Sango Guitars: 2012

Tuesday, May 1, 2012

Sango acoustic repair

I repaired a Sango acoustic guitar for a friend and took a few pictures. Never heard of the brand before, but after I finished, what a nice sounding guitar! I could tell before the fix it was nice, but the action was very high, unplayable really.
The following sequence is a bit out of order, but you can see the surprise. After trying and trying to get the neck to slide out of the pocket, I could see wooden dowels holding it to the body. So I had to pull it off versus slide it off. Would have been a lot faster had I known. So hopefully this knowledge will be valuable to someone else.
Sorry I didn't write down the model number. If I can find it I will post.
This guitar is a definite keeper.
My quite a bit less-than-perfect song on youtube doesn't do it justice, but hopefully you can tell it really is a nice sounding guitar. Notes are separate, great volume, and great harmonics.

Ironed off fretboard

$6 iron, not for clothes any more!

Dowels

Surprise!

Neck is off

The neck is off and now I see why I couldn't slide it off with steam. There were dowels holding it to the body. Never saw that before.

Inject steam with espresso maker setup

Drill fret for injecting steam

Bridge

Sango History

Apparently, Sango was a brand made by the Matsumoku company in Japan - a manufacturer of guitars for a number of brands - Aria being the most well-known. The following is from the wikipedia web site:

"Matsumoku Industrial was a Japanese manufacturing company from c. 1900 - 1987. Established around 1900 as a woodworking manufacturer of various items but is best known as a manufacturer of high quality guitars and bass guitars including some Epiphone and Aria guitars.

Matsumoku began in Matsumoto, Japan, as a family owned woodworking business that specialized in building tansu and butsudan.
Shortly after WWII, the Singer Corporation established the Singer Sewing Machine Company, Japan, and set up production facilities in Nagoya.
Matsumoku Industrial was contracted to build its sewing machine cabinets, and in 1951, became a partially owned subsidiary of Singer, Japan.
Matsumoku also built amplifier cabinets, speaker boxes and wooden cabinets for audio and television makers..."

Guitar Production

(from Wikipedia cont.)
By the mid 1950s, Matsumoku began to look into other woodworking markets and, as it had on its staff several skilled luthiers, ventured into guitar and violin production.
By the early 1960s, Matsumoku had acquired new mills, lathes and specialized presses and began to increase musical instrument production.

Matsumoku produced guitars, or parts of guitars, for Vox, Guyatone, FujiGen Gakki, Kanda Shokai (Greco), Hoshino Gakki (Ibanez), Nippon Gakki (Yamaha), Aria and Norlin (parent company of Gibson.) American owned Unicord contracted Matsumoku to build most of its Univox and Westbury guitars. St. Louis Music Company imported Matsumoku-built Electra Guitars.
J. C. Penney sold Matsumoku-built Skylark guitars through its catalog division.
Matsumoku built many early Greco guitars as well as Memphis, Vantage, Westbury, Westminster, Cutler, Lyle and Fell.
Washburn Guitars contracted Matusmoku to build most of its electric guitars from 1979 through 1985.
Though the names above reflect Matsumoku's involvement, many of the names were later sold to other companies which made completely different guitars in quality and sound.

In 1979, Matsumoku began to market its own guitars under the Westone name.

By the early 1970s, Matsumoku had begun using CNC mills, routers, and lathes, one of the first guitar makers to do so.
Even so, 60% of the guitar making process was still done by hand including planing, fretting, joining, and assembly.
This machine cut, yet hand worked process yielded high quality instruments with unique character..."

Sango Guitars

Friday, July 6, 2012

WD50 front

WD50 label

WD50 headstock