Vintage Yamaha FG-200 Shed Find

[chaosman12]

A friend was cleaning out a relatives shed and found this FG-200. It was still in its case, but the case was was falling apart. He was wondering if the guitar could be made playable again. Here's some pics and questions I have about bringing it back to life.

Considering it may have been in the shed for 10 or more years, the body is in decent condition:

Fretboard wood looks pretty tired. Frets have light corrosion:

These flat spots looks like someone leveled the bass side of the frets, and didn't bother with crowning them.

Is this amount of curvature normal? Or is it a sign of bellying?

Tuners have a lot of slop with the knobs and posts, but they seem to operate. Tag says Made in Taiwan.

I dribbled some penetrant (PB Blaster) onto the truss rod nut and the next day was able to loosen the truss rod nut.

Now the neck geometry:

With the truss rod loosened and a straight edge between the 1st and 12th fret, there is 0.007" of relief measured at the 6th fret.

With a straight edge between the 1st and 20 th (last) fret, the relief is 0.016" at the 12th and 13th frets. This confirms what looks like a rise of the fretboard over the body when viewing down the neck from the head stock.

The fret plane projection to the bridge should be level with the top of the bridge. Here, it is below by about 1/8". Is this too far from ideal that reasonable string height can't be achieved?

Saddle is about 3/32" above wood.

My main question is about adjusting the truss rod nut. Being that the guitar is about 50 years old (based in the SN) what are the risks of cranking down on the truss rod nut and what can I do to minimize the risks. The last thing I want to do is damage the truss rod.

Any other suggestions, advise or things that I should or shouldn't do? Thanks all.

 

[bender66]

Red label?

I've got a few. No 200 though. I sanded the saddles and adjusted the truss rod to get em playable in acoustic territory. Love the neck on my 160. Glad you saved it.

 

[hopdybob]

first would check the inside if the bracing is still glued to the top

i would get the nut off and clean it good, look at the wood and thread in the cavity if a washer is needed.
and help the neck by clamping it into the relief you need, eventual back-bow if with string tension you would get to much relief.
in the last case, loosen the nut, clamp the neck into a back-bow, tighten the nut and string to pitch.
then, with little steps, loosen the nut and let it rest, check, loosen again if needed.

 

[Freeman Keller]

A friend was cleaning out a relatives shed and found this FG-200. It was still in its case, but the case was was falling apart. He was wondering if the guitar could be made playable again. Here's some pics and questions I have about bringing it back to life.

Considering it may have been in the shed for 10 or more years, the body is in decent condition:

View attachment 1061904

Fretboard wood looks pretty tired. Frets have light corrosion:

View attachment 1061905

These flat spots looks like someone leveled the bass side of the frets, and didn't bother with crowning them.

View attachment 1061906

Is this amount of curvature normal? Or is it a sign of bellying?

View attachment 1061892

Tuners have a lot of slop with the knobs and posts, but they seem to operate. Tag says Made in Taiwan.

View attachment 1061890

I dribbled some penetrant (PB Blaster) onto the truss rod nut and the next day was able to loosen the truss rod nut.

View attachment 1061889

Now the neck geometry:

With the truss rod loosened and a straight edge between the 1st and 12th fret, there is 0.007" of relief measured at the 6th fret.

With a straight edge between the 1st and 20 th (last) fret, the relief is 0.016" at the 12th and 13th frets. This confirms what looks like a rise of the fretboard over the body when viewing down the neck from the head stock.

The fret plane projection to the bridge should be level with the top of the bridge. Here, it is below by about 1/8". Is this too far from ideal that reasonable string height can't be achieved?

View attachment 1061891

Saddle is about 3/32" above wood.

View attachment 1061894

My main question is about adjusting the truss rod nut. Being that the guitar is about 50 years old (based in the SN) what are the risks of cranking down on the truss rod nut and what can I do to minimize the risks. The last thing I want to do is damage the truss rod.

Any other suggestions, advise or things that I should or shouldn't do? Thanks all.

Your last two photos tell the whole story. That guitar needs a neck reset and will never have nice playable action until it does. Unfortunately old Yamaha's are very hard to reset the necks on - they do use a dovetail joint but they either set them so tightly that they won't come apart with heat and steam or they use a glue that doesn't come apart like epoxy. A few folks have had luck resetting them but I have not.

On my personal FG-150 I resorted to the old trick of sawing the neck off and converting the guitar to bolt on. That allowed me to set the neck geometry such that I could get a very nice playable action with adequate saddle.

Some other options, none of them good, include trying to reduce the top belly with a Bridge Doctor, but honestly the belly on yours is normal (and I don't like the Bridge doc). Some people will shave the bridge but then if and when you do reset the neck you'll have to replace the bridge and Yamies are kind of odd balls. Your frets need some work and Yamies have low frets to start with.

If you have 0.007 relief between the nut and 14th fret that is pretty good and tightening the truss rod might bring it down a hair but that isn't going to improve your geometry. A big problem is that change in neck angle has created a bit of a ski jump from the 14th fret to the end of the neck, that is your high 0.016 relief from nut to end of neck.

I'll add that old red label Yamaha's have almost a cult following and the the prices on a good one have gone up dramatically so consider carefully your plan of action. If you would like to see pictures of the sawn off neck trick let me know.

Edit to add, I just looked back at the photos and its not a red label Nippon Gakki, so its not one of the really valuable ones. Laminated top and back, it will still be a reasonably nice little guitar.

 

[Zarkon]

I had an FG-200, tan label just like that one, years ago and absolutely loved the sound. It did need some work so I moved on from it eventually but I miss it. Not much to lose if you try fixing it, they are neat guitars.

 

[chaosman12]

Your last two photos tell the whole story. That guitar needs a neck reset and will never have nice playable action until it does.

Yeah, the fretboard extension ski jump was a good way for me to visually understand that the neck is "folding up" on the body. A good lesson in guitar geometry for me. Perhaps it will at least make a good campfire guitar (and I don't mean throwing it in the fire! ;-)

On my personal FG-150 I resorted to the old trick of sawing the neck off and converting the guitar to bolt on. That allowed me to set the neck geometry such that I could get a very nice playable action with adequate saddle.

Freeman, I saw that (pun intended). I usually try to mine existing TDPRI threads before posting. My jaw dropped in the pic showing you sawing off the neck. It reminded me of a magician sawing his helper in half. You have a rare combination of ingenuity and execution. If anyone is interested, and you should if you read this forum, Freeman posted it in this thread:

New to me old Yamaha guitar

Fascinating. Where did you make the cuts to saw the neck off? Do you have any pics? Yes. Loosen the f/b extension in the usual manner. The little blocks are pieces of aluminum that I have warmed in an oven, now I would use a silicon heating blanket. Next I pulled the 15th fret and tried to...

www.tdpri.com

i would get the nut off and clean it good, look at the wood and thread in the cavity if a washer is needed.
and help the neck by clamping it into the relief you need, eventual back-bow if with string tension you would get to much relief.

I took the nut off and it was surprisingly clean. Even most of the chrome plating was intact. And there was already a washer protecting the wood. So I will definitely try helping the truss rod do its job by pre-bending it with a clamp. I'll post some pics when I do.

 

[crazydave911]

The relief on that neck is already ideal, and the "kung-fu" neck reset is ideal for those. If you're LUCKY it has a dovetail and fish glue. It likely doesn't. The most common I've seen is a huge dowel from the neck into the heel, all glued in with epoxy. Check the videos of twoofrd along with kung flu reset. He has many neat walk throughs

 

[chaosman12]

The fretboard wood was white areas, stains and looked very dry. I found that a card scraper worked best to get down to good wood. Not only does the scraper leave a nice finish but it gets right in there next to the fret.

I put a drop of oil on the truss rod threads and washer. With a clamp holding the neck in a very slight back bow, I tightened the truss rod nut to hold it in the back bow. Thanks for that suggestion @hopdybob

The frets polished up nicely. I used 3M WetOrDry Polishing papers. These are graded by the size of the grit in microns. I used 4 grits: 30, 15, 9 and 3 microns. In common sandpaper grades similar to P500, P1200, P2000 and P?? (no equivalent?). Amazon sells a sheet assortment of 6 grits for about 12 bucks.

After scraping the fretboard, I made a mixture of mineral spirits and mineral oil. I wiped on a wet coat, waited 20 minutes or so and reapplied everywhere. I checked it after about an hour and reapplied to any dry looking spots. I left it over night and gave it one more coat in the morning. Looks great.

I initially set the relief at 0.005", but then realized that the traditional set up procedure and values probably don't apply. Not having much experience the setup procedure became iterative small steps.

I deepened the nut slots so the string barely cleared the first fret when pressing the string between the second and third fret. Essentially using the string as a straight edge from the top of the second fret to the bottom of the nut slot.

Since the neck has "bent up" through years of string tension, the action at the 12th was quite high, close to ~ 0.2". I realized that in this scenario, I don't need any relief, so I set the relief to 0.001".

Action was still high, so I sanded down the saddle and deepened the nut slots a touch. After a few iterations the action at the 12th was 0.12" (bass) and 0.14" (treble). There was a bit more saddle left to remove on the treble side, but I was getting a bit tired of removing and reinstalling the saddle. (Hard work pays off in the long run, but laziness pays off right now ;-)

I cleaned up the rest of the guitar using diluted Simple Green and I was surprised (and pleased) that it was still quite shiny:

Sounds pretty good. The divots on the first two frets make it harder to get a clean sound there, but overall a very playable cowboy chord guitar.

 

[1bad914]

The relief on that neck is already ideal, and the "kung-fu" neck reset is ideal for those. If you're LUCKY it has a dovetail and fish glue. It likely doesn't. The most common I've seen is a huge dowel from the neck into the heel, all glued in with epoxy. Check the videos of twoofrd along with kung flu reset. He has many neat walk throughs

@crazydave911 Lol I can tell you have been watching a bit of twoodford. I have a “kingfu” neck replacement in my shop right now. I will do a thread on it one day.

 

[Freeman Keller]

Chaos, you are fighting the neck angle. One of the biggest dilemmas with old Yamahas is that almost every one needs a reset and they are darn hard to do. You can spend hours fiddling with everything else but until the angle is right you are spinning wheels.

At some point you are going to want to refret it, with frets out of the way you can do some work on the fretboard. I would suggest not putting a lot of treatment on the f/b - that can make gluing new frets more difficult. Another thing to really avoid is shaving the bridge (not the saddle, the bridge itself). People think they can't lower the saddle anymore so they need to sand the top of the bridge down, but when you finally do get around to fixing the neck angle the bridge will be too low. And, for what it is worth, Yamaha bridges are different shape from most other guitars so you can't just by a replacement.'

 

[chaosman12]

Chaos, you are fighting the neck angle. One of the biggest dilemmas with old Yamahas is that almost every one needs a reset and they are darn hard to do. You can spend hours fiddling with everything else but until the angle is right you are spinning wheels.

I've read discussions about guitar necks reset, but this is the first time I've held a guitar with that problem in my hands. So now I can see what your are saying first hand.

It is my friend's "found" guitar so any improvement is playing with house money. My fiddling around was educational for me and he'll have something to strum a few cowboy chords. In the past, I've visited a few local pawn shops looking for wrecks like this to practice on. Unfortunately most pawn shops won't even buy anything that need work.

Short of a neck reset, I thought about refretting the first 4 frets with tall frets to close the gap a bit. Again, some more free education doing the fret work, but do you think it would be any improvement? Would it make it any worse?

 

[Freeman Keller]

Plartial refrets are iffy, changing fret sizes is even iffier. Just like shaving the bridge, it might gain you a little, but when you finally do reset the neck you'll end up doing the frets all over again. One problem with partial refrets is that you can't deal with the entire fretboard so you can't fix any of the humps and bumps.

Its really a tough call, I put mine off for a long time and have turned down several opportunities to do it on other guitars.

There have been reports of people getting the necks off of these old war horses but I could not budge the one on mine

 

[crazydave911]

As I've said, look up "Kung Fu" neck reset on twoofrd on YouTube. On some he literally walks you through it. Your relief on that neck is damn near perfect, I would NOT mess with those frets

 

[Freeman Keller]

You already have the pictures of my bolt on conversion, here it is the master

Bolted Neck Conversion

 

[crazydave911]

You are literally talking about more (and more fiddly) work with those frets than the simple neck reset

 

[chaosman12]

simple neck reset

Sort of like saying “airplane food” or “jumbo shrimp” ;-)

Here’s a site run by someone who is easily a vintage FG fanatic. Tons of info on history, dates, models, labels etc. Here’s his comments on neck resets based on taking apart 25 vintage FGs.

Vintage Yamaha FG Neck Reset Procedure - Yamaha Vintage FG Acoustic Guitars

I apologize in advance for this document. It will be over the head of 99% of Yamaha enthusiasts. It’s meant for someone who has some guitar repair experience, or maybe

yamahavintagefg.com

 

[crazydave911]

Watch the videos I suggested, it is SIMPLE. What he lays out is NOT. When you charge $100 an hour labor rate it best be as easy as possible. I do the "kung flu" on many Harmonys, Stella and Kay's and they are now playing where with a standard neck reset at today's prices they would wall hangers.
In case you're curious, I've done all of the above including your fret idea. It was a 1935 Martin and yes worth it. That one is not unless you're doing it for experience

 

[Freeman Keller]

Sort of like saying “airplane food” or “jumbo shrimp” ;-)

Here’s a site run by someone who is easily a vintage FG fanatic. Tons of info on history, dates, models, labels etc. Here’s his comments on neck resets based on taking apart 25 vintage FGs.

Vintage Yamaha FG Neck Reset Procedure - Yamaha Vintage FG Acoustic Guitars

I apologize in advance for this document. It will be over the head of 99% of Yamaha enthusiasts. It’s meant for someone who has some guitar repair experience, or maybe

yamahavintagefg.com

I have had a number of conversations with the person who wrote that and yes, he does claim that he can get the necks off. I was not able to on mine and part of the problem could have been that I didn't hit the gap between the heel and the neck block. Here is my neck removal setup, it is very simple. As steam is injected into the gap the two nuts are tightened which puts pressure on the bottom of the heel pushing it up and out of the mortise

This setup works really well on other guitars, in fact with Martins I don't need the jig - the neck just pops out of the pocket.

Here is the neck when I finally got it sawed off, notice how tight the tenon is in the neck block.

I'm actually of the belief that they didn't use epoxy but rather just fit the joint so tightly that steam doesn't get in.

I've always wished I had another opportunity to try this. Several people have brought old Yamies to me and I've turned them down because I did know if I could do it. If I ever found one at a yard sale or a dumpster I would certainly give it a go and if you decide to do it I would encourage trying it the normal way first.