Withdrawn 2000 Tokai LS-320 VF & original case

[guitar hiro]

I am offering for sale a stellar example 2000 Tokai Love Rock LS-320 VF and original case.

I have owned this guitar for over 15 years and it is pretty much in the same condition now as when I purchased it.
Since I have owned this LS-320 for such a long time I'm in no particular hurry to part with it but the right buyer could certainly sway a decision.

This 2000 LS-320 is nearly 24 years old.
The rare lumbers currently regulated by CITES Appendix 1 and CITES Appendix 2, that were utilized for the manufacture of this stellar example, are surly quite a bit older than the production age of this example and older lumber is certainly a plus.
If Tokai were to currently replicate such an example with the same lumber species and the same build spec the price point would likely be around the $10K USD ball park but then you wouldn't have the older lumber that this LS-320 example has.

This 2000 LS-320 looks to be in original condition, the pickguard was never installed/screw holes never drilled, original case is included, warranty card, pickguard with protective film still in place, the control route cover and the toggle route cover have the protective films in place, originally purchased new in 2006 from Big Boss Freaks Market: I am the second owner.
I would rate the condition of this 2000 LS-320 as very good plus to excellent minus.
Some attributes include a fabulous looking and very unusual flat sawn Brazilian board, one of the nicest 4A Maple tops I have seen on any LS-320, a 1 piece flat sawn Honduran body back, a 1 piece quarter sawn Honduran neck with a long neck tenon, fret edge binding and a '60s slim taper thickness neck/profile. Weight is 9 lb. - 3 oz. and that is of course with no pickguard.

*** I reside in the lower 48 USA so, if sold, this awesome LS-320 would ship only to the lower 48, Alaska or Hawaii because of the rare lumbers to avoid any potential CITES issues. ***

I am not posting an asking price for this now quite rare example but I will consider any and all offers from seriously interested parties. You know who you are and you know who you are not.

Cheers

 

[guitar hiro]

Thought I would bump this on a monthly basis ....... just in case

 

[guitar hiro]

B4 anyone else HERE contacts me via PM about this currently quite rare 24 year old TOP SPEC example, I would like to say a couple of things.
(1) Please read the OP because I will NOT ship this example outside of the lower 48, Alaska, or Hawaii.
(2) If you are too timid to contact me with an offer because you are afraid of "offending" me then please don't waste your time nor my time; why? I WON'T be offended if you send me a 'LOW BALL' offer; I will just tell you that your offer isn't up to snuff. There is no being offended in that; period.

There is nothing personal here but PLEASE stop wasting everyone's time with ******** PMs if you are not attempting to be a potentially serious buyer.
Would you approach your better half for a screw with a limp ****? LOL
Please, do not waste my time and please do not waste your time playing some ******* games just because you think you may offend some 62 year old ******* geezer that has seen pretty much all the ******** games in the entire ******* universe.

Go back, read the OP and unless you are serious then please DON"T ******* PM ME .......

Thanks

 

[guitar hiro]

It's time for a Halloween bump for this amazing 2000 Tokai LS-320

this top spec, top end of the entire LS line example from the year 2000 is no trick but it is a treat

 

[chuckyz2]

Nice piece. That fretboard is sawn in an unusual way for a fretboard. Old growth BR is hard to come by. Especially long strips of straight grain. It looks very cool though. Not a potential buyer but would like to see the back of the body.

 

[guitar hiro]

Nice piece. That fretboard is sawn in an unusual way for a fretboard. Old growth BR is hard to come by. Especially long strips of straight grain. It looks very cool though. Not a potential buyer but would like to see the back of the body.

per the OP the fingerboard is, "very unusual flat sawn." Most rose' boards are typically quarter sawn.
I could never hypothesize why this board is flat sawn particularly so, since the annual rings run the entire length of the board but it does look pretty cool.
Since the annual rings are so uniform and run the entire length of the board it doesn't offer the typical visual of typical stump Braz samples.
Since LS-320s were catalog items but were only 'made to order' when an order was actually placed I can only assume that possibly the buyer that ordered the guitar may have requested the board be flat sawn but that is purely speculation.

The Honduran hog body back is also flat sawn, which doesn't seem unusual for LS-320 examples that I have seen, but I don't have any pics that could demonstrate that attribute. Even with an in hand inspection it's difficult to see that the body back is flat sawn just by looking at the back of the guitar but looking at the end grain of the body is the giveaway.

 

[guitar hiro]

once a month bump for the 2000 LS-320 and with some additional info


I was informed by another member from a different forum of some updated info concerning Brazilian rosewood aka dalbergia nigra and CITES. It would seem this information is from 2019 and I won't vouch for its' authenticity but nonetheless I will post the link. None of this means that I would be willing to ship the LS-320 to any buyer destination other than those listed in the OP. Cheers


https://usacustomsclearance.com/process/importing-rosewood/
Excerpted info:
As of 2019, CITES regulations were lifted regarding rosewood instruments. Meaning that if you travel, buy, sell, or trade rosewood-made guitars, no longer are you required to have an article 10 permit. You can even move freely with guitars made of rosewood and exceed the previous weight limit without a permit.

 

[Homeras]

OK, how the customs will tell what wood is used if even the "experts" here or there, owning hundrens of guitars within thousands of years very often can't determine what "rosewood" particular guitar has? what about "jacaranda" ?

 

[guitar hiro]

OK, how the customs will tell what wood is used if even the "experts" here or there, owning hundrens of guitars within thousands of years very often can't determine what "rosewood" particular guitar has? what about "jacaranda" ?

if I don't export 'rosewood' then I won't have to find out

 

[Homer J. Simpson]

Wise guy comment: It is mentioned in the linked article but so much down the page that it can be missed easily - while the 2019 conference excluded the species Dalbergia spp. from the CITES-II trade restrictions, Dalbergia nigra (aka Brazilian rosewood aka jacaranda) as a CITES-I wood is excluded from that exclusion of course.

 

[guitar hiro]

Wise guy comment: It is mentioned in the linked article but so much down the page that it can be missed easily - while the 2019 conference excluded the species Dalbergia spp. from the CITES-II trade restrictions, Dalbergia nigra (aka Brazilian rosewood aka jacaranda) as a CITES-I wood is excluded from that exclusion of course.

It's all kinda just crazy, nutz and confusing to me but it is what it is.

Up until around 2017 or so, I had shipped guitars internationally from the US to over 20 different countries.
With the situation with the various dalbergia lumbers, Brazilian in particular and also with the situation with freight/shipping costs I eventually concluded it was no longer in my interests to ship guitars internationally.

Actually the last time I sold an instrument to a non USA buyer was to a guy in Russia. We agreed that I would ship the (bass) guitar to a freight forwarder in the NYC area and they shipped the instrument to him in Russia. That was all arranged and negotiated before a transaction was finalized.

 

[Homeras]

Did anybody ever had any issues with shipping a guitar with braz, except the japanese proxies refusing to buy/ship one with those sacred words in the description?

 

[Homer J. Simpson]

Not shipping guitars like that is definitely protecting unaware buyers from having their guitar confiscated and getting into even deeper trouble.

Every time I try to understand what's needed to stay on the safe side if I were to import something extra yummy (googled my behind off several times for that) it becomes less attractive to even bother. For example, how exactly "Honduras" mahogany is affected when it was already turned into a guitar, or how I can get proof that the lumber was harvested from a plantation and not a neotropical forest.

However, If I understood that right, a guitar like yours (and it's what I'd deem "extra-extra yummy") can't be imported into the EU without ending up in hell - it was made post-1992 and the needed documents to prove that the rosewood lumber was rightfully harvested, maybe before 1992 just can't be obtained. Trying to import this without having these documents is a criminal offense and can cost you 25,000-50,000€, and of course they keep your guitar.

Species conservation is what many musicians totally agree with but this is just plain bureaucratic madness. [Whataboutism] While I wrote this reply 3,000 acres of tropical timber were burned down to produce cheap meat for my supermarket. [/Whataboutism]

 

[guitar hiro]

Not shipping guitars like that is definitely protecting unaware buyers from having their guitar confiscated and getting into even deeper trouble.

BINGO

As far as selling I have been extremely fortunate over the course of nearly five decades.
I have shipped literally a few hundred guitars, several internationally and a few accessories and pickups.
I have never had a single parcel confiscated, lost, stolen, anything, etc., not even a single broken head stock and many of the guitars I shipped were not even in a hard case.

I guess the worst experience was I shipped a set of Dry Z pickups from the US to a buyer in Germany. After nearly two months the pickups seemed to have vanished off the face of the Earth. I had been communicating with the buyer and I let him know that I was ready to refund his purchase and I would take the loss, which was several hundred U$D. The very next day the buyer had the pickups delivered to his door. ****, that was a relief.

 

[guitar hiro]

This LS-320 is rarely played mainly because it sits at the back and the bottom of a stack of LP cases; it's difficult to access in such a huge stack of cases as it's quite the chore.

I went through the pile of cases yesterday, made sure every guitar was tuned properly and played each guitar for a bit. I'm not crazy about the smaller neck profile/thickness on this 320 but it does sound really good. I know there are those that don't care for the unpotted Seth Lover pickups but they sound fantastic in this 320 and these are date coded to 2000.

I played several other LP types from the big pile of cases.
My Combat and my early Momose MLS, both with non-original pickups, are my two favorites and that is likely because of the larger/thicker neck profiles but the 320 is a true beast.

 

[Homeras]

My Combat and my early Momose MLS, both with non-original pickups, are my two favorites and that is likely because of the larger/thicker neck profiles but the 320 is a true beast.

Have the luck to also own (some in the past) LS320, Combat LP and early Momose MLS-STD/J, all are/were fantastic guitars!

can't be imported into the EU without ending up in hell - it was made post-1992 and the needed documents to prove that the rosewood lumber was rightfully harvested, maybe before 1992 just can't be obtained. Trying to import this without having these documents is a criminal offense and can cost you 25,000-50,000€, and of course they keep your guitar.

Did similar deals many times, import, export, no issues ever

 

[guitar hiro]

Have the luck to also own (some in the past) LS320, Combat LP and early Momose MLS-STD/J, all are/were fantastic guitars!

The thing about my LS-320 is it is basically all original; nothing has been changed electrically and it has such a clean and fantastic sound. I wish it had that larger neck profile like the Combat and the Momose.

The Combat and the Momose are just the opposite as the Combat shipped to me without any pickups and the Momose has non-original pickups so, both were not original as the 320 is.

I think one thing that may offer the 320 an edge as far as sonic response is the fingerboard lumber. It just has that little something extra; 'lagniappe' as they say in Louisiana. The 320 has that.

 

[guitar hiro]

still available?

sent you a PM

 

[guitar hiro]

I have very few photos of the LS-320 and the very few I do have are quite old.
someone here asked about a pic of the body back.
I was digging through some old pics and I located a couple from August, 2011 which is about three and a half years after I purchased the guitar.
The pics aren't very good, they are actually quite bad, LOL, but the one showing the end grain is likely the one that can demonstrate the annual ring orientation; it is basically flat sawn.

You can right click either image and 'open image in new tab' and then enlarge for a bit better detail.

 

[guitar hiro]

forgot to bump this FS thread at the end of December; better late than never I suppose

one odd thing about this circa 2000 LS-320 example:
When I purchased it from the used market in early 2008 the plastic protective films were still on the pickup covers.
Below is an indoor flash photo from April, 2008, about one month after I purchased the guitar, with the plastic protective films finally removed from the pickup covers.
Who stole the nobs?





Here, as in the OP, from March, 2008 is an outdoor photo with the plastic films still on the pickup covers.
The top looks quite different in the two photos exhibiting the true 3D phantom flame nature of the maple