Hi kmarccoco,
Very nice, if you like lime green writing!
- wonder if they do a cherry pink one too?
My friend got a couple of these "NOS" decals (haha!) off eBay & is understandably not happy that they are fruit-coloured.
We'd previously both had versions for repairs from eBay by "The Decal Shop" in Wales, UK, also non-accurate - a very bright silvery gold - each decal arrived in separate 3 pieces, badly cut, & was very hard to apply (melted a bit & the dot on the 'i" in "Tokai" disappeared when my luthier friend Simon Pinder was applying a 'Breezy Sound' decal to my friend Greg's 1980 Breezy that had almost 1/2 its original decal missing - Simon had to 'paint' the letter back in by hand!)
...you can see how the decals look when you get' em here: -
( - please ignore the even more crappy Fender one!)
( - sorry, bad scan - the gold in the logo looks far lighter than this in reality, see next pic below)...
- and how they look once applied here (
The Decal Shop one is on the maple-necked Springy at the back (actually chrisheyes ST-80 which he swapped with me) - and the genuine Tokai one on the rosewood Springy in the foreground : -
As you can see, the Genuine 1980 Tokai decal has a much darker logo - looks like a vintage Fender one from a distance - whereas
The Decal Shop one is not very visible from a distance at all as the light gold is way too light & almost the same colour as the maple headstock. :-? ...additionally, the font used for "SPRINGY SOUND" is fractionally too small & not as "bold" as the originals.
Being rather frustrated by this, I contacted decal expert & fellow Tokai-player Terry Fisk (who plays out professionally as "Terry Lee Travis" around 6 nights a week all over UK & Europe), & asked him if he could come up with a really accurate decal for me, as luthier Simon Pinder is helping me restore the very well-played & dinged-up 1980 ST-80 I got from chrisheyes.
(The deep dings in the sunburst body would show after being filled if it's kept sunburst, so it's now going to get a black nitrocellulose finish over the body, like "Blackie" - Simon did a lot of work on the original "Blackie" for Eric Clapton many years ago).
Terry worked on this decal for over 3 weeks to get it absolutely right, as he is very,
very pernickity about detail, and has finally come up with an extremely nice-looking & accurate decal : -
The colours, font, type-size and angles (including the size & "outline") are 100% the same as the Tokai originals, and although you can't see it on this image at computer screen resolution, are absolutely razor-sharp. The finished decals are with Simon Pinder at the moment & I will post pics of the finished result as soon as possible when I get "Blackie" back (hopefully by the end of the month).
Chatting with chrisheyes, we feel it's important to try to keep these
OFF eBay, out of the grabs of fakers, & ideally only offer them to forum members who can show they've actually got a real Springy that needs a replacement or a 'spare'. Chris has contacted Villager about this, but he's rather busy to administer it (as are Chris & I), so rather hoping a 'senior' forum member - like Gottfried (Togps) perhaps? - would like to take them on.
Failing that, I guess I will have to post Terry's contact details here, as he needs to sell a bunch of these to get recompensed for the time & materials he's invested in producing them.
kmarccoco - if you're interested, send me an e-mail or PM & I'll give you Terry's contact details to get a decal or two for the '79 ST-80 you got from Mark (Villager)
