Repair And Restoration
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Suzuki "Three S" OM – circa 1970s
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Suzuki "Three S" OM – circa 1970s
This is a Suzuki violin company ‘Three S’ OM-style guitar, circa 1970s. This particular instrument was sold in the Japanese domestic market (my customer purchased it in Japan) but I’ve seen others in circulation here in Australia so presumably some were exported too.
Sides and back are laminated rosewood, the top is solid spruce.
Although this ended up being a relatively standard reset, I feel like this is worth documenting as prior to diving in I could find no information online about the neck joint used in these guitars.
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Neck joint type: Dovetail, fretboard extension glued to top.
Adhesive: Hide glue
The guitar body is 84mm deep at the neck block.
The dovetail socket is 76mm in length.
The socket is 44mm wide at the top tapering to 14mm at the bottom.
The socket and tenon are both 15mm deep.
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Typical thick finish over the joint which needs to be scored. I scored fairly deeply and still ended up with one or two small chips on the heel.
There was no gap at the front of this dovetail, with the face of the tenon glued hard up against the back wall of the socket. This was 15mm in from the body join, so about 1mm before the 15th fret. If there was a gap, you would hit it by drilling at 15 and angling back a few degrees towards the headstock.
The hide glue in the joint was copious and covered the tenon face, tenon cheeks, heel cheeks etc. There was a stack of spruce shims ~1.5mm thick glued to the treble side of the socket. I assume these are factory shims as there is no evidence the neck was removed in the past.
I heated for 15 minutes with two hot wire foam cutters before I saw any movement in the joint. It took about another 10 minutes of heating and wiggling to completely remove the neck.
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Other notes:
– Due to the chunky block glued to the fretboard extension, and corresponding cavity in the soundboard, there is very little wood left at the top of the soundhole. The tiny remaining portion of the centre seam in this area let go as soon as I began heating to loosen the fretboard extension.
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