Ryan SG type guitar, where does it come from?

[dsmcl77]

Hi,

A friend found an old guitar belonging to his (late) father, He gave it to me as he doesn't play any instrument himself.

It is a "tagged" Ryan walnut colored. It seems to me that it is a kind of rebranded guitar for a distributor in Europe and probably France.

After "few" research (thats how I discovered this great site and forum), it looks like a Maya SG (distributed in UK and i saw one for sale in Canada) or an Ibanez 2354 with the Bigsby type trem of the 2382 model pre lawsuit.

http://www.captainibanez.com/display/CA ... -+Electric

Also found that it could be from the Tombo factory under the brand Yamato (found in he US), but no confirmations there.

Not sure how to put picture in here, any help welcome yet again...
I'll work on this and dismantle the guitar to find out any clues and post the pics.

Does any one have info, about this rather nice plank?
Is there a US equivalent?

THX,

dsmcl77

[Phizix]

Here are instructions for posting pictures http://www.vintaxe.com/boards/viewtopic.php?t=1858

We have a 1980 Maya catalog in the catalog subsciption section of our site here http://www.vintaxe.com/catalogs_japanese_maya_1980.htm

Page 5 of the catalog shows a walnut finished SG type guitar that could be like yours, its model # is SG-26DT, solid mahogany body, mahogany finish, available with or without diecast tremolo (SG-26 is model without trem), brass bridge saddles. It looks like a really nice Gibson copy. There was also a bass version available.

[dsmcl77]

Hi,

I did some research and here are my findings by cross checking few things.

It seems that it is coming from the cimar co.

Here is a page of the catalogue: look at the 1944


And the guitar






it is made of plywood, but not regular plywood.
It is a thin layer on top then strips of solid wood (a bit like my kitchen countertop...)then again a thin layer, strip of solid wwod and the the thin back layer
varnish is all but environemental friendly as any asian axes even today, but can withstand almost any abuse.



the sound unplugged is good and warmer than my 1993 Gibson LP standard...

It is two single pups in humbucker covers


500k and 0.42 as electronics


Once cleaned and all set-up properly it was time to try her out

the sound unpluged is good and warmer than my 1993 Gibson LP standard...same strings gauge.

Plugged it sounded liked a bad telecaster and i changed the brige pup for an HS filtertron and bridge for a MK45 1984 japanese humbucker

much much better now.

I feel that the neck is a bit "soft", i mean that if i pull and push it i make a nice tremolo kind of sound.
It seems to be made of mahogany by the look of the wood fiber ( and so say a shop that is selling one) but not as strong feeling as the gibson.

sustain is two third of the gibby, not bad for kitchen countertop plywood stuff.

Put a new spring on the "bigsby like" trem and it is working but i never used a real bigsby so i can't compare.

All in all, a nice piece(s) of wood and fun to play for a tenth of the price a a real thing.