Well scored a weirdo maple Yamaki. Even has a maple fretboard.

[Rambozo96]

Another Buyee impulse buy after hearing a fellow LTG member (I forget who) give a glowing review on his Yamaki which lead me to search for one and the old Daions which was more or less the same people. Looking through some catalogs I saw some nice dreads until I saw one with maple back and sides. AND the fretboard is maple as well! A true oddball after my heart. Found one on Buyee after leaving same saved searches that seemed to have nice action and loads of saddle for a late 70’s make. Still resides in Japan so it will probably be a bit for it to arrive.

 

[cupric]

Is the shipping, tariffs etc. expensive when buying from Japan? There's always a lot of nice stuff offered from there.

 

[Rambozo96]

What I find most peculiar is in the spec sheet says the top is pine but in the pics it looks like every spruce top I ever seen.

 

[Rambozo96]

Is the shipping, tariffs etc. expensive when buying from Japan? There's always a lot of nice stuff offered from there.

Shipping can get expensive if you’re not careful. In my experience it can be as cheap as $80 or as high as $180. As far as tariffs go and customs shenanigans I personally haven’t run into any. *knocks on wood*.

 

[Rambozo96]

Even with CITES I imported some guitars with rosewood fretboards and the customs office didn’t seem to throw a fit over it BUT I do believe they scaled that back to where you’d have to be either importing something like Brazilian rosewood or just a massive slab of the stuff to need papers. Also the Japanese seem to really pride themselves on customer service it seems. Most of them send a follow up message making sure everything was kosher.

 

[Guildedagain]

I've never even had Customs charges from Japan, and some of the shops have free shipping. Got two last year in full Covid lockdown. the MIJ 7 string RG7, and this one.
The Enchanting Harmony by Yamaki (there's actually a number, D135?) solid top, big tall bone saddle, huge tone, name of the guitar shop on nice period case. Most of the better guitars have an original like this one.

And that back

 

[Rambozo96]

I've never even had Customs charges from Japan, and some of the shops have free shipping. Got two last year in full Covid lockdown. the MIJ 7 string RG7, and this one.
The Enchanting Harmony by Yamaki (there's actually a number, D135?) solid top, big tall bone saddle, huge tone, name of the guitar shop on nice period case. Most of the better guitars have an original like this one.

And that back

Well found the aforementioned LTG’er that had one. I also recall seeing Yamaki and Daion mentioned when I did my research on a Waco Texas based company MCI that made guitorgans back in the late 60’s or so. Apparently they tried to push Daion and Yamaki until the owner of MCI got tired of pouring money into the project with the guitars seemingly not taking off as expected. It’s a shame because the Daion and Yamaki stuff seems incredibly well made.

 

[Rambozo96]

I believe I seen some Yamaki 130’s in that Japanese auction but unfortunately no clear shot of the action and saddle. I got burned taking a chance on it before so I passed. I think there was a way to talk to the vendor directly but I forgot how you went about that. I hope to get one of the Buffalo series guitars that took some styling cues from Harptone.

 

[Rambozo96]

It’s to arrive tomorrow. I can’t wait.

 

[Rayk]

Cool , love to hear it when you get it ! Nice score .
I had to pay import fee 180 bucks if the price was listed at full value it would of been more .

 

[Rambozo96]

Showed up in what could be described as brown paper and bubble wrap. Hardly something I would ship a guitar in across the country let alone across the Pacific so my greatest fear come true. Been dropped in transit despite the many fragile stickers and thus the top is now separated from the side with some binding breaking off in the process. I was afraid this would happen when I was informed that the box the seller originally used was too large so they had to scale it down. Imagine paying $30 extra for what amounts to the worst packaging job I ever seen in my life.

 

[Rambozo96]

Well whatever you guys do don’t give a red cent to Buyee. They’ll try to weasel their way out of compensation even if they shipped the guitar poorly. Let’s see what PayPal’s gotta say about this .