Kenmac
Well-known member
Seeing as how this is my 100th post I figured I'd make it special and show and tell you about the very first Tokai I bought back in 1985 for $250.00. The ad was originally posted in the Buy & Sell newspaper and at that time I'd heard of Tokais but I never saw or tried one out. So I went to this guys place and tried it out. The action was a little on the high side for me but it sounded good in most pickup positions. (More on that later.)
I was pretty impressed with it and bought it. It came with the original Tokai tweed case but the person who owned the guitar prior to the guy I bought it from made some modifications. He installed a Kahler copy vibrato system which I never really bothered with and he replaced the bridge pickup with an Evans Eliminator Lead pickup. To be honest I didn't like the sound of that pickup even though I know that Evans pickups are revered by a lot of guitarists. It sounded too trebly to me. So there's the first two mods, the vibrato system and the bridge pickup.
Now here's where we get into my modifications. I hope you guys don't flip out over these. A couple of years after I got the guitar I had some stickers laying around. One was a gold star and the other was a musical staff with notes on it. I put both of them on the headstock of the guitar. Hey "Goldstar" and the notes denote "Sound" right? :wink: About two years after that I decided to change not just the Evans pickup but all three of them for Fender Lace Sensor pickups. I also had a guitar tech add a 22nd fret to the guitar because (and I know this may sound silly) I felt like I was getting ripped off in a way with a 21 fret guitar.
The thing to remember about the mindset of the mid to late eighties was that Tokai made good copies of Fenders and Gibsons but at the time people didn't take them as very good guitars in their own right. The last modification I made was to install a Roland GK-2 pickup on the guitar as I sometime use a Roland GR-33 guitar synth and I had the tech set the action up for slide guitar but not so high that you couldn't play it normally. Now having said all this, IF and that's a BIG if, I were to sell this guitar a person would have to be a pretty hardcore Tokai fan to want to buy this. But truth be told, I'm not selling it. Anyway here are the photos. I've included a couple of the case for those of you who have a case fetish. :wink: In one of the pictures the sun made the colour of the fur lining bloom a bit. It's actually more of a crimson red as you see in the first two photos.
I was pretty impressed with it and bought it. It came with the original Tokai tweed case but the person who owned the guitar prior to the guy I bought it from made some modifications. He installed a Kahler copy vibrato system which I never really bothered with and he replaced the bridge pickup with an Evans Eliminator Lead pickup. To be honest I didn't like the sound of that pickup even though I know that Evans pickups are revered by a lot of guitarists. It sounded too trebly to me. So there's the first two mods, the vibrato system and the bridge pickup.
Now here's where we get into my modifications. I hope you guys don't flip out over these. A couple of years after I got the guitar I had some stickers laying around. One was a gold star and the other was a musical staff with notes on it. I put both of them on the headstock of the guitar. Hey "Goldstar" and the notes denote "Sound" right? :wink: About two years after that I decided to change not just the Evans pickup but all three of them for Fender Lace Sensor pickups. I also had a guitar tech add a 22nd fret to the guitar because (and I know this may sound silly) I felt like I was getting ripped off in a way with a 21 fret guitar.
The thing to remember about the mindset of the mid to late eighties was that Tokai made good copies of Fenders and Gibsons but at the time people didn't take them as very good guitars in their own right. The last modification I made was to install a Roland GK-2 pickup on the guitar as I sometime use a Roland GR-33 guitar synth and I had the tech set the action up for slide guitar but not so high that you couldn't play it normally. Now having said all this, IF and that's a BIG if, I were to sell this guitar a person would have to be a pretty hardcore Tokai fan to want to buy this. But truth be told, I'm not selling it. Anyway here are the photos. I've included a couple of the case for those of you who have a case fetish. :wink: In one of the pictures the sun made the colour of the fur lining bloom a bit. It's actually more of a crimson red as you see in the first two photos.