Sango Guitars: WD50 label

Friday, July 6, 2012

WD50 label

1 comment:

S WinterOctober 30, 2013 at 6:59 PM
I owned one of these beautiful guitars. I purchased it in 1976 and played it up until 2010. I loaned it to my son living in Fort Smith however someone decided they needed it more than I and stole it. Wish I could find another for old times sake being I owned it for over 35 years. S. Winter - Fort Smith, AR
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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..."