Nagoya Suzuki Acoustic Guitars: F200 front

Saturday, August 2, 2008

F200 front

3 comments:

VirtualJoe said...: I have an F 200 from 1976/77. Purchased in Milwaukee, WI.
beautiful mother of pearl fret markers, double ring abalone sound hole.
Suzuki Threes on the head

Had it reset by a J Thomas Davis a luithier in Columbus OH in 1997. He came to see the fine instrument that is and was pleased to have a chance to work on it.

Plays well, bright warm sounds, excellent condition. Friend for 31 years.; August 21, 2008 at 3:27 PM
Joe said...: Just bought one of these, beautiful guitar! thanks for the info; October 1, 2010 at 5:03 AM
Anonymous said...: Only thing I've played that comes close to the sound of my Suzuki F-200 is a Martin. It has a rich sound.; September 3, 2013 at 6:21 PM

Older Nagoya Suzuki acoustics...

Many people have posed this question to me about their older Nagoya Suzuki...Am I supposed to have steel strings or nylon strings on this guitar?

On some of the older models: the #6,7,9,12, and 18, the answer is not immediately obvious, since all these models have slotted headstocks like a classical, and the saddle in the bridge is like a classical...not angled (compensated) like an acoustic steel-string. But they have truss rods like an acoustic.

The answer is: steel!

I have an old Suzuki brochure that describes these guitars and it says they were steel stringed-guitars. Although some people put nylon strings on them, they were made for steel. So don't be afraid to put steel strings on them.

A couple of observations: I took apart a #18 (lost pictures when hard-drive crashed)...removed the top and found out it was ladder-braced, and I assume so are the other older models mentioned. Ladder bracing was an old way of internal bracing steel-string guitars. All these too are laminate tops.
Also, the fret-board on the #18 was flat, not radiused like most other steel strings (same with the other models I'm assuming).
The rosette was faux-MOP or nylon, which also goes with an acoustic model.
The headstock rollers are thinner than classical rollers.

I changed the bracing to a fan-braced top and put in tone bars ala Overholtzer book on classical guitar-making.

I didn't have any purling so I replaced the top binding with pieces of straight inlay pieces and glued them in.

The end result was nice and jangly. I liked it, but being new to the setup work I didn't put in enough relief so the strings buzzed a bit, though the saddle was very high and action was low.