‘76 Kiso-Suzuki W300S

I definitely overpaid for this thing. It was in pretty rough shape, but it is the sister instrument to my first ever Takeharu WK-300 (also made by Kiso-Suzuki) and I just couldn’t walk away. Some young fella in Winnipeg’s North End was laughing all the way to the bank with my $160. (He, by the way, tried to tell me he paid $950 for it a couple weeks earlier – like it was my first day on the job – hahaha).

Anyway the solid spruce top, 3 piece rosewood back, and gorgeous abalone inlays everywhere made this thing worth it to me.

So here’s what was wrong with it…

– neck heel separating from the body

– binding separation at the heel

– zero fret deeply cut with a file (likely to lower the action as a result of the neck pull up)

– slight hump at frets 14-16 (from a grossly over tightened truss rod)

– saddle made of old brittle plastic that had deep string grooves

– three of the original tuners were broken inside the headstock (plastic casing on these tuners). One other tuner was mismatched and crooked as hell.

– filthy, filthy, filthy.

I cleaned it all up, glued and clamped the neck and binding back together, put new Guyker 1:21 locking machine heads on it, unseized the truss rod, slackened off the neck tension, replaced the zero fret, filed down frets 14-16 so they’d be more level with the rest of the neck, made a new bone saddle and then laced it up with Elixir light strings (I like these strings by the way – my first time trying them).

I’m invested in this thing for about $230, but it plays like a dream, looks great and sounds spectacular!!! The intonation and harmonics are probably better than almost anything I’ve restored yet. I already turned down an offer of $650 for it, it’s not for sale – this one I’m keeping (for now anyway).