Re: Bizarre Japanese guitars

46
Moving along, this arrived, shown after a clean up. Not so bizarre in that it pretty much just tries to copy a Mosrite but ... Sappho Gakki Co Ltd??? That is who made it in Japan. And it's the MAX REGER model???? Only Max Re3ger I can find was a German composer who died during WW1. Almost everything on this guitar is weird apart from the tuners.
Pickguard material for a nut, Framus style headstock/neck join (I've never seen THAT from Japan before), weird neck plate, odd pickup internals, heavy decorated plate with regular 60's era vibrato bolted top of it, Bridge appears to use cut up bolt threads.

Where is 'sleepkid' when you need him!

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Re: Bizarre Japanese guitars

48
twelvepoint wrote: Tue Feb 08, 2022 7:37 am That Mosrite is amazing. Are we looking at a laminated bamboo neck here?
Huh! I had not thought of that! Not much of a wood expert.
Pretty sure that this is late sixties /early 70's. Would they have used Bamboo like this then?

The name 'Sappho Gakki Co Ltd' appears on some early traditional Japanese harp instruments (those things with strings and what look like typewriter keys).
There is also a Mory guitar called a Sappho 3 but I don't believe it had anything to do with Sappho Gakki.

Also, do the Japanese mean Sappho the early Greek woman poet from the island of Lesbos, (and, supposedly and somewhat coincidentally, a lesbian herself and a heroic figure to lesbian women down through the ages), or is this a Japanese word meaning something entirely different?

It does look like bamboo now you mention it!

Re: Bizarre Japanese guitars

49
randomonion wrote: Tue Feb 08, 2022 9:05 pm
twelvepoint wrote: Tue Feb 08, 2022 7:37 am That Mosrite is amazing. Are we looking at a laminated bamboo neck here?
Huh! I had not thought of that! Not much of a wood expert.
Pretty sure that this is late sixties /early 70's. Would they have used Bamboo like this then?

It does look like bamboo now you mention it!
My guess is sapele. It definitely looks like the bamboo flooring in my house though!
Last edited by tommy on Wed Feb 09, 2022 2:28 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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