Keira-WitherKay
hello all , today i snagged a yamaha nylon string from a local pawn shop for next to nothing ....... not a top end guitar... just the opposite but old and with tone... a G120 but real old... machine heads have yellowed....... changed strings and filed down the bridge to lower the action and she plays sweetly.....
prob hold onto it or sell it to a student.... it's a perfect nylon.... strange how the older entry level guitars seem better than the new yamaha cg 45's which a few of my students have.... and this CG120 has such a beautiful warm bass tone....
so a good day.........
peace and light
keira
MikeM
Ok come you can't not tell us how much you nabbed it for ?
AlanRatcliffe
Well done. IMO, even the "entry level" CG100 Yammys were better than a lot of the intermediate models they sell now. Quality has dropped...
Keira-WitherKay
ooop s i made a boo boo pn model number ...it's a G120 ......... and i'm doing research on it........ it says it's from 60"s ... but they all describe it correctly with the smaller headstock and the yamaha 3 pitchfork logo small on headstock... no serial number which is confirmed by a posting on vintage guitar forum.... but they all say made in japan.... the one i have says clearly made in republic of china ..taiwan and the model number G120 is clear ......... the paper with the info is glued under the sound hole it's way old and totally faded
so interesting might be older than i thought..... anyway not expecting some gem here just a nice guitar which it is.......
anyway the guitar sounds awesome truly does....i have no idea what woods they are .... will ask a luthier friend on thurs ....... but it plays real well..... so i guess the price of R 600 is fab just to have a playable nylon with tone.... heheheh as i said earlier the bass tone is incredible....... and rich...
peace and light
keira
MikeM
I gave my C40 (A nice one) to my bro a couple months ago so he could learn. Was looking for one for myself. Found a CG100/102 but bad stuff happened with finances ☹
Great find, hope it's looked after ?
AlanRatcliffe
Even better! My first ever guitar was a G140.
Keira-WitherKay
hello alan, research is proving quite futile on this.... all i could find is that it's been around since 1962 but made ever since and the small i behihind the G120 label read G120 i indicates it could be a 1962/1972/1982/1992 model since apparantly thats how yamaha repeat letters in numbers every 10 years.... (info thanks to vintage guitar pro)
i know the japan built model was spruce with mahogany sides........ but i assume the taiwan model will be some sort of laminate....
interesting is the machine heads which are intricately engraved.....
anyway Alan do you have any thoughts on this..........
peace and light
keira
AlanRatcliffe
Yamaha history is a huge amount of info to wade through, because it's such a large company, and is well over 100 years old - most histories don't mention which factories opened where (probably because that alone would fill a book). I'm sure Taiwan was later. They were definitely still building in Japan through the '70s and early to mid-80s. I think Taiwan would have only been mid-80s onwards (when the improving Japanese economy forced them to move offshore) and I think that's when they started using CG and FG prefixes.
I know for sure that they started producing in Singapore in the early '90s - particularly the guitars "under" the then "entry-level" CG100 - the CG40 and CG60 (supposedly for Singapore only, but we got them here too).
But AFAIK, guitars without a "Made in..." detail on the sticker will be Japanese. Only when they started building elsewhere (Korea, then Taiwan, then Sinagapore, then China and everywhere else in SEA), did they start marking country of origin.
That's all I've got...
