Simon Appleton's Yamaha FG-360

Hi David,

Hope it's ok to contact you at this address, I read your article on the Yamaha 360 and thought to drop you a line. That page wouldn't give an address but rather offered the option of opening an account with Microsoft and giving them access to my contacts info etc etc, which I don't like doing as I find the internet far too intrusive as it is. Anyway after looking around your linked pages I found this address, so again hope that is ok and accept my apologies if it's a appears a bit random

Anyway I am originally from the UK but live in Australia now and have played guitar for many years. I've  been a fan of the early Japanese guitars for a long time, ever since I was visiting friends in UK and they mentioned they had an old guitar up in the attic that someone had left years ago and never come back for. They brought it down and it was an old and very battered Yamaha FG 140 Red Label. Even in it's condition I was knocked out by the volume and projection of that guitar and since then have had a few of these old Yamaha's pass through my hands. The electric guitars (I had one of there Les Pauls)were also exceptionally well made and overall have found the workmanship of the luthiers of that era to be on a par with many of the higher end brands coming out of the US

At the moment I am living in Sydney and have a workshop for repairing and restoring guitars. I must admit that at present my personal collection of guitars are all Gibsons although that's about to change. I have just bought a Yamaha 360 Nippon Ghaki made in Japan that came up for sale on one of the local buy/sell guitar sites here. The present owner is delivering it tomorrow so I haven't had a chance to check out the serial # yet. It appears to be in very good condition and was going for  a song so as he said he had several people chasing him for it I bought it on the spot without out dickering or pressing him for too many details. He says he got it as part of a swap for a bass he was selling and didn't want to keep it. The original owner had got it off his dad and it seems it had been stored away for years hence the good condition. It's in it's original case which has the Yamaha logo on it, I mention this because you brought up the point of cases in your piece. In fact I can attach a pic of the guitar and case. I'll wait for a reply and if you prefer write you at a more appropriate address. By that time I should have checked out the guitar and be able to send you more info.

All the best,

Simon