Limehouse Blues
Senior Member
- Joined
- Jul 14, 2012
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A Tokai Story
I think I first heard about Tokai Les Pauls way back in the early 1990s. Aged 11, Christmas 1991 and I got my first electric guitar. It was a cheap superstrat copy called a “Rockster” that quite a lot of the music stores in the UK sold at the time. All featured terrible hardware and cheesy cartoon finishes. Mine was emblazoned with a Judge Dredd style character screaming “Kick Ass”. Not a great guitar by any means but for me it was the gateway. My best mate at school got an electric guitar around the same time. His was a red Hohner superstrat copy. We used to jam regularly, playing mostly Status Quo tunes. Now I remember one day when we were jamming round his house, he had this book on the electric guitar that he’d borrowed from the local library. I was leafing through this book which explained all the different styles of electric guitar - Teles, Strats, Les Pauls etc. I distinctly remember one page had a mini feature on Japanese copies of famous American guitars, with photos of a Tokai Les Paul and Strat. I recall the text mentioning the cost of American guitars and that some players turned to cheaper Asian copies as an alternative, with Tokai mentioned as a popular brand. So that was my first brush with Tokai, probably some time in mid 1992 while I was wearing out Joe Satriani’s Flying in a Blue Dream on my Walkman. I never saw Tokais in the stores in the 1990s (Musical Exchanges in Birmingham) and I never heard the name Tokai again until signing up to this forum in 2012.
MLP and its many knowledgeable members really piqued my interest in the MIJ phenomenon. In 2012 I briefly owned a 1990s Burny picked up on eBay from a vendor in Japan. A solid guitar that I pimped out a bit, then part exchanged on a Gibson Historic. I remember when shopping for Historics in 2012 being pretty underwhelmed by all the different Gibsons I played. To be fair, shop setups are often not great but I remember playing a bunch of USA and CS Gibsons at Guitar Village in 2012 and thinking to myself, “Sheesh, is that it? - And they want how many thousands for this?” I was struck by the fact that the Gibsons I was picking up (including some of the CS guitars) just didn’t feel ‘primo’ or as upscale as the price point would suggest. Other US guitars (in particular PRS) just felt snazzier. I eventually found an R0 I clicked with at GAK in Brighton and got a decent deal on the trade in. But I really wanted to look into early 80s MIJ a bit more.
Nico Nico, Shibuya
Fast forward to October 2014. I’m on holiday in Japan. After traipsing round Ochanamizou with little success I head over to Shibuya where I played a Tokai LS 150 at Nico Nico. It was love at first sight. My first Tokai…
Tokai LS-150 // Love Rock // 1981
The guitar is in a faded orange / lemon drop finish. It is all original, with a super distortion at the bridge and DiMarzio PAF in the neck. It’s an odd pickup combo but works. The Super Distortion has grown on me over the last year and I was reluctant to start swapping out pickups and parts on a collectible guitar. This particular example is very heavy (over 10 lbs) and that is the only real fault I could find with it. Strangely it doesn’t feel that heavy when standing up playing. Certainly my 1980 Gibson Standard (now gone) felt even heavier to play. I love the finish of this LS-150 and find that the solid flame top, rather dark fingerboard, lemony fade and double whites give the guitar a very ’burst like’ appearance. The neck profile is nice ’59. One piece back. On arrival from Japan the guitar went over to Charlie Chandler’s guitar experience for a Plek setup. Plays beautifully.
Tokai LS-50 // Love Rock // 1981
Soon after getting the LS-150 I laid my hands on this one from the other end of the range. Picked up on eBay for just under 500 quid from a seller in Japan. This one is a curiosity. It survived pretty awful packing and shipping. It had been wrapped in bubble wrap inside a tatty, old hard shell case that had had its foam innards ripped out. The case was then wrapped in bubble wrap and shipping labels applied. Incredible! Case went straight into the trash and guitar went to a luthier whose workshop is round the corner from me in East London. I managed to sheer the heads of a couple of screws and break the neck pickup ring making the luthier’s work a bit harder. He cleaned it up and gave the frets a good polish. He also managed to drill out the broken screws and installed new rings for me that I obtained from Gottfired at tokaiguitar.de. Pots were replaced and new OX4s installed with some Russian PIO caps. I really love these pickups. They give such a wonderful, harmonic growl. I keep this guitar in E Flat strung with 11s. One day I will remove the pickup covers revealing the double black OX4s and lose the scratch guard to look just like you know who….
The finish on the back of this one is very unusual. All other Tokai Gold Tops I’ve seen have had darker backs. This is one is natural but I wonder if it’s been discoloured by light over the years. The oval ’50’ label is still in place but the serial number is hardly visible to the naked eye. Under strong direct light I can just pick it out as 1014971 which I think makes it a Hamamatsu model. With all its nicks and dings, this guitar has major mojo.
Tokai HLS-170 // Reborn Old // 2015
Being so taken with the early 80s Tokais I really wanted to give the new ones a try. Now the only thing I really don’t like about contemporary Tokais (and other new MIJ guitars) is the parabola shaped truss rod cover. It just looks odd and oversized to my eye and I don’t know why the old truss rod shape was abandoned. Thankfully it’s one of the points addressed by the Hibiki range produced by Tokai for Hibiki corporation. The HLS 170 is very light weight. Mine weighs just a hair over 8lbs and is the lightest non weight relieved Les Paul I’ve ever played. The guitar has quite a chunky neck profile. Closer to a ’58 than a ’59. The fit and finish is incredible. Fret work and binding in particular is of the highest standard. My guitar teacher (a burst player himself) checked it out at a lesson recently and was extremely impressed with the finish and playability of the guitar. The out of the box set up from Kurusoawa Gakki was very, very good. The flame top is a veneer and the finish is thin poly rather than nitro. Two piece back. The “Fifty Nine” pickups that the guitar comes with are on the weak side. The neck is nice enough but the bridge sounds a little thin and brittle. My feeling is that the guitar would benefit from a beefier pickup at the bridge. Some Hot Duanes might be in order. We’ll see.
Tokai LS-80 // Les Paul Reborn // 1980
This one has just arrived from TC Gakki. After getting rid of my 1980 Gibson I wanted another axe from that year (being my birth year) and when this LS-80 popped up I pounced. Taking it out of the case just this weekend I was struck by its burst like mojo. The nitro is ageing nicely. A good weight (under 9 lbs). The guitar retains its original circuit board harness which I will replace with new pots and PIO caps. Frustratingly the neck pickup ring and scratch plate are both cracked. I don’t know if they can be rescued. If not I’ll face a challenge finding aged plastics that fit the metric measurements of the guitar and its level of ageing. The pickups are a pleasant surprise. They appear to be potted but they have a honk that I normally associate with unpotted pickups. Either way, they are definitely staying in the guitar. There is some binding separation on the body and I may see if this is something a luthier can fix.
Now with a wedding on the horizon next year I think it’s time for me to take my foot off the G.A.S and enjoy these axes. Yet I can’t help but feeling though that it won’t be long before this collection expands. The quality and craftsmanship of these Japanese guitars just impresses me so much. Of all four guitars, the one that has stunned me the most is actually the LS-80. It’s just a perfect guitar and it has a vintage vibe and lovely plain top that very much reminds me of my Jaeger R0. If the collection does expand it will be to add some P90s into the mix.
I think I first heard about Tokai Les Pauls way back in the early 1990s. Aged 11, Christmas 1991 and I got my first electric guitar. It was a cheap superstrat copy called a “Rockster” that quite a lot of the music stores in the UK sold at the time. All featured terrible hardware and cheesy cartoon finishes. Mine was emblazoned with a Judge Dredd style character screaming “Kick Ass”. Not a great guitar by any means but for me it was the gateway. My best mate at school got an electric guitar around the same time. His was a red Hohner superstrat copy. We used to jam regularly, playing mostly Status Quo tunes. Now I remember one day when we were jamming round his house, he had this book on the electric guitar that he’d borrowed from the local library. I was leafing through this book which explained all the different styles of electric guitar - Teles, Strats, Les Pauls etc. I distinctly remember one page had a mini feature on Japanese copies of famous American guitars, with photos of a Tokai Les Paul and Strat. I recall the text mentioning the cost of American guitars and that some players turned to cheaper Asian copies as an alternative, with Tokai mentioned as a popular brand. So that was my first brush with Tokai, probably some time in mid 1992 while I was wearing out Joe Satriani’s Flying in a Blue Dream on my Walkman. I never saw Tokais in the stores in the 1990s (Musical Exchanges in Birmingham) and I never heard the name Tokai again until signing up to this forum in 2012.
MLP and its many knowledgeable members really piqued my interest in the MIJ phenomenon. In 2012 I briefly owned a 1990s Burny picked up on eBay from a vendor in Japan. A solid guitar that I pimped out a bit, then part exchanged on a Gibson Historic. I remember when shopping for Historics in 2012 being pretty underwhelmed by all the different Gibsons I played. To be fair, shop setups are often not great but I remember playing a bunch of USA and CS Gibsons at Guitar Village in 2012 and thinking to myself, “Sheesh, is that it? - And they want how many thousands for this?” I was struck by the fact that the Gibsons I was picking up (including some of the CS guitars) just didn’t feel ‘primo’ or as upscale as the price point would suggest. Other US guitars (in particular PRS) just felt snazzier. I eventually found an R0 I clicked with at GAK in Brighton and got a decent deal on the trade in. But I really wanted to look into early 80s MIJ a bit more.
Nico Nico, Shibuya
Fast forward to October 2014. I’m on holiday in Japan. After traipsing round Ochanamizou with little success I head over to Shibuya where I played a Tokai LS 150 at Nico Nico. It was love at first sight. My first Tokai…
Tokai LS-150 // Love Rock // 1981
The guitar is in a faded orange / lemon drop finish. It is all original, with a super distortion at the bridge and DiMarzio PAF in the neck. It’s an odd pickup combo but works. The Super Distortion has grown on me over the last year and I was reluctant to start swapping out pickups and parts on a collectible guitar. This particular example is very heavy (over 10 lbs) and that is the only real fault I could find with it. Strangely it doesn’t feel that heavy when standing up playing. Certainly my 1980 Gibson Standard (now gone) felt even heavier to play. I love the finish of this LS-150 and find that the solid flame top, rather dark fingerboard, lemony fade and double whites give the guitar a very ’burst like’ appearance. The neck profile is nice ’59. One piece back. On arrival from Japan the guitar went over to Charlie Chandler’s guitar experience for a Plek setup. Plays beautifully.
Tokai LS-50 // Love Rock // 1981
Soon after getting the LS-150 I laid my hands on this one from the other end of the range. Picked up on eBay for just under 500 quid from a seller in Japan. This one is a curiosity. It survived pretty awful packing and shipping. It had been wrapped in bubble wrap inside a tatty, old hard shell case that had had its foam innards ripped out. The case was then wrapped in bubble wrap and shipping labels applied. Incredible! Case went straight into the trash and guitar went to a luthier whose workshop is round the corner from me in East London. I managed to sheer the heads of a couple of screws and break the neck pickup ring making the luthier’s work a bit harder. He cleaned it up and gave the frets a good polish. He also managed to drill out the broken screws and installed new rings for me that I obtained from Gottfired at tokaiguitar.de. Pots were replaced and new OX4s installed with some Russian PIO caps. I really love these pickups. They give such a wonderful, harmonic growl. I keep this guitar in E Flat strung with 11s. One day I will remove the pickup covers revealing the double black OX4s and lose the scratch guard to look just like you know who….
The finish on the back of this one is very unusual. All other Tokai Gold Tops I’ve seen have had darker backs. This is one is natural but I wonder if it’s been discoloured by light over the years. The oval ’50’ label is still in place but the serial number is hardly visible to the naked eye. Under strong direct light I can just pick it out as 1014971 which I think makes it a Hamamatsu model. With all its nicks and dings, this guitar has major mojo.
Tokai HLS-170 // Reborn Old // 2015
Being so taken with the early 80s Tokais I really wanted to give the new ones a try. Now the only thing I really don’t like about contemporary Tokais (and other new MIJ guitars) is the parabola shaped truss rod cover. It just looks odd and oversized to my eye and I don’t know why the old truss rod shape was abandoned. Thankfully it’s one of the points addressed by the Hibiki range produced by Tokai for Hibiki corporation. The HLS 170 is very light weight. Mine weighs just a hair over 8lbs and is the lightest non weight relieved Les Paul I’ve ever played. The guitar has quite a chunky neck profile. Closer to a ’58 than a ’59. The fit and finish is incredible. Fret work and binding in particular is of the highest standard. My guitar teacher (a burst player himself) checked it out at a lesson recently and was extremely impressed with the finish and playability of the guitar. The out of the box set up from Kurusoawa Gakki was very, very good. The flame top is a veneer and the finish is thin poly rather than nitro. Two piece back. The “Fifty Nine” pickups that the guitar comes with are on the weak side. The neck is nice enough but the bridge sounds a little thin and brittle. My feeling is that the guitar would benefit from a beefier pickup at the bridge. Some Hot Duanes might be in order. We’ll see.
Tokai LS-80 // Les Paul Reborn // 1980
This one has just arrived from TC Gakki. After getting rid of my 1980 Gibson I wanted another axe from that year (being my birth year) and when this LS-80 popped up I pounced. Taking it out of the case just this weekend I was struck by its burst like mojo. The nitro is ageing nicely. A good weight (under 9 lbs). The guitar retains its original circuit board harness which I will replace with new pots and PIO caps. Frustratingly the neck pickup ring and scratch plate are both cracked. I don’t know if they can be rescued. If not I’ll face a challenge finding aged plastics that fit the metric measurements of the guitar and its level of ageing. The pickups are a pleasant surprise. They appear to be potted but they have a honk that I normally associate with unpotted pickups. Either way, they are definitely staying in the guitar. There is some binding separation on the body and I may see if this is something a luthier can fix.
Now with a wedding on the horizon next year I think it’s time for me to take my foot off the G.A.S and enjoy these axes. Yet I can’t help but feeling though that it won’t be long before this collection expands. The quality and craftsmanship of these Japanese guitars just impresses me so much. Of all four guitars, the one that has stunned me the most is actually the LS-80. It’s just a perfect guitar and it has a vintage vibe and lovely plain top that very much reminds me of my Jaeger R0. If the collection does expand it will be to add some P90s into the mix.
Nice story and pics, thanks for sharing.
