Yamaha electric guitar models
| Public | |
| Traded as | : |
| Industry | Conglomerate |
| Founded | October 12, 1887 |
| Headquarters | Hamamatsu, Shizuoka prefecture, Japan |
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Key people
|
Torakusu Yamaha, founder |
| Products | Musical instruments, Audio/Video, Electronics, Computer related products, automobiles, Vehicle Engines, Personal water craft, golf clubs |
| Revenue |
 4.676 billion US$ (March 31, 2009) |
| 140.95 million US$ (March 31, 2009) | |
 (209.87) million US$ (March 31, 2009) |
|
|
Number of employees
|
26,803 (March 31, 2009) |
| Website | Yamaha.com |
The Yamaha Corporation (ヤマハ株式会社 Yamaha Kabushiki Gaisha) is a multinational corporation and conglomerate based in Japan with a wide range of products and services, predominantly musical instruments, motorcycles, power sports equipment and electronics.
Yamaha, a company that is known for having an extensive broad range of products, from motorcycles to musical instruments, produces electric guitars models since 60's. It follows a compilation of these products.
In 1967, Yamaha have changed the series # from S to SG series.
Yamaha began using the "SG" (solid guitar) prefix for their solid bodied guitars when they introduced their first solid-body model in 1966 and continued using the SG prefix up until 1981.
There were three SG eras - the first era SGs, lasting from 1966 to 1971, saw guitars with double cut-away bodies with similar features to the Fender Jazzmaster. These guitars had single digit suffixes - like SG-3, SG-5 and SG-7.
Features: - the round Yamaha logo on the is not a decal, it's a die cast metal piece with chrome tuning forks (the Yamaha logo) raised above a black background. You can turn it with your fingers on my guitar but it doesn't come off - you can also see in the picture that the Yamaha brand name appears on the neck plate. This is also chrome and black but is a stamping not a casting. And this isn't actually a neck plate because it doesn't hold the neck on. If you remove the four screws this plate comes off, you will then see the actual neck plate which has four larger screws holding the neck on. The neck plate has a rectangular "window" in it to allow you to access the truss rod through a hole through the body into the back of the neck (that's right, the truss is accessed through the back of the neck). - All three pickups are identical. They have adjustable pole piece screws. The black and silver areas that you see are actually the tops of the pickup bobbins themselves. The black and silver areas are covered by a domed clear plastic piece. I took the guitar apart a few years ago to give it a good cleaning. I found that the pickups are not held in place with springs at the height adjustment screws like normal pickups, but instead had a large foam rubber block under the body of each pickup. The fretboard is quite thin. Thin enough that the side dots are actually located on the split line between the fretboard material and the wood of the neck. The guitar's serial number is stamped directly into the fretboard between two of the lower frets. - Yamaha was obviously proud of this guitar, and put their name and logo all over it. Besides the Yamaha name on the tuning machines, it has the Yamaha decal and die cast logo on the headstock, the name and logo on the neck plate and the name and logo are molded into the bridge pickup ring between the two bridge pickups. - The SG2 and SG3 were Yamaha's first electric guitar models, and finish details (as described above) are amazing for a 1965 Japanese guitar. If I lay it down next to my Strat, the Strat looks like a bargain basement model by comparison. Later 1960s models in Yamaha's SG series have far cruder appointments. - As was already noted, the bridge has roller saddles and each saddle is height adjustable. The bridge also has the normal coarse height adjustment screws on each end. There are two sheet metal springs on the ends of the bridge pinching the saddles together so they don't move side-to-side. - The guitar shown here has either a metal or black plastic nut, mine is white plastic. There is, of course, a zero fret. - The string tree is also a good quality chrome plated die casting, not a metal stamping like many guitars of the period. - The main knobs are chrome-plated metal with plastic skirts. As for the roller controls, the mysterious 3rd thumbwheel nearest to the bridge pickup is a balance control for the two bridge pickups. This functions whether the slide switch is in the up or down position. - The remaining two thumbwheels are just like their Fender counterparts; they're a volume control and a tone control that override the main volume and tone controls when the slide switch is in the up position.
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