A very well sounding Bozo B8. This luthier, in fact
more known for his steel strings also had his ideas
around gut stringed guitars and had them built in
Japan by Alvarez / K. Yairi and strangely enough also
Mr. Mass Hirade was involved who later built very
good instruments for Takamine under his supervision.
Scale length: 650mm Width topnut: 53.
Body frequency: G# (104 Herz.)
This guitar has a repaired spot that can' t be made
invisible but it is stable now and won't affect the sound
in any way. I would subscribe sound quality being on
parr with guitars around 1500 / 2000 Euro's. This guitar
costed 1250 Dutch guilders back in 1981. It can now
be bought for 500 Euro's, sturdy bag included.
I will come up with some pictures in the near future
The sides and back are in fact laminated but rosewood
has been glued on rosewood so what could be the point?
They often did that for overseas transport reasons. This
way of building guitars can withstand much more!
Ebony fingerboard and this range starts with the
model B3 up to B15 as can be seen on the pricelist
of 1981 here beyond.
A Dutch price list, confirming the higher end models of
Bozo weren't that cheap at that time. You might take a look
at my Juan Orozco Blog around prices for Japanese guitars.
As you can see on this picture it all starts with the B3. The
next one in range is the B5. Along with the more luxury B8
they all were equipped with laminated sides and back. The
more expensive B10 had solid sides and back as has the
B15 that even was equipped with an European spruce top.
As you may know in those times Juan Orozco didn't
built guitars himself anymore but simply distributed them.
Made by a rather small team of experienced woodworkers
still it could happen that a lower model sounded better
than a high end one of the same brand from Japan. I once
had the choice between a Juan Orozco model 15, two
models 10 and a model 8. One of the two models 10
was in a pristine condition as were the 15 and the 8 but
the model 10 with some slight cosmetic issues sounded
by far the best and brought the model 15 to shame!
