Božo (Podunavac) B8 Classical guitar (Made in Japan)

 

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!