Montana-based luthier Mark Johnson has been repairing and building custom guitars and basses for over 35 years, and has no shortage of experience crafting premium-quality instruments. In the mid ’70s, Johnson started his career working for Alembic—one of the great crucibles of guitar innovation in history—and he has put this experience to good use. The company he now runs with his son Ethan, MJ Guitar Engineering, is perhaps best known for the Mirage series, a line of handmade instruments boasting dramatic top carves and a unique reinforced split headstock design. Collective Soul’s Joel Kosche is among the high-profile pros who play Mirage series guitars.
MJ’s newest creation is the Groovemaster, a P-90 equipped solidbody that melds the company’s distinctive, curvaceous designs with elements from vintage Fender and Gibson axes.
Getting into the Groove
The Groovemaster’s distinctive shape is
bound to turn heads at a gig. The slanted
lower bout and exaggerated bass side horn
of the flat-topped poplar slab read like a
tweaked and slenderized Jazz bass body with
Tele-style knobs, switching, and input jack.
The intonated wraparound bridge from
Wilkinson and Seymour Duncan P-90s
(P-90 Vintage in the neck position and P-90
Hot in the bridge) inject this MJ with a
healthy dose of Kalamazoo heritage as well.
The bolt-on mahogany neck conceals a dual-action truss rod and features a rosewood fretboard for added sonic warmth. The headstock features a near-straight string pull over the nut, and the guitar’s keystone tuning keys add a classic touch. It’s a fine combination of hardware, electronics, and adventurous styling all-in-all, though I couldn’t help but think that the wonderful split headstock found on MJ’s other models would assert MJ’s own worthwhile aesthetic amid the classicism of the design.
I was impressed with the instrument’s build quality and its honest, heavy-duty feel—the neck bolt holes were reinforced for rigidity, the Wilkinson bridge was beefy and simple, the knobs turned with a smooth resistance that just felt expensive, and the thin satin finish on the neck provided a great blend of silky smoothness and barely perceptible woody texture. The neck is a fairly thin but comfortable C shape with jumbo frets and a 12" radius that felt great on everything from fast leads to cowboy chords. Fret ends were nicely rounded and the leveling job on our review model was excellent, but this Groovemaster begged for that last stage of fine fret polishing.
Master of the House
The acoustic musicality of the
Groovemaster is easy to hear. It’s exceptionally
loud, and this actually had me wondering
at times if the body was chambered.
Those potentially put off by the use of a
body wood outside of the usual ash, alder,
or mahogany should take note—this poplar
slab resonated like crazy in my hands,
straight through to the headstock.
I plugged into a Fender Champ and experimented with some clean tones. The Groovemaster’s neck pickup communicated everything I love about a P-90—clear, ringing highs, a syrupy midrange, and ample low-end warmth. This smooth single-coil had the added benefit of living on a 25.5"-scale guitar, which lends additional percussiveness and bass articulation. Dense chord voicings benefited from this combination, and there’s an excellent transparency between notes.
The middle position was warm and sweet—a cool variation on the classic dualpickup Telecaster sound. It was outstanding for funky stabs, but packed enough twang and snap for chicken pickin’.
Switching to the bridge pickup opened up some bluesy, cutting lead tones that rang with a bit of natural overdrive when I dug in, as well as enough low-end foundation to feel punchy. The overall tonal character was complex and three-dimensional, and as I sustained chords or ran through Radiohead-inspired arpeggios, the Duncan P-90 rang through the Champ with long, almost pulsing sustain.
With the Champ cranked up, the bridge P-90’s harmonic complexity increased. I heard an appreciable gain in fatness without any of the unwanted midrange honk I occasionally get from my Les Paul. The combination of the Groovemaster with the classic Fender combo was killer, with crisp cutting grit and tasty overtones all over the frequency spectrum.
I plugged into a Carvin V3M for some modern distortion, noting the guitar’s ability to remain articulate as the tubes saturated to thrash levels. With a slight scoop in the EQ, I got a punishing grind with ample harmonics and good clarity across almost all the gain ranges. The bridge P-90 exhibited a controllable, slightly microphonic quality at the highest levels of gain that let me squeeze an extra ounce of angry intensity out of the instrument.
The Verdict
It’s cool that MJ combines bold new curves
with a vintage flair and proven, quality
components, because the result is a guitar
that, in many ways, transcends genre. The
range of clean tones on this guitar is exceptionally
wide, and the 6-string can move
from warm to concise in ways that make it
an excellent choice for use as a funk, blues,
or even a solidbody jazz vehicle. It’s a showcase
for the often overlooked P-90 pickup,
and its ability to bring together the toastiness
and midrange girth of a humbucker
with the clarity and percussive response
of a single-coil, makes it a beautiful rock
machine for anything from Mountain to
Wolves in the Throne Room. Cool, classic,
and forward looking, the Groovemaster is a
master of the multi-faceted as well. Players
not hung-up on tradition are going to love
what this thing can do.
Buy if...
you want a freshly styled solidbody that retains key vintage appointments and delivers feel and tone beyond what you expect for the price.Skip if...
you can’t handle the curves.Rating...
The body shape of this 6-string seems surprisingly ergonomic, but that perception changes when you hold its neck!
And so it goes that I pondered this proliferation of Virgos and Libras, and my hypothesis came into focus. Were we all the result of our parents’ Christmas and New Year’s celebrations?! I have to say, there was a camaraderie discovered among my fellow party babies when I presented my findings to them. Now, being born in the early ’70s also had me thinking of the culture of the times. Hippie life was fading as young people started to realize they had to get a job, and alas, long hair and beards were being replaced by staid 9-to-5 gigs that could slowly suck the life out of you. So, given the cultural mores of that era, I thought that this month I should write about the Sorrento Swinger.
“Hippie life was fading as young people started to realize they had to get a job.”
Born around 1967—maybe in September—these Swingers hailed from the “crazy” design period of the Kawai Co. Kawai produced some of the coolest guitar designs from 1967 to ’69, and there were some very creative guitar designers there on the job. Kawai had poached some of the finest employees from the wreckage of the Shinko Gakki factory (Pleasant, Intermark, etc.) and through the purchase of the Teisco brand. In this era, Kawai usually used three different standard pickups and they all sound great, plus the units are always wired in series, which is just awesome.
For a 25-buck, Japan-made guitar from the ’70s, the Swinger has an elite-looking headstock—and, on this example, most of its tuners.
Now, the Swinger (and similar Kawai-made guitars) came from an era where U.S. importers would order small batches of instruments that were often unique and extremely gonzo. The guitars might have been destined for medium-sized music stores or direct-order catalogs, but whatever the case, the importer usually gave the guitars names. In this instance, it was Jack Westheimer who featured this model as an “exclusive” design. In Westheimer Corporation catalogs from the time, the Swinger carried the A-2T model name (there was another one-pickup model called the A-1) and sold wholesale for $25 in 1967! As the catalog mentioned, these were “priced for the teenaged trade.” This particular guitar featured the Sorrento badge, and was sold through some sort of music store that’s probably long out of business, but all the Swingers were the same.
The Swinger’s large mahogany neck (sans truss rod) is robust and beefy in all the nicest ways. Like, when I was a kid, I was considered a “husky” fit. That’s this neck: husky! The striped pickguard is a Teisco holdover and the controls are as simple as it gets. Two knobs (volume, tone) and two pickup selectors is all there is, but the beauty is in the body. That lower bout is shaped like some sort of 1969 lounge chair. The strap pin is totally in the wrong place, but the big bottom swoop is worth it. Yep, the Swinger was ready to bring in the dawn of the 1970s, but alas, the guitar came and went in a blink.