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I have a couple of Maton Acoustic/Electrics. One is old (1967 MODEL 010) and dead.

The other is about 10 years old and wonderful (TE with an upgraded pickup to the AP5 - this was a big improvement)

Contact the folks at Maton in Melbourne. They are very friendly and helpful.

Hope this helps.

Listen to bootlegger.

Price (or brand) isn't the thing (although you will often get what you pay for) - the set up is.

A badly set up instrument will retard your progress immeasurably.

Get someone very experienced (not an enthusiastic amateur friend) to check it out for you.

Don't buy something that has a "ski jump" neck that needs a re-fret that would cost more than you are paying for it.

You are more likely to find a nylon string that represents a safer bet than an electric and finally a steel string acoustic.

If you are in Australia I can recommend Chris Melville who not only makes world class guitars (Tommy Emmanuel has a couple), but has spent many years restoring and setting up (both used and new) guitars.

http://www.melvilleguitars.com/contactUs.asp

I am not connected in any commercial way to Chris, but am fortunate enough to own one of his guitars (I have 7 guitars in total and they are all good or excellent and his is by far and easily the best in both sound and playability).

My guitars include 2 Matons (including the TE model) , an old LG1 Gibson - good for fingerstyle, a couple of Yamahas - electric and nylon and a Fender Strat '57 re-issue (presently in need of a re-fret), as well as my Melville.  Oh and a Martin backpacker I picked up in Nashvile in '96 that I use for travelling and has a sweet treble but otherwise is not really a Martin.

Good Luck

yNot (Tony) Mitchell