The Steel Guitar Forum

C C,

I've been teaching guitar for a lot of years now, and I see far more strats than teles come into my studio--maybe that's the difference between Killeen and Austin?

I see far more strats than teles come into my studio--

Same here Mike. I teach guitar four days a week at a music store that sells Fender, and many other brands, and the Strats outsell the Teles by at least 6 to 1, maybe even more. Stratocaster is the most popular electric guitar in the world. And the most copied. Personally, I don't like them. I prefer Telecasters, after steel guitars, of course.

You Austinites have always been more sophisticated than us cotton choppers in Killeen. cc

Doug Beaumier wrote:...I prefer Telecasters, after steel guitars, of course.

I have a Telecaster and a Stratocaster, and I prefer the Telecaster. But then, I prefer the Fender Coronado over both of them.

Yesterday I set up my Guyatone D-8 in my studio, where the lighting is different than the lighting in my home... and guess what I saw? A Laminated body! Earlier in this thread I insisted that the body was a solid block of wood. I was wrong At least six layers can be seen through the finish.

I got the exact same guitar, a D-8. I love it. It was my first steel. Wow was white the only color they used back then. I would love to know more about Guyatone steels. Just my 2 cents.

was white the only color they used back then.

I have seen these G'tone D-8s in two colors: white (blonde) and brown, which makes perfect sense for a Stringmaster copy. Stringmasters came in two finishes only, blonde and walnut (brown). In the mid-late 1970s Stringmasters came in black too.

We had a mild earthquake a few days ago, during which my Guyatone fell off the Sho-Bud it was resting on, and took a dive to the floor, sustaining a few more dents. I don't know whether the moral is to not live in earthquake country or not to stack instruments on top of each other.

Probably not a good idea to stack instruments on top of each other. Let's hope "the big one" never comes!

Hi, I have a Guyatone D8 like the one being discussed. I wonder if anyone has a schematic for the switches which are not working properly. I also wonder if anyone knows if the Lollar stringmaster pickups would fit these guitars?

Regards,

JD

removing double posting

I know this is a belated posting but I felt I should share with you the history of GUYATONE the way I learned it:

MATSUKI MFG, a predecessor to GUYATONE, was founded in 1933 to make wooden housing fixtures like Shoji screen. Other than that its pre-war activities are little known. Soon after the WWII, some manufacturers turned their attention to the merchandise whose manufacturing had been banned during the war. Hawaiian steel guitar was one of those target products. At first MATSUKI MFG was providing a body of the steel guitar for TEISCO who was a forerunner to make a steel guitar in commercial quantity. MATSUKI realizing its sales potential, decided to make a steel themselves under their own brand of GUYA. What does GUYA mean? In Japanese a shop to manufacture or sell housing fixture for a Japanese house was called “TATEGU(housing fixture)-YA(shop)” or “GUYA” in short as a musician likes to shorten any word.

In 1948 MATSUKI MFG was renamed as MATSUKI ELECTRIC SOUND LAB to signify its corporate goals looking toward the post war era. Next year when they were to start assembling a guitar amp, they changed the brand name to “GUYATONE” hoping “TONE” added would give the brand more flavor of a musical instrument.

In ‘50s and ‘60s the demand for a steel guitar soared in line with rising popularity of Hawaiian music and C&W. GUYATONE along with its competitor TEISCO provided steels at an affordable price with an acceptable quality. When I first bought a GUYA 6 stringer in 1960, a double neck Fender Stringmaster was sold here for a price equal to an year’s salary of a college graduate. It is fair to call it a poor man’s Fender or Gibson as we felt exactly as such thinking that some day we would get the “real” thing.

Craze for Rock music, Ventures syndrome in Japan, helped to expand GUYATONE market globally and they shifted their main product from steels to solid body guitars according to the evolution of the guitar market. In 1956 with global marketing in mind MATSUKI ELECTRIC changed its corporate name to more recognizable TOKYO SOUND CO.
Attached is a catalogue of this transitional period:
http://www.guyatone.jp/sub_menu/catalog.htm

TOKYO SOUND was also known among audio buffs as a manufacturer of quality phonograph cartridges and tone arms.

Late ‘50s and early to mid ‘60s were best years for GUYATONE guitars. To meet soaring demand they not only built a new factory in Tokyo suburbs but had to subcontract the production of the body of the electric guitar to YAMAHA. With the craze of guitar market subsiding, however, their sales fell and in August 1969 they went broke. In September they were back as GUYA CO refocusing their business goals and in 1976 it was renamed back to TOKYO SOUND CO.LTD.

When you were to keep up with the growing market under severe competition, it was a safe bet to make your product as close as to a best seller looking-wise or function-wise or both. To penetrate into overseas market you would have to listen to what your local dealers demanded. GUYATONE was no exception. But from late ‘70s the company seemed to have changed its policies leaning more toward originality. Here’s a catalog from that era and you don’t find many copy product there.
http://brochures.yokochou.com/guitar-an ... tone/1979/
(BTW, did you know they made a pedal steel then?)

One last remark on GUYATONE steel: Deluxe 8 made by Fender Japan sounds very much like GUYATONE 308 IMO. The person once responsible for manufacturing GUYATONE guitars moved out to start Fender Japan and oversaw, among others, production of Deluxe 8.

Thanks Jackiso ... that was very interesting

Wow! thanks for that information Jackiso. That answers a lot of questions about the history of Guyatone.

Being that I have a Guya does this mean that my D8 Guya is possibly pre 1948?

I am now beginning to wonder if the market downturn during the 50s was the reason some people have laminated or plywood type bodies on their Guyatones.

Doug's last post about his Guyatone possibly being a laminated wood body got the best of my curiosity so, I actually took the tuning pan off my steel and drilled a 3/4" deep hole in my Guya to see if was in fact actually laminated wood or solid wood. My Guya is solid wood without the slightest doubt. Possibly white birch or white poplar. I cannot find a serial number or production number on the D8.

Being that I have a Guya does this mean that my D8 Guya is possibly pre 1948?

Unlikely. I doubt if MATSUKI people were that fast in making a D8 almost concurrently with Fender's introduction of Dual Pro. Although in 1948 "GUYATONE" was introduced as the brand name, they have not discontinued the use of "GUYA" as the logo until very end of the lifespan of their steels. I had one beautiful S8 made apparently late '70s or even later that had a very artistic GUYA script logo on its front and on the case.
Jack Isomura

So the company used both the GUYA logo and the GUYATONE logo during the same years? I always assumed that a guitar with a Guya logo predated one with a Guyatone logo, but evidently not.

Damn, my bubble has been burst so many times on this subject that I am beginning to feel like a cheap hooker.

Sorry for jumping in so late on this thread. Here is a pic of my Guyatone six string.

Doug, I'll bet your guitar sounds as sweet as it looks.
Bill

Bill, thats a nice clean Guyatone!

Doug, I'll bet your guitar sounds as sweet as it looks.

To hear my Guyatone click on either "Sand" or "How D'ya Do" at the bottom of this reply.

Damn, my bubble has been burst so many times on this subject that I am beginning to feel like a cheap hooker.

Don't worry Les, you've got a good sounding D-8 and you enjoy playing it. I enjoy mine too.

Doug: What sort of amp and processors are you using on How d'ya do ?

Alan, I didn't use an amp. I just patched the steel guitar into a Black Box (tube filter), then into a reverb (Holy Grail II), using a very minimal amount of 'spring reverb', and then into the computer. No volume pedal. I monitored through the computer speakers.

steel guitar ---> black box ---> reverb ---> into computer

The pickup on the guitar tends to break up a little, which adds some warmth to the tone, in my opinion. I wouldn't say it's a clean sound, like a Fender, but it's good sound nonetheless. Thanks for asking about it.

Here's my Guyatone, which I got for a mere £25 in a junk-shop in the Scottish Highlands.
Pickups (are these the Cooder-approved gold-foil ones?) sound really sweet and it's very portable: great for a few tunes on steel in mainly-guitar gig. Very light, too.
I like it.

Oh, seem to be having trouble uploading the picture: I clicked on "upload picture" and "browse", then "send"...then nothing happened. Odd. Oh, well, I'll try and add the pic another time, maybe. It's a wee blonde 6-string, 2 pickups.

The Forum Computer wrote:...okay, Brookes, you Dufus, you're making duplicate posts again

Ooooops

Iain wrote:...seem to be having trouble uploading the picture: I clicked on "upload picture" and "browse", then "send"...then nothing happened....

That's what usually happens if your image is a bitmap, or if it's too big. Go into Paint, open your file, go to Image/Stretch/Skew and set both to 40%. Then save your image as a .jpg file with a different name. Load that image into the Forum and I bet it works.

Doug Beaumier wrote:... Thanks for asking about it.

Well, thanks for posting it. I always appreciate your work, and I've been trying to get a similar sound, but my Guyatone doesn't sound like yours. I think I'll pull out my old 50s Watkins Copy-Cat tape-echo unit, instead of the electronic ones I've been using.

Jackiso wrote:I know this is a belated posting but I felt I should share with you the history of GUYATONE the way I learned it:...

The more I learn about the Guyatone D8 the happier I am that I bought two of them.