Restoration Project - Yamaha FS720S - FINISHED

impmann

I couldn't resist this on eBay for pennies... being sold by a house clearance place that clearly didn't really know what it was. Its had one heck of a hard life and has been stored somewhere very damp but the eBay pics were encouraging that the action wasn't too high, and the body didn't appear to be bellied. 

Pics as it arrived:



Plenty of muck, plenty of rust on the machine heads and check out those strings!!!!!



Green frets, dry rosewood and just look at those strings... yuk.



Dirty, and a few dinks, but very cool colour.



Just minging. 



Some nasty looking marks on the back, but I'm hoping they'll polish out.



The plan is to get it taken apart, cleaned and restrung to see how bad it is - so far, the neck looks straight and there's very little fret wear. Even with dead strings it does sound like it may have a good tone!

Updates soon.

paulnb57

What a great project, looking forward to updates

impmann

No pics... but its all strung up with a cheap set of strings and... they need to come back off because there's a buzzy fret around the fourth. Sighting down the neck, and checking carefully, it appears there is a high spot so I'll give it a proper stoning job and try again.

On the plus side, the truss rod works perfectly and it sounds really nice (even with crap strings).

BillDL

Now there's a coincidence.  I've just been looking at an FS720S in the cobalt blue finish on Gumtree, however the seller is charging a bit more than the average market price for it.  I like those guitars a lot.

impmann

BillDL said:

Now there's a coincidence.  I've just been looking at an FS720S in the cobalt blue finish on Gumtree, however the seller is charging a bit more than the average market price for it.  I like those guitars a lot.

This one is the greenburst rather than the blue which I understand is fairly unusual - out of curiosity how much is the cobalt blue one?

BillDL

The guitar has the same pinky-purpley label as your one, i.e. made in China for Yamaha.  It looks to be in pretty good condition.  I went back to look again, thinking the asking price was £260, but I realise that was for a different guitar I had open in another tab I had bookmarked.  The guy is asking £200 for this one in Cobalt Blue Aqua (CBA), which is actually about £25 to £30 below the average price I saw when searching.  I may be tempted.

impmann

Tbh, the build quality of this is excellent - it’s quite hefty for an acoustic but the fit n finish (high fret aside) is spot on. At £200, I’d say it’s a bargain really… but that said the acoustic market isn’t my specialty! 

Mine is in bits right now awaiting some time to do the fret skim, plus some derusting of metal parts. Time is so scarce right now…

BillDL

For me it's the space that's getting a bit scarce 

ICBM

Was the house that was cleared in eastern Ukraine?

impmann

So the fret job is done, a considerable amount of de-rusting and scratch removal later plus a fresh set of strings adorn it. What a lovely guitar! God knows why the previous owner chose to mistreat it so badly, as it definitely didn't deserve that. So its now part of my collection - and has a different voice to my old Hagstrom J45 or the Alvarez dreadnought, so its probably sticking around.

Some pics for you all.