these guitars get back to being great performers. Besides, I like to help out a fellow guitar lover, so you could do me one favor and realize that when you write in bold face like that, it sounds like you're shouting, and that comes across as rude when your question actually got answered the first time. :)

No harm meant or taken, I'm sure. I should be able to help you out with that pickup. Monarks are rare and cool- of the Phoenix/Spectrum/Dynasty/DimensionIV/Monark family that, aside from so many other shared details, they're the only one with a tilted back headstock (like a Gibson, rather than flat like a Fender). Again with the cool details though, I'm sure the SLM shop, like any guitar shop, saw lots of guitars with 'gibson-style' tilted headstocks that fell when the guitar was knocked over. I notice that the Monark is only tilted just enough but not so much that it is below the plane of the back of the guitar- and so more Monarks will probably survive longer (unlike some earlier models like the flying wedge and many an LP which were vulnerable to a nasty neck break if they were knocked over)

The naptha will dry SO fast, as in the first fret will be bone dry way before you clean the last fret and you don't wanna leave the cap off the bottle. It's not at all 'greasy' - it leaves NO residue. Naptha isn't a brand name, it's a chemical name. You can get it in a large can at the hardware store next to the acetone and mineral spirits. It is also Zippo fluid, avaliable at the pharmacy under the brand name Ronoco Lighter Fluid or similar. I think you can buff whenever, it's not necessary to buff right after cleaning with naptha, although if the guitar has been sitting around I'd wipe it off with a tack cloth before putting it on the buffer.. If you've got some MILDLY abrasive polish for painted or varnished surfaces, I'd use it instead of Colegate, followed with the swirl remover. If your polish isn't for painted surfaces, *I'D* stick with Colegate, just because I KNOW it won't hurt anything. I didn't watch the video, but your order seems right. As long as you don't use anything that's to abrasive, there's no real overkill with the buffer.

Also, I haven't finished the thread, so forgive me if anyone already touched on this. A phase reverse switch simply swaps the coil 'hot' and 'ground' of one pickup. Looking at the wiring diagram, the green HAS to be a ground for something.. [edit: finished the thread... I dunno from a Yamaha pickup...]

I agree with markymayhem, green is usualy ground in electrical equipment. A relativly inexpensive multi meter would be very usefull in your attempts to straighten the wiring out.