Project Yamaha A/E

[jmshrader]

Picked this up at local Salvation Army store Wednesday for $27. 80s Yamaha FN-595e thin body acoustic. It’s pretty much as found,dead stings,had 3 broken plastic bridge pins that I pulled and grabbed 2 camel bone pins and a walrus ivory pin in it and cleaned the grime and funk off of the fingerboard. Saddle was lowered to the point it buzzed entire length of the board. Took .60 of ebony shims to get it to stop buzzing. Rather pretty laminate top,back and sides. At some point the factory electronics were ripped out and a hole cut in the side for a preamp and someone started to sand the back. I’m gonna dig thru my back and side scraps and see if I can find something to fill the hole in the side that dosnt stand out too bad. Despite being laminated everything except the neck it’s not a bad sounding guitar. I have a fishman dual source pickup system with sound hole preamp and tuner out of a basket case 00 Martin x series that was destroyed in shipping that’s going to go in it,I’ll cut a nut and saddle out of bone and a set of bone pins with abalone dots to match the purfling,do a good setup on it snd it will find a new home. 

[antares]

Looks nice but I'm a Yamaha fan boy anyway! As it stands, do you notice better sound for yourself the player with that aperture? Maybe it could become a feature with a bit of polishing up. There are guitars around like that now ...

e&oe ...

[jmshrader]

I’ve had some very nice playing and sounding yamadog’s over the years. I still have a 70s nippon gakki d28 lawsuit copy that’s a beautiful sounding and playing dred. As to the sound due to the “monitor” hole in the side of it I do hear more of the guitars voice. Sorta reminds me of a flamenco guitar from Portugal I had on the bench a few years ago that had a player monitor in the upper bass bought of the rim that had a little sliding door on it that you could open or close. I might fill it in and then cut a football shaped monitor in the patch and bind the edges of the new cut out.

[Deleted]

Looks like a fun project.
I just did an acoustic. I got it for $40.00. It's posed on here.
Looking forward to seeing this being rebuilt.
EB

[jmshrader]

Had a little time to brave the cold out in the old shop this evening digging thru one of the multiple boxes of back/side scraps,bad bends etc and found a peice of cherry that I think will not look too out of place once it’s inlaid in the hole and stained. Someone started sanding the back so I’m not to concerned about saving the finish on the rim anyways. I think I’m gonna sand the clear off the back and rim and so a multi-coat hand rubbed finish of bri-wax on the back and sides. I’ve finished several of my seagull and other godin family acoustics like that and if you build up a good coat of briwax you can buff it to a decent shine and it’s a pretty durable finish. Little off topic but figured I’d share,the second pic is book matched mulberry that was sawn on my almost 100yr old frick sawmill. 

[dnic]

Quite a find for 27$ and not in to bad of shape all in all. I was wondering the same thing as Steve about the sound port. Too bad it's square you could just bind it and call it good.

[jmshrader]

Could save myself a lot of work and put a preamp in the gaping hole but that’s not my jam,what’s the fun in taking the easy road lol

[jmshrader]

Had a text message about a paying job about quarter 12 tonight so the yamadog is gonna take the back burner for a while. Once this storm has subsided and the mystery strat makes its way to me and I assess it I’ll make a new thread,but from the pictures they sent personally I’d throw the body in the stove and save the neck lol