
SL-380 is the cheapest grade of the early SL series.
The 70s was age of guitar. Many boys played guitar then. I remember that about 10 to 20% boys played guitar. Acoustic guitar players were more than electric guitar players.
There were few part-time jobs for boys then, so the grade of guitar that one had usually indicated wealth of his home directly. Most boys had 30,000 to 50,000JPY class, upper 60,000JPY class were bought by a few rich minorities.
My father bought me Greco EG-380, the cheapest grade of Greco Les Paul as my first guitar in 1975. It had detachable neck and sounded like semi-acoustic guitar because it had hollow top.
This guitar was the same price model of YAMAHA then, and had carved top enough to make normal Les Paul sound. I selected Greco then because I didn’t know guitar specification much and regarded the style as important. It might be right that I had selected this model then as rock guitarist.
The SL early version was finished with lacquer. So the time have been changing appearance gradually. It’s so nice.
Good maple with freckles was applied to the top on plied Agathis. Agathis belongs to Araucariaceae family of conifers, and known as the oldest wood in the world. It spread all over the world in Jurassic period and now distributes mainly in Southern hemisphere around Indonesia and Papua New Guinea. It is known as famous giant tree Kauri of New Zealand.
Agathis was adapted for cheap guitars in this era. I can’t tell the sound is inferior to mahogany or not because I have only one guitar with Agathis back. At least this guitar is not so bad. (Updated 2016.8.28)
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