Music Man Mariposa - A Unique and Versatile Offset Guitar
In ever-growing world of electric guitars, Music Man's Mariposa offers a unique take on the offset that is quite different from any other design I've come across.
Designed in collaboration with Omar Rodriguez-Lopez of The Mars Volta, At the Drive In, and many more projects, the Mariposa is definitely skewed towards the higher gain and prog-rock crowd, especially those who are looking for a body shape that is a bit left-of-center. That said, the Mariposa is definitely not a one-trick-pony, and in my time with it I've found it can sound very good with all sorts of tones. To make things even better, because this is a Music Man, the guitar plays amazingly as well.
In this video, we'll check out the Mariposa through a variety of tones and discuss the all the positives and negatives of this design and it's unique electronics layout. For those of you who prefer your content written, feel free to read on.
Construction
First off, let’s list out the specs:
Okoume body w/ custom laser-etched pickguard
Roasted maple neck with ebony fingerboard
10” fingerboard radius
Stainless steel frets
25.5” scale
Music man Tremolo
Schaller Locking Tuners
Custom-wound Music Man Humbuckers
3 way switch
2 volume controls with the “Tethered Tone Circuit”
As you would likely expect from Music Man, the overall build quality of the Mariposa is great and the guitar is free from any visual flaws or functional issues. Tuning stability is also fantastic, even in the very rare event of me using the tremolo, and all the electronics have worked flawlessly in the entire time that I’ve had the guitar
One thing worth mentioning is that the neck on this guitar is fairly straight-grained, unlike my other Music Man guitars where the necks have more figuring. I’ve also found this to be the case with pretty much every MAriposa I’ve seen photos of online, outside of a few limited-run, Ball Family Reserve varaints. This isn’t something that bothers me personally, but I can understand the people who would prefer figured maple, especially for the price. That said, from what I understand, straight-grained wood tends to be more stable than figured wood.
Feel
Even though the neck has a more subdued appearance than some guitars, I think it more than makes up for that by being incredibly comfortable. Music Man’s signature gunstock oil and wax blend feels just as awesome and smooth to the touch as it has on every other one of their guitars that I’ve played, and it’s awesome being able to slide up and down the neck without feeling any sort of stickiness or resistance.
I’d classify the neck profile on this one as a fairly thin C shape that I find incredibly comfortable even after playing for hours and hours, and I also love the narrow nut width found on a lot of Music Man guitars including this one.
I also think the body shape is pretty smartly designed from a comfort-perspective. Despite the top of the guitar looking fairly angular, the edges have been subtly rounded off so there isn’t anything to dig into your forearm while playing.
The back of the guitar, interestingly, is even more rounded along all the edges, and as a result the Mariposa feels really good up against your body whether you’re playing sitting down or standing up. I feel like if all the edges on the guitar were this round it would look weird, so kudos to whoever came up with that design decision (because I personally think it gives you the best of both worlds).
The one downside of the body design is that it can be a bit difficult to hit the highest frets since the angle of the body gets in the way. Obviously, for some people this won’t be much of an issue, especially if you are mostly a rhythm player or just someone who rarely hits the 22nd fret, but I feel like it's something to be aware of if you’re looking into one of these and don’t have the chance to try it first.
One quick final thing I want to mention about the feel and playability is that the bridge saddles and screws, despite being more vintage-styled, are a lot smoother than other similar bridges to me. This is something I also noticed on my Stingray RS, but my Valentine’s saddle screws feel a bit rougher in comparison, though not as bad as most other vintage-style saddles I’ve played before. That said, the Mariposa and Stingray are newer than the Valentine, so if you get a more recently built guitar, I would think you’d have the same smoother saddles and screws.
Overall, the Mariposa is a great feeling guitar, and it’s one that I can play for a long time given how comfortable it is.
Sound
I’ve also personally enjoyed the way this guitar sounds. It definitely has some attitude and snarl with very strong mids, which is especially noticeable when playing with higher gain.
The higher output of these pickups give my tones a little front end push, but I feel like it isn’t too much and I can still get some nice sounding cleans. The bridge pickup is about 16.6k and the neck is 14.2k according to my multimeter.
There is a certain “directness” to the sound, for lack of a better term, that can be difficult to dial out, especially in the neck position, so those of you who prefer smoother and more subtle tones might find these tricky to dial in, especially since there isn’t a tone knob. On the flip side, the guitar stands out pretty well in a mix thanks to that direct sound, regardless of which pickup position you are playing in.
Like I mentioned earlier, the Mariposa also has what Music Man is calling a “tethered tone circuit” which can help shape the tones and round things out a bit. Given how the guitar is wired, the volume controls interact more directly with one another, so you get a lot more high end rolloff when lowering the volume knobs than you would on a Les Paul or other guitar with 2 volume controls.
It’s also possible to get some different sounds in the middle position by adjusting the volume of each pickup to get a different blend. As an example, I’ve found that you can somewhat replicate the sound of rolling a tone knob back to about 5 or 6 by rolling the volume of one of pickups completely down while in the middle position.
Obviously you have a lot of options with how much or how little you can have each pickup dialed in, so I’d guess the main appeal of this circuit is the flexibility offered when in the middle position.
Honestly, while the tethered tone circuit is an interesting idea, it’s not something I really get a lot of mileage out of, and as someone who tends to favor brighter tones, the additional high end rolloff when messing with the volume knobs is not the most desirable effect.
This high end rolloff also poses a bit of an issue since I’m not the biggest fan of the balance between the humbuckers. Specifically, the neck pickup has a tendency to sound louder with more power and low end compared to the bridge when you leave the volumes wide open, especially with clean tones. With more compression and gain the difference can be more subtle, but I feel like I can still notice it.
Logically, this makes sense given that the pickups are similar output wise and neck humbuckers in general can be pretty low-end heavy in comparison to the bridge, especially when both pickups are at the same height as they appear to be in this guitar. I could lower just the neck volume to compensate for this, but like I just mentioned, due to the way this guitar is wired, the high end gets attenuated much more than I’d like.
I’d normally try lowering the neck pickup to balance things out, but because these pickups are direct mounted, that isn’t really an option, since the the feet of the pickup are already completely flush with the bottom of the cavity. I could also try to do the opposite and raise the bridge pickup, but then I’d have to get some foam or something to put underneath it to keep it stable. I’m also pretty happy with the way the bridge pickup sounds, even though I admit there are times where I feel like it can sound dry with some gainy tones, which could be due its distance from the strings.
This is arguably just me being overly critical or making something out of nothing since its of course possible to just dial in tones specifically for each pickup position, especially for me since I’m using an Axe Fx most of the time. Even still, I figured it was worth mentioning, since this didn’t really come across in any of the reviews I watched prior to buying this guitar.
Conclusion
The Music Man Maripopsa is definitely a standout visually with its compact offset body style, which isn’t going to be for everyone, but I still really enjoy the look of it even after having the guitar for a few years now. The light weight combined with Music Man’s always awesome necks make this guitar incredibly easy to play standing up or sitting down for long periods of time, even though it can be a bit difficult to hit that 22nd fret due to the body shape
I’d also say that overall, I do think the guitar sounds great with a variety of tones even though the pickups are higher output, and that is not something that can be said about all high-output pickups. I personally wish I could tweak the output balance of the pickups more without the extra high end loss from the tethered tone circuit, but this obviously is not my signature guitar and I think it’s safe to assume these quirks are intentional choices from Omar and Music Man.
To wrap up, I’ll just say that if you are into offset guitars and/or Music Man guitars, the Mariposa is definitely one to try if you have a chance, whether its the USA version or the Sterling version.
