O-hisashiburi

It has been a long Corona year, and there really is no good reason to stop posting guitar photos and occasional thoughts about all things related to Japanese instruments. Today I'm just going to add a few photos of some amazing Grecos. 

A rare pair of EGF-1800 Super Real Grecos

EG57-60 from 1982

52 Blackguard-style TL-800

The one that should have stayed: 1981 Greco SS-800

Lighting and Wood: Tokai LS-80

Old Tokai LS-80s are a real pleasure to play and photograph. This particular one is an early one from 1978 with mother of pearl fretboard inlays and chrome plated hardware.

It was a sunny winter day here in Tokyo with the sun coming in hard through the windows. The top of the LS really caught flame and revealed the fine figuring of the old maple.   

A very clean headstock with the early pearloid tuning pegs.

A more subdued look in the shade.

Not your typical back grain here on the 1-piece mahogany.

Mint Collection Greco special SGs

When checking email for auction alerts I had a Greco SG notice that was already an hour old.

One click on the link, and right away I am staring at a Greco odd-ball SG, the same one that I remember seeing years ago on the legendary Udonitron's Flickr site (pics below from the talented Udonitron). With a fair purchase price, I remembered enough to read the description before hitting the magic button. "The Greco logo looks similar to a Gibson - don't purchase if that bothers you." stood out but only as something I've never seen before. The pictures look decent enough so click, click, click and off the market it did come.

Triple mini-humbuckers. From https://www.flickr.com/photos/bobenis/

1989 serial From https://www.flickr.com/photos/bobenis/

Someone from the great FB Greco group posted a video link to another example from 1989. There is some good playing here to demo the pickups.





Certainly there was another 3-pickup SG that came out around the same time, also with gold hardware but with P-90s, dot inlays, and metal tuning pegs like on a junior.  One one of the auction sites, a proper model name: Greco SS-85S model for Ranmaru from "Street Sliders."
A quick search and we have actual footage of the man himself with the guitar.

I pulled these pictures from an old auction:

So that solves one Greco 3-pu model story, but I couldn't find anything for the SG model with mini-hums.  At least there is one more out there. There is one more SG that I had, but as is my bad habit with most of the rare guitars I get, I ended up selling it. Perhaps it was a custom order or a model made for an artist. I'm sure another one will show up someday.

GOLD Jerry! GOLD!

Happy New Year 2020!

Stoptails, P-90s and gold. Gold Jerry! Gold!! 

 
Ok, excuse that Seinfeld reference.

Here are a couple of made-in-Japan tone machines that meet that recipe. The non-reverse Burny Firebird is an early 90's FB-65 or FB-75 (I think they adjusted the price at some point and the Crews is a recent model from around 2017 in the LS-02 series.

The Burny pickups sound really good to me. I'm not sure what the middle position switch does but will have to look under the hood some time. 

These are a slightly different shade of gold. I'm not sure what is more accurate to vintage Gibson colors. 

Both guitars have decent intonation all things considered with the stop-tails but full chords past the 10th fret just sound a bit off with the imperfect intonation. These are great blues and rock guitars though for single lines, bends and vibrato to make the intonation not matter too much.

The Crews is a Terada product and as usual is flawless in build has a perfect nitro finish and nice inlay and fret work.

I guess the Burny is a Dynagakki build from the routing and rough year but have no confirmation of that.

Gold Jerry! Gold.

Under the hood: Maxon 1974 U-1000 Pickup

This 46 year old Maxon U-1000 showed up on Yahoo Auctions needing a new home and a new pickup lead wire. I though the U-1000s started in 1975 but the stamp on this one shows a 1974 date.





Thankfully the pickup coils were both intact and there were no shorts. There are the remains of a "Maxon" sticker that would have looked like this:

You can see that Maxon did a decent job of replicating the good old PAF design with the wooden spacer and the metal bar. The magnet is probably Alnico 8 if it is in line with the typical U-1000 design.

A little bit of soldering action later we have a nice vintage U-1000 reading a bit over 8k in resistance.

Now to find a guitar to put it in....

Get your Ace Frehley on! Greco EG-600PR

Ace Frehley and Kiss have been big in Japan since the 70s and still make waves today. The current Ace-less KISS incarnation just finished played the Japan shows on their latest farewell tour.

Back in the 70's when Gibson's glory days were behind it and Japanese guitar makers were building on years of experience to produce excellent handmade Gibson models even Ace had to see what all the fuss was about. There are photos of him playing the Mick Ralphs model and a special AK-1400 flying V model during live shows in Japan.

Ace with Greco AK-1400 Flying V model -  Key Music Limited

Ace with a 1977 Greco MR-1000

There have been many Greco homages to Ace's famous three-pickup "Budokan" 1974 Gibson Custom over the years starting in the mid 70's with a few Greco models. I just acquired the very clean 1981 EG600PR below from everyone's favorite music store Ishibashi. It is a fairly light one at 4.2 kg and has a nicely matched 3-piece top. The U-1000 pickups are ceramic and work very nicely as open pickups. While the 1980 Super Real catalog has this model listed as having an ebony fretboard ("エボニー") it does not, and I've never seen one that does from the Super Real era and I'm pretty sure that was an unfortunate error in producing the catalog. I'd love to get am EG800PR which has an ebony fretboard and MOP inlays but they are fairly rare. 

Greco PU-2s and the letter "A"

These "A" stamped pickups show up from time to time, with no real reason or rhyme. Why did they use an "A" stamp on some 80's Maxon pickups made for Greco?

The only working idea I have is that they wound the "A" pickups in the same place and at the same time as they wound the "Z" pickups. I think they probably didn't want to get them mixed up so decided to use an "A" stamp for PU-2 pickups.

Are all "A" stamped pickups PU-2s? There are also some "A" pickups without "PU-2" embossing in the plates. One more mystery.

The pictured set is from a 1980 EGF-850. The numbers suggest different production dates. Only one has an "A".