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Old 05-08-2012, 11:09 PM
bananas bananas is offline
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Quote:
Originally Posted by stardot View Post

Yamaha laminates were made to prevent cracking, not to make a cheaper guitar. Yamaha made guitars in Japan at the Nippon Ghakki factory in Hammamatsu (I'd I spell that right guys?) and the labels were several colors prior to the move to Taiwan with a lot of their production. Good stuff always is!
Right...from the Japan Vintage series of books, they were getting complaints on cracking on export models of the early...1950`s...Dynamic nylon string models...the #30, 50 and 70. So they made the S series of Dynamic...the S-50 and S-70 models that were entirely laminates. Not sure precisely when the S series started but there may have been some over lap with the FGs which according to vol. #1, was 1966...the S series probably began in the 1960`s, possibly late `50`s...but by the 1960`s Yamaha had expanded the Dynamic line considerably and the line under went several label changes over time...the white with the red dotted border label, again according to books...started in 1960...and they also had the #15 export model at the time but it was all solid wood like the rest of the Dynamic series...the exports have the Yamaha logo arched across the top...domestics have it straight across. So Yamaha had already been perfecting their lamination process before the FGs came into production...there was another series of more classical type Yamahas in the early `60`s as well...the #25, 60, 80, 100, 120 and 150 models with the higher ends being all solid wood...100`s were maple, 120`s were mahogany though I have seen some maple 120`s too...and the 150 which was Palisander. PLUS...they had another series of natural finished classicals that had Dynamic style necks...fatter and thicker than classical necks seen today...the No. 45, 85 and 300...again all solid wood models that seem to date from the early `60s and they have totally different labels than the Dynamics.
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