Tokai Forum - a subsidiary of TokaiRegistry.com

It is with great regret that I'm forced to sell my Love Rock. I'm moving house and I need the dosh. Sob! Only UK offers please. It's a 2001 MIJ with one piece mahogany body and neck, 2-piece maple top. No veneers, unlike some of the "high end" models. When I bought it I could have afforded any of th...

You bought your guitar for exactly the right reasons. Head says "Fenders MUST be better", heart and ears say - no they're not!

The most obvious difference (apart from the split post tuners) is that the Korean guitar has two string "trees" and the Jap one has the more authentic (for the era) single B/E tree.

You can't beat these guitars. I sold my bloody awful 1996 USA Strat yesterday and good riddance.

I'm struggling with this. your question was about wiring the humbuckers in a Loverock in series. Pickups are strange things - if you want clarity and brightness you need a single-coil pickup with individual magnets. If you want power with clarity you go for a Fender humbucker with two coils and 12 m...

In fact the coils on a humbucker are already in series. If you wire both humbuckers in series you'll get a higher output and horribly dull sound. It's more interesting (but not very) to split the coils on a humbucker. Neither fish nor foul (fluoroescents and your computer monitor will suddenly be pa...

London Barry, Well one thing Tokai gave us all was an authentic "platform" to fart around with different pickups/wiring/finishes etc. If we foul up big-time it's a lot less expensive to replace a Tok. I've been guilty in the past of chopping a humbucker-size cavity in an ash Fender Strat body, cutti...

Most people buy Tokais to get a faithful replica of the guitars that Gibson and Fender once made, long ago. The nuances, brilliance, flaws in the timber (remedied these days by F&G with the use of veneers) and mechanical flaws (including microphonic pickups) are all faithfully recreated. If you feel...

The new Japanese Goldstars have no serial numbers and the "wrong" headstock shape. The machine heads have the correct design but no Kluson logo. However - the body is pukka 2-piece alder for a 50's replica (Fenders very first cost-cutting exercise was to buy narrower billets of timber hence the thre...

Well for fox's sake...I just bought a Goldstar and it plays like my first Fender Strat (Dec 64). Complete with choking if I dare to play above 14th fret, lively and bright everywhere else. It balances like only Alder can and sounds better than Phoney Blair admitting that he made a mistake. I have a ...

PJ is a guitarist and KNOWS guitars. He gets Tokais (MIJ) and hides them behind Fenders etc. 'till he can sell them to someone who appreciates GUITARS not labels. He showed me a Goldstar last week because he knew I would buy it, it's the best "Strat" I've played since I was 19, that's - er - 34 year...

Hi Mike, Thanks for your input - my guitar is the same colour as yours except for my rosewood neck! I have a good instinct for guitars and it didn't "feel" Korean, although I have a healthy respect for what they're doing as guitar makers in that part of the world (Ibanez, Burns Brian May etc.). Why ...

FINALLY I found a new Tokai "Strat" in the shape of an Ocean Blue, Rosewood neck Goldstar Sound (single-tree on the headstock, just like the fifties Strats). The headstock is the slightly pointy shape - actually rather nice. The truss rod is the vintage "X" screwhead at the body end of the neck and ...

A friend of mine has a 1976 black Les Paul Artiste (P90s), I have a 2001 MIJ LS-65. The carved top on his guitar is shallower than the Tokai's - when we compared them he said the LS-65 made his guitar look like a copy... My guitar reminds me very strongly of my old 1960's Les Paul Standard which I h...

My beautiful Japanese 2001 Cherry Sunburst Love Rock, single-piece body and neck, Kluson machines, SD 59's, two-piece maple top is as good as they get, but I'm a Strat man at heart. My 1996 USA Strat is CRAP and I want a decent Tokai replica (HA! - maybe Fender could do a "Tokai" replica and get it ...

He's in love!