Rick Nielsen and Tokai

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Sigmania

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Starting a thread to collect stories about Rick Nielsen of Cheap Trick and his early involvement with Tokai.

This was inspired by a post by bluejeannot (see below) about the origin of the E pickups, then I spotted another blurb about him in the Spring 1982 catalog, so I wanted to see if there was any other info out there and to also gather cool pics of guitars... 8)
 
bluejeannot said:
Where I got this information from I don't quite remember, but the story went that Rick Neilson's Cheap Trick were on a tour of Japan in the 70s and Tokai Gakki entered into an endorsement arrangement with him and his vintage strats and teles(this may have also happened to his Gibsons) and their hardware were examined in great detail and replicated. Tokai reproduced the woodwork and the bridges which were pot metal at the time were supplied by a generic Japanese manufacture that produced strat bridges for a number of other strat copy manufacturers .The pickups specs were sent to Gotoh to produce pickups which replicated the originals as accurately as materials allowed. The same kind of grey board, and a similar number of windings with alnico 5 magnets with ground edges. The authentic sound and faithfull specs of these early Springys caused an absolute sensation in England at the time and the first batch sold out very quickly indeed. The E pickups were hand wound copies of some of his vintage strat pickups minus the cloth wire which was impossible to find in Japan at the time. The Us were the slightly hotter all machine wound mass produced versions of this vintage specced pickup. These were the pickups that wound up(pardon the pun)on the first Springys. How much truth there is in all this is open to question but It does have the ring of truth about it, (like a Springy or Goldie fitted with E stamped Pickups you might say!)PS the A stamped pickguard appeared on E loaded pickguards and B was stamped on U loaded pickguards.


http://www.tokaiforum.com/viewtopic.php?f=11&t=26023&p=194956&hilit=cheap+trick#p194956
 
Spring 1982 catalog.

tKbsfCO.jpg


5. Rick Nielsen. Old guitar collector Rick is now crazy about Tokai. This person, Rick Nielsen, who doesn't need to explain any more. Probably the number one old guitar collector in the world. As you know earlier in the previous catalog, he got the Tokai Tramoku (flamed maple) standard model at Cheap Trick Japan performance. It's a normal story that seems to be everywhere up to that point, but it's hard because the important one was stolen in New York. I've done a lot of work here and there, but of course New York, which is famous for its criminal city, doesn't come out. Are you smart there? I thought that it would be better to order another Rick from Tokai rather than worrying about it, so l asked him to make it with a check. Surprisingly, I think there are many guitar freaks who think that musicians can get anything for free, but this is also the case. If you really like the guitar, you want to get it, this is what the musician really is. Oh, take off your hat to the great Rick. I'm so impressed that the eyeballs of lyawata Cine are checked. (Tokai staff who are very impressed) Of course, as a musician, his Udemae is a first-class guitarist who wants Hachamecha to continue to do his best.
 
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