One thing I learned from this project is that some dudes are holding on to their information for various odd reasons and really don’t want to give it up. These three guys are just so great for sharing what they know. Scott Freilich of Top Shelf Music filled in some missing pieces too. The great Jimmy Noise worked on this list and added a ton of information, and Nate DeMont of DeMont Guitars gave up just about everything he had for this project. Many thanks need to go out to the main contributors to this list besides yours truly. Of course it’s a seemingly impossible task, so I did/do need help. So, I figured I’d give it a shot! I’m going to try to list every damn brand name that was ever placed on the headstock of a 1960s Japanese guitar!! A lot of this information is already out there floating around like tiny puzzle pieces, and all I’m trying to do is collect it in one place. At the end of his list he wrote that it was time to start tracking all the names down but in the almost 20 years that have followed, I haven’t seen anyone else try. What he did was compile a list of brand names and distributors/importers where known. Way back in the 1995 the early legend of guitar research, Michael Wright, published a short list like this in his book Guitar Stories Volume One.

OK, I think it’s time for a list like this.

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