Maton EBG808 (Tommy Emmanuel)

There are signature models that amount to little more than a name on the headstock. And then there's the Maton EBG808. Tommy Emmanuel has been playing this guitar on every stage in the world for decades, under conditions most acoustics would fail in, and that's precisely why this model is the way it is.

The 808 body is smaller than a dreadnought, and that's the key point. Compact bodies respond faster, sound more even across all six strings and are far less inclined to boom in the bass. For fingerstyle players that's essential: if melody, bass and percussion all have to come out of one instrument, every voice has to stay audible. The 808 manages exactly that.

What it's really famous for, though, is the electronics. The Maton AP5 Pro system combines a piezo pickup with a built-in microphone and an adjustable blend, plus tone controls and a phase switch. That sounds like a lot of technology, and it is. The point is that it works. Where most amplified acoustics sound like a piezo — that glassy quack — here you actually get the wood of the instrument through the PA. Which is why the AP5 is the reference in the fingerstyle world.

Acoustically you get a clear, balanced tone with plenty of attack and a response with no delay in it. Amplified, that character survives intact, and that's the real trick.

A genuine workhorse of the highest order, from Ede's Private Stock. It's his main acoustic for live work.