Suzuki Guitars: Suzuki Guitar Pictures

Sunday, April 23, 2006

Suzuki Guitar Pictures - Kiso and Nagoya

This is a blog dedicated to older Suzuki Guitars. Suzuki Guitars have been around since the early 1900's and have attracted a growing interest by players and collectors alike. Many guitar players own more than one guitar, yet a common story it seems is that the Suzuki guitar is the one played most often, or that stays with them when all others are sold. The company may be known by the generic label "Suzuki", but there are actually three different Japanese companies that have manufactured guitars under the name of Suzuki during the 50's to the present time - but all having a common ancestry.
Kiso-Suzuki was one company to manufacture guitars in the region of Kiso-prefecture. A company was started in Nagoya too - Suzuki Violin Company, Nagoya manufacturing about the same number of models as Kiso, but with different numbers.
Today, there is a company called "Suzuki Musical Instrument CO." and it has no relation to the other Suzuki companies, but was started by Manji Suzuki, whose guitars used to be labelled with the 'M Suzuki' label. Good guitars it seems.
Suzuki in Nagoya, Japan does not manufacture guitars any more,
All Suzuki's have had a fairly good-to-excellent reputation and some models are very collectable; one reason is the quality of wood and workmanship; there is also a history of copying from the venerable Martin company, (some story is getting passed around that the copies resulted in a lawsuit by Martin in the 1970's, but apparently is not true according to allexperts.com writer bilrux@aol.com.)
Also, I had a tour of the Martin factory a few years ago and asked the president, Chris Martin, who gave us the tour (super nice guy)about the lawsuit, and he said 'imitation is the sincerest form of flattery', or words to that effect.
I've attempted to create some kind of order out of the chaos that exists regarding Suzuki model numbers and dates of manufacture, but the following list is only incomplete. I'm looking for any information re: the models of guitars that were manufactured by this company and the materials used.'
When this goal has been reached, it will be a wonderful day for all of those guitar players around the world who own a Suzuki guitar and have said to themselves, "I REALLY like this guitar...what is the story behind it?" If you have any information to add to the Suzuki story unfolding here, please submit pictures and/or stories thru the relevant links at the top of the page. If you have any pictures of construction, repair, or modifications, e-mail the pics to me at suzukiguitars@gmail.com and I'll publish them. Just identify the model and describe the pic. Thanks!

Solid vs Laminate? from craftsman R.M. Mottola...

(the information below is from R.M. Mottola, a well-known and respected luthier, editor, and author. I posed the question to him in an email and he kindly responded and gave me permission to quote the following response.).........check out his interesting web site - http://www.liutaiomottola.com

"If you have read my site in any depth you will know that I am not one for simple answers, and there is no exception here. There are a number of variables here which should be considered. What exactly is meant by the term laminated top? Does it mean conventional wood laminates with the grain orientation of the middle ply at 90 deg. to the outside plys? Could it mean a wood laminate where grain orientation was aligned for all plys? Could it include a center ply that is not wood at all, as in so called double top construction?

And then there is the issue of what the term "sound as good" means and implies. What sounds good to folks most often is what sounds most familiar. And it is certainly true that the musical material played on any type of instrument evolved along with the instrument, and exploits the features and works around the shortcomings of that type. These two factors conspire to make instruments with construction that deviates significantly from the norm for the type to be perceived as sounding not as good sometimes.

My general observation of sonic differences between instruments with solid wood tops and wood laminated tops with center ply at 90 deg. is that the laminated top instruments offer less overall sustain. In musical styles and applications where sustain is considered to be a good thing, then laminated top instruments are generally perceived as tonally inferior. Painting with a broad brush, this means classical and steel string acoustic guitars. Less sustain generally provides more perceived separation of notes of chords and in applications where this is a desirable feature, such as in archtop jazz guitars and other applications where complex chords are a key tonal element, laminated top instruments are more well received. It is my observation that, if one judges acoustic bass guitars by how close they sound to pizz upright bass, that reduced sustain helps to move the tone in that direction. That said, I have heard nice sounding ABGs with laminated tops.

Let me briefly touch on less conventional types of laminated tops. In my observation the so called double top classical guitars (which make use of spruce laminated with a central core of honeycomb Kevlar) sound no worse but certainly no better as a class than instruments using solid wood tops. I have heard good sounding instruments that made use of laminated top where the grain orientation of the plys was the same, but not enough to come to any conclusions about this class of construction.

Hope this helps; best of luck with your project."
--

R.M. Mottola

Liutaio Mottola Stringed Instrument Design

Nonprofit Technical Design and Research for the Lutherie Community

See the Liutaio Mottola Lutherie Information Website at http://www.LiutaioMottola.com

Technology editor and contributing editor
for American Lutherie, the stringed instrument makers' journal
of the Guild of American Luthiers.
See the G.A.L. website at http://luth.org.

Editor of the Savart Journal, the online research journal
of science and technology of stringed musical instruments.
See the Savart Journal website at http://SavartJournal.org.

Member, New England Luthiers.
See the NEL website at http://newenglandluthiers.org.

Some background...

Masakichi Suzuki (1859-1944)was Japan's first violin producer. His father was a samurai moonlighter who also made shamisens in Nagoya. Masakichi succeeded his father's craft business that soon failed. In the push for westernization in Meiji, he naturally became interested in shamisen's western counterpart: violin. In the 1880s, he started to manually produce and sell violins. He founded the Suzuki Violin Factory in 1900. By 1910, his factory was producing 65,800 violins per year. Nagoya became the manufacturing center of string musical instruments.

There was 'one' Suzuki company before the 2nd World War. After the war, a entity created by the US and allies called GHQ (for General Headquarters) dismantled some parts of 'Imperial' Japan and some companies were closed or restructured. In Suzuki's case, the company was separated into - the Suzuki Violin Company, changing to the Kiso Suzuki Violin Company and the Suzuki Violin Manufacturing Company came to be called the Nagoya Suzuki Violin Company.

Kiso Suzuki went bankrupt in 1987 and the machines and materials were sold to ESP.
Nagoya Suzuki stopped making guitars in 1989.

Many guitar players own more than one guitar, yet a common story it seems is that the Suzuki guitar is the one played most often, or that stays with them when all others are sold.

Model #'s...

Re: the serial number: on many of the models the first one or two numbers in the serial number stands for the year in which it was manufactured; from the 60’s to the 80’s. I have never seen a definite 1950's guitar yet, mainly because I don't know enough about them yet.The other prefixes/suffixes ...W, C, S, VS, D, G, A, T, R, O, J...may follow other common meanings.
W = Western model
F= Folk Model
FM = Flame Maple
C= Cutaway
E=Electronics
K=?
S=Spruce (top)
VS= Violin Sunburst color
D=Dreadnaught shape
G=Grand Concert shape for classicals; some 'G' acoustics however had a large Gibson-type headstock
A=?
T=? Takeharu sometimes
R=?
O=?
J=Jumbo shape
(if you can help with understanding their system, please DO write me at suzukiguitars@gmail.com....Thanks!)

Some Suzuki History...

This is a blog dedicated to older Suzuki Guitars.

Suzuki Guitars have been around since the early 1900's and have attracted a growing interest by players and collectors alike. The company may be known by the generic label "Suzuki", but there are actually three different Japanese companies that have manufactured guitars under the name of Suzuki to the present time - Kiso Suzuki, Nagoya Suzuki, M Suzuki (Manji Suzuki)/Suzuki (modern company) but Kiso and Nagoya have a common ancestry.

Masakichi Suzuki started making violins in 1887 and became well-known in a short time - because of a combination of good timing and quality.

He made guitars starting in the early 1900's, and early models are pretty rare.

After the 2nd World War, his original company was split into two - Kiso Suzuki Violin Company, run by one of his sons, and the Nagoya Suzuli Violin Company, run by another son. Both companies made guitars, as well as other stringed instruments for awhile.

Kiso-Suzuki manufactured guitars in the region of Kiso-Fukushima, Nagano prefecture.

Nagoya Suzuki manufactured guitars in the region of Nagoya Japan.

They manufactured about the same number of models as Kiso, and many of their model numbers are the same. But each had different brands and labels, but both are well-liked by owners of their guitars.