NGD: 1982 TE-70YSR

[Homer J. Simpson]

Got my Tokai today:



I had the seller take off the neck for shipping, so I could check the neck stamp right away:



Body code is matching:



Interesting that the color code seems to be YSO, not YS?

January neck and body stamps and a low L+5 serial dates that to assembly in possibly still February 1982:

Electronics look untouched (sorry, bad photo):



Finish has suffered a few blemishes in 42 years, the poly(urethane) finish has sunken into the grain:



Before I put it back together, I gave the fretboard a good cleaning and polished the frets:



So now I have to get used to that old farm girl, I think this afternoon we both were not quite sure yet what to think of each other...

 

[Sigmania]

Very cool! Congratulations!

With the color, YSO is a code that meant Old Yellow Sunburst. I thought it came along in 1983 or so, os this is news to me.

And the Tokai literature said the new numbering system would be fully in effect by Feb. 1, 1982, but likely began before that date.

1980s - 1982 "The Scoop" Ad (April 1982)

 

[Sigmania]

YSO first mentioned in the 1983 catalog, but obviously must have begun before that.

The Color Palette Of Vintage Tokais

 

[Homer J. Simpson]

Thank you, Sigmania! Yeah the first thing I did when I saw the code was going to that thread to see what it means. That it's not in the 1982 catalog yet might be just an oversight, the white binding is definitely slightly yellowed (even though AFAIK polyurethane becomes yellow too, just much slower). I also thoroughly checked the decal on the remarkably clean headstock (nobody used it as a battering ram or to open beer bottles) for correct position and signs of being newly applied but couldn't find any. Some minor dings are there, and I can't imagine someone ordered a custom neck plate on top to date a not that valuable guitar back a year or two.

 

[Homer J. Simpson]

What I forgot to say is that seeing all the remarkably clean cavities on pics and reading the praise about quality is one thing, experiencing it first hand is another.

 

[Homer J. Simpson]

After 24 hours aka sleeping over it, there are a few things to mention.

- To polish the frets yesterday I taped off the fretboard. The seller wrote about having the guitar imported from Japan years ago, then getting the frets dressed etc., that's why it didn't come to me going over the frets with a fret rocker and maybe doing some spot repair if necessary while I had the the tape on it. Stupid mistake, today I found out that the 10th fret had worked itself up enough to fudge up my desired action. Of course it did, the frets are in there since 42 years and that's their favorite pastime activity besides having parties with oxygen atoms.

The lesson to be learned is - 1. whatever a seller writes doesn't matter and 2. if you get a 40 year old guitar you gotta anticipate and check for every problem there could be.

- I'm still trying to compute what the pickups present to my ears. For a Tele with vintage-correct 1MΩ pots promising ear-piercing highs it's unexpectedly mellow and sweet, which also means it doesn't have that one particular trademark snotty bridge sound. It's similar and you'd probably guess you hear a Tele but it has a different quality. It does have a (not ice-picky) bite and a remarkable low end, also the bridge PU seems to be pretty hot. It's not what I expected (or aimed for), but OTOH it's also pretty good in its own right, the tone has a lot of "meat" to work with and it definitely isn't "anemic" (like some of the Teles I've played in the past).

 

[Sigmania]

"The lesson to be learned is - 1. whatever a seller writes doesn't matter"

+1

 

[Homer J. Simpson]

Hey, just found this in the 1982 specs table:



Also I totally missed to point out why I mentioned the "low serial number" and the neck/body stamps - it seems to confirm that Tokai used the L+ numbers at least in batches (like Fender) or consecutively, so the number range -> year lists are likely dating the guitars correctly.

 

[Homer J. Simpson]

The Breezysound circuit is sure odd. Before I shell out $$$ for new pickups and and pots I'm trying to figure out "what the hell they were thinking" when they decided to put 1MΩ pots and a treble bleed into what's supposed to be a bright guitar anyway, I can't imagine this was just a random decision.

I found the sound of my Breezy rather unexpected as well but I didn't have the impression that this was all ear-piercing (which is the unexpected part) and bad from the beginning. Common hearsay is that the TEB ("TE Vintage MkII") pickups are "average" and the TEA ("TE Vintage") are better. In my experience this is depending so much on context, what music style, what amp and whether or not someone is willing to work the controls.

Here's an example: This is a Strat, with the (Fralin Blues Special) bridge pickup driving a (well, virtual) Deluxe amp, then the TE-70 (settings on the amp unchanged):

View attachment BrezzyTest_1_ST-TE_Dry.mp3

Note how the TEB is not only hotter so the amp is breaking up more, it also has (what I find) a sweet grittiness to it. Now this doesn't mean the TEB is better than the LF pickup, it only means that it matches the amp with its current settings and obviously my expectations better.

The neck pickup is often described as "dull" and that was also my first impression of it. But it was screwed down pretty much and changing that did not only fix the output level, it also changed the muffled sound to a degree that it's not much different from my Strat(s) anymore. If everything is right, Tele neck pickups share the general character of a Strat pickup more than they sound different (which they do nontheless!). The TEB neck pickup has less output and sounds narrower, a little bit less of both bottom and top end.

Strat (neck pickup):

View attachment BrezzyTest1_Strat_Dry.mp3

Breezysound (neck pickup (duh!):

View attachment BrezzyTest1_TE70_Dry.mp3

Maybe you can hear that both the Breezy and its player have a few fret related problems. Easy to solve only on the Breezy part.

Here's the Breezy in a full recording context (not a hit production, just some tracks with as much Breezy as possible in a short clip). Everything in this (even the bass) is the Breezy, except for the drums and the faint high organ fading in on the right side. Lead starts with the neck pickup through the Deluxe amp (modeler) again, then the bridge PU with the tone rolled almost fully down. Gives a kind of creamy sound:



My impression is that the pickups and even the pots are just fine, at least for the time being. It's a fine guitar and I have a feeling that it could be one of my favorites after a proper fretjob. Who am I kidding.. I love it already.

Edit: Swapped video for a more edited version

 

[Sigmania]

I feel like I am witnessing a love affair. Lol

 

[Homer J. Simpson]

Of course I love all of my guitars. This afternoon I did what the Breezy sorely needed:



I have no idea how the frets could be so massively uneven (also along single frets) when the seller had them leveled a few years ago. Anyway, it's all good now. 1.5mm/0.060"(both e and E) is about as good as it gets for action on a 7 ¼" fretboard, now without buzz and fret-outs and it's so much more fun to play now!

When I learned about Tokai through an article in German "Fachblatt" magazine in the early 80s I wanted one badly. What I got to read there was really petting the right nerves and seeing the cheeky spaghetti logo on the F-style guitars was kicking (obviously not only) me into the worst fit of GAS ever. The problem with that was that the "Fachblatt" article was a few years old and the spaghetti logo was already history, dealers were few and far between anyway and most importantly, the guitars were not exactly cheap!

The magazine ad shown in the beginning of the video a few posts above seems to be from 1981 and it's very blurry but I can make out that the TE-70 was 835 Deutschmarks (RRP).



Exchange rate was ~2.00 DM for one US$ that year to give you an impression, and a standard Fender Tele was only like 100-150 DM more. The Love Rock dominating the ad seems to be a LS-120 (or something else 3-digit >100) for almost 1,400DM and at the bottom of the page you can see (what looks like) a ST-100 in shoreline gold for the same price. Actual store prices were lower of course but still... even that Breezysound was quite out of reach for the poor kid I was in 1981.

Of course this ad was showing only some of the higher tier models and by 1985-86 much more affordable Tokais could be seen in magazine ads. Some of them were pretty attractive and nailed the zeitgeist (MAT anyone?) but they plucked a different string in me than the spaghetti logo guitars, not to mention that they were all still pretty elusive over here. At the same time I started working in a small guitar store, learned the repair/service business and had hundreds of different guitars on my workbench and Tokais were not so much on my mind anymore.

It's pretty known that the increasing run particularly on vintage Tokais has much to do with people sharing a similar experience with me, the guitars were adored but for various reasons they were unobtainable, or people just had missed the very short period when they became visible on the world markets while not being plagued by infringement issues yet. Now that people are in (or close to) retirement age they're not only more likely to have the needed funds, the instruments can also be bought from all over the world from home.

My demands for a Strat as my main guitar have deviated from the '54 or '60 specs of vintage Tokais and a fine Japanese custom Strat fills that slot with perfection, so I wanted a Breezysound to fulfill my need for a Tele and the worst of the old craving from the early 80s. Something very utilitarian and pre-battered, a player I don't need to put behind glass, yet a real "vintage" guitar in all the true meanings of that mis- and overused-to-death word. Yes, I sure love that.

 

[dcochran4]

Interesting to read about your experience with the stock electronics! Even with the tone rolled way back on the bridge, it sounds great in the mix.
Seeing your photos reminds me that my caps are worth checking too, with regards to tonality and values.

 

[Homer J. Simpson]

Yeah, I've seen your WTB thread - very much against the mainstream!

People seem to be reluctant to use the tone controls on guitars and admittedly they were often pretty awful even on some popular guitars in ye olde days, that may have created some prejudices and there's likely some widespread thinking like "the tone pot is taking things away, which I don't want".*

But that's not what's actually happening (if I understood this all somewhat correctly): Higher value pots are creating a sharper resonance peak (potentially causing the "ice pick" impression) - turning down the tone knob a bit "flattens" the resonance peak before it evidently acts like a low pass (also forming a lower frequency resonant circuit with the pickup again when the knob is fully turned down -> "woman tone").

Using lower resistance pots simply reduces the range of action by keeping the resonance peak flatter in first place, however it will not change the general voicing of the pickups. BTW the tone control does work in a pretty practical, not very sensitive way on my Breezy - IOW you don't need surgical precision to find the right setting on that knob.

Since I went through these considerations before with my SA2200 (which is quite on the bright side of humbuckers) I came to the conclusion that it's much less costly and even beneficial to tame a surplus of treble on the guitar, or even better on the amp where it will help reducing hiss. The opposite situation would be having a rather dark pickup and electrics where you need to employ a treble booster (= adding hiss) to get the sweet crunch for neck pickups etc.

I'll experiment with a 330Ω resistor (alligator-clipped) parallel to each of the pots to check if I like the 250Ω option better, or something in between, or just on the tone knob.

* I should've added that if you have e.g. regular 250kΩ pots limiting the peak to what's considered a "sweet spot", the tone pot can really only take away from that, and the volume knob (w/o treble bleed) will lose treble too if you roll it back. This is no doubt still useful for many things but it certainly has contributed to the way we think about these controls and it removes an extra "bite" reserve that could be just as useful in e.g. a live situation.

 

[Voidoid56]

Interesting thread. I've only had the one Breezy so far, a 1985 TTE-60TM, that weird-but-tasty sort of half-Custom (top body binding only) with a quilted mahogany top veneer. I did NOT get along with the 1 megs in that, and not really with the TE-Bs even with 250k's, tbh. I ended up putting a set of Fender Twisted Tele pups in it as well as CTS/CRL electronics (yeah, this was a long time ago, when I still must have thought that US stuff was somehow automatically better) but I still wasn't really happy about it.

The thing that finally made it come alive suprised me: I swapped the original 6 x 1 saddle bridge for a Tokai 3 x 2 with non-original compensated brass saddles and the thing suddenly started responding like a proper Tele. I've really no scientifically plausible explantion for that, but that was my perception anyway.

Either way, I ended up selling it a couple of years later. I'm not that in tune with Teles anymore and tend not to play them that much. Anyway, I still have a 1966 original I bought in 1976, as well as a 1981 Greco TL-500, that'll do me for now, I think. The sentimental value of the '66 is through the roof... but I prefer the Greco. So it goes.

 

[Sigmania]

Interesting. I posted a TE80BL in the eBay section where the owner swapped the original 6 barrel for a 3 barrel bridge.

1980 TE80 BL

 

[Homer J. Simpson]

did NOT get along with the 1 megs in that, and not really with the TE-Bs even with 250k's, tbh.

And you're definitely not alone with that. Maybe I got some extra mellow example, maybe the ridiculous rosewood veneer on the neck makes more of a difference than it looks like or it's something else... but the biggest factor is certainly the amp. If I'd be stuck with a specific amp that isn't coincidentally a great match for that guitar I might hate them pots and pickups too. But I'm not - I have a pretty decent modeler (GT-1000CORE) letting me swap amps to begin with and also change speakers, mics types and mic position/distance and it makes a huge difference (also in the real world) what part of the speaker your mic is pointing at, particularly for the high frequency range. In real life you'd be hearing what the speaker sounds at whatever position your ears dwell right now - might be good for you and ear-piercing for the audience or vice versa...

The thing that finally made it come alive suprised me: I swapped the original 6 x 1 saddle bridge for a Tokai 3 x 2 with non-original compensated brass saddles and the thing suddenly started responding like a proper Tele. I've really no scientifically plausible explantion for that, but that was my perception anyway.

I'm always wary with everything that reeks like cork sniffing but that the contact point materials subtly change the sound could be considered a fact. I'm old enough to have witnessed how brass nuts are making open strings sound more like fretted ones (why did anyone want that?) and on the other end, bridge saddles (particularly when they not only use different materials but also construction and mass differences) might be doing something to the spectral composition in the time domain or something. Unlike the nut this is the end that's always part of signal chain, and changing super cheap Strat bridges with saddles made of whoknowswhat and die-cast blocks was something even I couldn't help noticing that it made a difference.

A part of the traditional Tele sound might also be the lack of super precise intonation - I was pretty concerned about that and yes, the compromise can be measured but in practice it's pretty OK (to my surprise), but that may be just that I kind of settled with taking that guitar for what it is.

Interesting. I posted a TE80BL in the eBay section where the owner swapped the original 6 barrel for a 3 barrel bridge.

I've read many threads about Breezysounds (with disgust!) where people swapped the ergonomic and no intonation compromises Tokai 6-saddle bridge for that pesky sheet metal bracket. Not for the historic correctness but for the sound! I wanted to do the opposite, but now I'm not so sure about that anymore.

I'm not that in tune with Teles anymore and tend not to play them that much.

Yeah, traditional Telecasters are inherently uncomfortable, sharp body edges giving you bruises for a while, some weird hack of a bridge construction, small fretboard radius limiting action and the sound is sometimes...umm...too "special" even if you were lucky enough to pick a "good" one. What the hell was I thinking? After striving for the most easy to play guitars most of my life and markedly disliking 7 ¼" fretboards I had second and third thoughts about getting one of those. But I wanted to have that extra spanky sound in my arsenal (still dreaming of learning some rad chicken picking stuff) and also something that puts me out of my comfort zone, a sparring partner if you will.

That's exactly the job description for a traditional Telecaster! Turns out it's big fun - now that its severe playability problems are solved I can spank it like no other of my guitars and I do get that sassy, rowdy trademark (well, my idea of it) sound out of it.

I'd be curious why exactly you prefer the Spacey Sound over the '66 Fender though?

 

[Homer J. Simpson]

Re the bridge...I think the barrels are a little bit too groovy for my taste.



(That D-string went briefly into the incomplete groove to the left by accident, which looks like a recipe for disaster. Luckily I decided to keep the just one week old D'Addarios on the guitar after the fretjob so I didn't ruin a new set of Elixirs. Haven't seen a broken/breaking string on my guitars in like 20 years.)

 

[Sigmania]

Hmmmm. Wonder why is broke the nickel wrap? Is there a burr in the groove?

 

[Homer J. Simpson]

No when you string up and the string gets jammed between the setscrew and the half groove next to it, it likely shears off the wrap wire. The setscrew thread is likely pretty sharp, too.

 

[Homer J. Simpson]

I'll experiment with a 330kΩ resistor (alligator-clipped) parallel to each of the pots to check if I like the 250Ω option better, or something in between, or just on the tone knob.

I only had a 470kΩ resistor (~320kΩ total pot resistance) but here's the (still noticeable) difference:
View attachment 1meg_vs_320k_pot.mp3

This is almost identical to rolling back the tone knob more than one quarter. Almost because rolling back the tone knob cost a tiny bit of total volume, the tonal result is pretty much the same though:
View attachment TonePot_Breezy.mp3

Certainly a matter of preference and usage profile but I personally feel like literally throwing away the top end for good isn't a good move for me, and it may actually make me wish to change the PUs as well. I'd rather manage the amount of gamma rays the 1MΩ pots may let through further down the signal chain. In a way I'm even liking (I'm a perv ) the destruction happening up there (lick with tone rolled back a bit, then full open):

View attachment SpankSpankSpank.mp3