Bill Alston

Yamaha SA 1300W


Information on this guitar is very limited. It is a separate model stating the model clearly on the headstock. Information I can find suggests that only 50 of these were made all in 1984. In January 2017 one was offered on Ebay USA from a Japanese seller at $1324 buy it now price. The serial number conforms to 1984. I have now seen pictures of two of these.




The scratchplate has been lost on this guitar.

The pictures below don't really tell us much more, I can see that the fretboard is rosewood and the rest of the features also look similar to the 1300 I am unable to see what makes this a different model, except the colour. The Sunburst on the 1300 is a tobacco sunburst whereas this is more like a Cherry Sunburst.

Further Information
Leon from Japanaxe who has a great Yamaha site in the Netherlands, see my links page, has made the following comment
I'm not sure but some claim the W in SG1000NW stood for wave maple referring to the striped maple. Looked up some SG1000NW's and they all have a striped top. The SG1000NW was a special edition march 84 guitar so about the same period as the SG1300W. The SA1300W seems to be striped too.
Hypercarrots from the Yamaha forum has found some more pictures of a 1300w serial number 136364 and provided a link which says that this model was first released on the 1st March 1984 at a price of 130,000 yen.

Update January 2018
JDZ from the Yamaha Forum has found one of these and provided the following good information

The SA-1300W showed on Friday. The pickups in the guitar are labeled SA 800 and date coded 59, so 1984. Your website shows the SA 800 as Spinex pickups, which I also saw in the 1985 catalog specs. This guitar definitely sounds different than my 80 SA-1200S. I’m not good with pickup descriptions but the Spinex is definitely clearer when the gain is cranked up on the amp, probably brighter and maybe higher output. Guitar has regular tone pots, no coil splitting. Neck is definitely different from my SA-1200S, thinner:


80 SA 1200 S 84 SA 1300W
Thickness 1st Fret 0.846" 0.805"
Thickness 11th Fret 1.013" 0.872"
Nut width 1.690 1.690
width 12th Fret 2.075 2.053
Fretboard radius 12" 12"

Fretboard was really dark, but that was dirt! I cleaned it and now see some really nice rosewood. Almost wondering if it is Brazilian. Realized something else with them side by side – the 77-83 dot guitars have a dot on the first fret, but the 84-88 one’s do not. Never noticed this before. Color of the guitar is really nice, light brown to amber sunburst – perhaps iced tea burst? Top, back and sides are curly maple, so flamed all the way around. However, the flames in the maple are not very pronounced. The guitar has some of the milky white ghosting from the Yamaha poly finish. Around the edges of the body, neck and headstock. Seen much worse, but I am really wondering if the finish has become more opaque and obscuring the figuring in the wood. Either that or Yamaha just didn’t use a very figured maple for this guitar, which is a little surprising if they were doing a limited edition with flamed top. I continue to be impressed with the quality, playability and sounds these produce. The milky poly issue is frustrating though. At some point I want to compare these to some other ES-335 copies.

The rest of the pictures.
 
 
Some pictures of one with the pickguard
   

April 2018
JDZ is back again with more great information. Thanks John he has found a 1984 catalogue with this guitar in it. We now know that only 60 were made
2 colours available Vintage Sunburst and Brown Sunburst
It has a curly Maple and Japanese Beech top on an Alder Body
The pickups as previously said are Spinex
It has a Mahogany Neck and a Rosewood Board
Weighs in at 3.7kg


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