Cheap Tokai 335's

Let me introduce myself on my first post:

I'm Rafy, from Puerto Rico and I'm the owner of a nice looking and amazing sounding Tokai korean LP...

Now, to my question:

Anybody has info on this guitars?




They look outstanding, but the price seems a little too low, kinda in the artcore range and I'm thinking about the quality.

If it's near my korean LP, it should be a **** nice instrument, but that's what I don't know.

another question:

The only way to get this kind of guitars are through Canada?

Thanks a lot!

Hola Rafael!
This have been discussed here,that guitar is not either japanese either corean.It feels very cheap to me and I have owned an ES120 model....

If the brand name TOKAI would be registered in the USA as a trade mark, it would be easily to stop such kind of shame.
But the American law does not allow at present time any activities of Tokai. So there is obviously no need for Tokai to protect itself for fakes.

I've seen one of those in a store here in Canada and it is a cheap piece of crap I'm afraid. Avoid!

Jim

Those ones are Chinese knock offs and are not ES-60s.

Yeah that seems like JSD is right, chinese knock off. Sometimes they look okay, but most of them are probably crud.

It's crazy what you get in terms of chinese knock offs. I saw chinese knock off epiphones with crazy looking gibson not quite headstocks, knock off gibsons with epiphone headstocks, coutless weird looking "fenders". If you want to check some out, look for "electricity guitars" on ebay, or just chinese guitars.

Not meaning to offend: Well, today I found out (on this page) that this is a Chinese Tokai made for Canada. It sounded bad. Wouldn't intonate, and buzzed. I was going to return it to the seller, but my Luthier, the owner of two upper scale Tokai ES 335 style guitars was with me when I bought it, and was impressed. He called it a great entry-level ES 335 style guitar. 'Who cares if it is made in China, put some new 11s on it, and try intonating it again', he said. We had already put a lot of relief in the neck (the truss rod was much much too tight). I did what he said, and after putting on the new heavier-guage strings, spending an hour getting the intonation right, and adjusting the pickups, it found it's voice, and it spoke sweet music. Don't let the bad setup fool you - this guitar has potential. The finish is really beautiful too, except for a flaw in the binding on the neck (cosmetic). The other comment my Luthier made, besides telling me you would have to spend well over $1000 to get an equivalent guitar is 'I am glad there's competion out there'. So much stuff is overpriced these days. Now, I know what you're thinking, but I am not a joker. I have been playing, adjusting, and tweaking guitars for more than 25 years. My complaints with this guitar are not in the build quality, but rather that it is not set up at all from the factory, came with bad strings, the truss rod was way too tight, one fret needs to be hammered down (my luthier noticed that), one tone control doesn't work (probably the capacitor broke off), and the pickups need to be potted. Once I take care of these issues, lookout! I think I am going to be happy with my purchase. It is already quite playable.





Bridge pickup and pickup cavity:

???? :roll:

I guess what can you really say... You probably are not a repairman. I stand by what I said - this guitar rings, and that is the bottom line. 8)

I understand that Tokai's are now also made in China ( Under TOKAI's approval)

Hmm... I wonder if this is one of them...