Japanese Riveria SG guitar

[Hardcoretroubadour]

Anyone out there have any knowledge of the guitars? This belongs to a mate and it needs some electric work done, and I stupidly said I would have a look while I was building mine. Are they any good or worth much? As you can tell this is not an area of expertise for me.

[Hardcoretroubadour]

Hmmmm, time to get out the glasses

[Andyxlh]

I have no idea, but it looks like a decent bit of wood. It's probably quite old, 70s perhaps, and if it's Japanese it might be quite good. What are the frets like? Is the neck straight? Are the machine heads quality?

[Sonic Mountain]

All I can find is that possibly came out of the Teisco or Kay guitar factories in the 70's in Japan. There was a slew of different styles and brands at the time which were all quite cheaply produced. That said there is a fair bit of interest around them at the moment and some people seem to think they are pretty decent guitars.

Very difficult to find any specific info on this one. Is it a set neck?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Teisco

[Dedman]

Riviera's were made by Sakai Mokko, cabinet makers until the early 60's when they went into guitars. Located just outside Nagoya they made heaps of guitars under many brands including their own Sakai brand. Electrics were supplied by Mitsuya. They ceased production in the mid 70's.
There is a Japanese guitars facebook page if you want more info, some of those guys even have serial number records for some brands.

[Hardcoretroubadour]

Cheers Guys, I knew someone out there would had some knowledge of them. The neck is a bolt on, no obvious serial numbers anywhere (they wouldn't be under the neck plate would they?)
Seems to be pretty nice, it has suffered a bit from neglect, I'll replace the stings and look at replacing pots if need be. Just have to trouble shoot the intermittent sound issues. It works fine at some volumes then completely dies, giving the knobs a tap or slight turn seems to bring it back. Might just be a dicky solder somewhere. I'll have a bit more of a look ove the coming few days

[Simon Barden]

I'd say the pots have been changed at least once before, and not soldered particularly well. My first choice for a culprit would be the selector switch, followed by a volume pot. You could try folding down the ears on the back of the switch so that they are flat again, which may improve matters. A squirt of contact cleaner in the pots and the switch will probably help the general operation as well.

Note that the tone pots are inverse-acting pots, so if you end up replacing them, I'd use standard pots and connect up the centre and the other outer tag to the one used. Note that the tone pot for the bridge pickup is completely missing the unused outer tag and the paxolin board it was attached to is broken (probably removed so that it didn't contact the ground wire linking the volume and tone pots.

At least two of the knobs aren't original, and all four may have been replaced at some time.

It reminds me of the Columbus Les Paul I had as my first electric guitar, in which case you may find that the pickups are single coils, not humbuckers. You could check with a magnet or some iron filings.

As it's already departed from full originality, I'd suggest that replacing all the wiring harness would be a good idea, with a new switch and pots and jack socket.

The guitar itself isn't a great copy of an SG. The batwing guard was used by Gibson from 68-71, after which they reverted to the original smaller treble-side only pickguard. The choice of bolt-on neck means that the neck is set a lot further into the body than on an SG, with all the pickups and bridge moved back further into the body as a result. On an SG, the end of the neck is level with the bottom of the two horn cut-outs. On this, the neck is set a further three frets into the body. there also appears to be a definite skew to the neck angle with regards to the centreline, which makes the lower rear bout of the body appear larger than the upper rear bout; probably to allow enough space for the control cavity not to affect the bridge and stop-piece mounting integrity with the location being around 40mm further towards the rear than they would be on a real SG.

And of course, no SG up to that time had a maple fretboard.

This style of Japanese copy is nothing like the high quality detailed copies that some Japanese companies made that invoked the mythical Gibson 'lawsuit', and whilst some were reasonably well made and could at least be set up to play well (my Columbus LP had a very good action), they were at the very bottom rung of the Japanese copy guitars, though a lot better than some of the earlier Japanese-made guitars with bent metal bridges, bad pickups and almost unplayable high actions. So it has some worth, but not a lot. Originality counts for collectors, and as at least some of the guitar is un-original, then it's really only worth what someone is willing to pay for it.

[wazkelly]

Definitely 70's and was considered rather low end compared to Cimar which was made by Ibanez.
I owned a Sakai SG Bass as my 1st foray into 4 string low end stuff and they were only just entry level back in the mid 70's where even Suzuki was considered better gear.
Pots are probably the cause of the electrical problems. Pups surprisingly may be ok if not better than stock Chinese kit ones. Tuners will be crap same as low end Epiphone.


Sent from my SM-A520F using Tapatalk

[Hardcoretroubadour]

I was assuming you would throw in your 2c Simon, and it is much appreciated, I now just have to work out what you have said in simple laymans terms 😃 .
I will look to replace the internals and wiring as a fairly inexpensive start and hopefully that fixes it up. Thanks for all the advice gents

[wazkelly]

Good place to start but it may need better tuners as i suspect they will be very stiff and prone to slippage.

Sent from my SM-A520F using Tapatalk