Yamaha Guitar Archive MIA

Illuminati confirmed!!
This is just the beginning. 

I've made posts about the loss of the Yamaha Guitar Archive on Harmony Central, and Acoustic Guitar Forum.  I'll repeat it here.

Last year I laid out the framework for a Yamaha Vintage FG forum, complete with sub-forums and descriptions. I've been saving pictures of whole guitars (110 models), backs, bridges, fretboards, headstocks, interior markings, labels, serial numbers, truss rod covers and tuners. I was also thinking about making a matrix of all the characteristics and make a web page to be able to click on pictures and narrow down the possibilities to identify a model without a picture of a label. The idea of the forum was with the intention of sharing my information and gathering more.

I've also successfully removed the necks of 4 Yamaha FG's (previously said to be impossible because of the Asian Mystery Glue) and written a 12 page procedure on how to do the full neck reset (no pictures yet), based on articles I've read and what little experience I've had actually doing neck resets on them. The initial intention was to document the procedure so I could do it again in the future.

I've also written papers on the history of the FG-3XX series (my initial interest), a history of the Yamaha FG 1966-81, and how to decode the interior date markings (started by my current interest of the older 1XX models).

Also, and this is the big one, in 2014 I emailed Yamaha USA and asked if they could send me the Yamaha Guitar Database. They replied they couldn't send me the database but he sent me a large Excel spreadsheet with all the data. I've refined, corrected and added more models that I've found.

Everything is unpublished. I've probably got hundreds of hours into all of this.

I intended on starting the forum but I've wondered about the legality of all the pictures I've taken from the internet. I'm sure it's fine to posses them, but to share them without the original owners permission may be illegal. I don't want to open that can of worms. Also, I don't want someone to steal my huge amount of data and modify it as their own, or Yamaha to sue me for distributing their data without permission. I hope you see my point.

Now that the Yamaha Guitar Archive web page is gone, there's a huge void of information on them. I assume I posses more than anyone in the US (sane or insane), but the legality of distributing it worries me.

For the people who want to comment that I've wasted hundreds of hours of my life to document crap plywood guitars, you can hold your breath. You're probably right. But for about 3 years, until late last year, I was pretty fanatical about them.

I got berated on Harmony Central for posting about inferior Yamaha plywood guitars.  That part was for him.

They are pictures I've found on the internet and CraigsList searches.

CTGull , I could be wrong on this, but as far as I understand it, if you're posting pictures that are copyrighted, I don't think there's any problem with that unless you are making any sort of money from it.  If it's just in a forum situation where people are just talking about stuff and sharing info, again, as long as no money is being made in the process, technically speaking, you are not infringing on any copyright.

It gets different when it comes to videos, audio etc but even there, you are allowed under copyright law to use "pieces" or "parts" of the video/audio for critique, review or commentary purposes, even if you're making money from those critiques, reviews or commentaries.  And let's face it, even a short snippet of any video is just a bunch of "pictures" strung together.

So, unless the picture itself has some sort of copyright stamp on it, I think you're ok.  But again, I could be missing something here, but I've never heard of anyone getting in trouble from something like this.  There are cases where people have gotten in trouble from sharing pics, but that usually falls more into human rights, or privacy etc. issues rather than copyright.

I've used pics from all kinds of sites on my youtube vids for 10 years.  Never been flagged for copyright on any of them.  Funny, my cover's audios to get flagged by an algorithm though, which is kind of cool when you think about it cuz that means I'm covering the songs close and well enough that a computer can easily tell what song I'm covering.  ha ha!  I guess I might not be as shabby as I may have thought.  he he.   Edit: my point here being that YT "flags" the vid for copyright, but is totally ok with it because I'm not monetized (not making any money from my vids) so YT is just saying "hey, it's ok that you did this, but just to let you know, you couldn't make any money on this if you wanted to try that because it's copyright protected."


If anyone has any info that would say otherwise, please share cuz I'd be curious to know as well.

I would respond with something like this:

Quid pro quo Yamaha. 
I'll share some of my guitar data if you share some of your guitars!