Paisley Greco SG from 1987

Here is another one of those oddities that pop up every now and then among old Greco guitars. This is a 1987 SG in paisley. I haven't seen any other model like this and Greco didn't even have a paisley tele as far as I have seen so perhaps it was made for an artist or was some kind of limited run.  It has a fairly beefy neck and plays really nicely. I am not sure what the pickups are as the covers are on and I can't see if it has alnico magnets or ceramic. So it goes with old guitars. Only the original owner may know for sure!

Early 80's Flashback: 1981 Tokai SS-70

Mint Collection EC57-60 1982 "Super Real"LP Custom

1982 Greco Mint Collection EC57-60. Sure, it doesn't have and ebony fretboard or MOP inlays but it is a pretty good Gibson substitute with the all-mahogany body/top/neck, 50's style neck and headstock angle. 

Fatboy Pickups "Super Dry" DRY-Z Clone

Has someone cracked the secrets of the Maxon DRY-Z pickup? The "Super Dry" Fatboy humbucker set sounds to me like the secret is out.

New Guitar Day

THUMB Acoustic by Terada

Oyaji has been in Japan for a few days enjoying the nice weather before the summer heat hits. A tour of the main guitar stores in the Tokyo area was uneventful with very few interesting old Japanese guitars up for sale. Yesterday however at the Yokohama Ishibashi there was something. An old acoustic with some cloudy lacquer and THUMB in large round font like an old Martin.

Thumb headstock

Martin headstock font

It was labelled as "Junk" since the high E string sits low in the nut and buzzes on the first fret in open position. Other than that the action was perfect and there were no fatal body blows to worry about. Since it came with a hard case it was hard to say no to this oddball so now I am have a new Thumb. I always wanted an acoustic in this Martin style but never found one that was affordable or sounded good. A trip to Ray's Guitar Spa in Singapore should sort out the nut and then it will be good to go.

Tokai Custom Edition - what year is this?

And what kind of pickups should it have?

Any ideas at all? 22 fret model with gold hardware and likely veneer-top.Serial number 12726

Deep in the Heart of Texas

PGM guitar are amazing. I've had some Navigators, Tokais and Grecos that had a lot going for them but so far the classiest Fender copies I've tried are PGM Van Zandts and Moon guitars.

Best wishes to BB King

BB King is one of the greats of all time. A guitarist who can say so much with so few notes on the guitar and sing straight from the soul. Thanks to BB King for all the great music.

Vintage Replica P-90 Pickup "Hysteric Soapland" - Vintage Maniacs

That is more than a little creepy but can't beat the tone! "Soapland" also has a very different meaning in Japan than just the reference to soapbar pickups,

Tales From The Woodheap : White pup rings arrived today, gave em a quick ag...

There is some nice refinishing work going on with an ESP Navigator at "Tales from the Woodheap."

Go have a look for yourself.



Tales From The Woodheap : White pup rings arrived today,  gave em a quick ag...: White pup rings arrived today,  gave em a quick ageing and tossed em on. These rings are about a mm wider and longer than Dimarzios  and th...

1980 Greco Super Real Series Information Catalogue Volume 12

I put up a scan of the 1980 Super Real Series catalog.

Dry-Z : From the blog of Jun Takano Part 2

Part 2 of the blog entry of Jun Takano regarding the "Z-DRY" development. Translated from the original Japanese.


At the time I had a pretty close relationship with a music promoter who also played guitar and consulted me regarding foreign musicians' guitars and gear more than a few times.

Or course, whenever he had problems with equipment of foreign musicians (such as needing emergency repairs) I would always deal with it on an emergency basis so I had come to the point where I had gained his strong trust.

So, when I showed him the guitar with the prototype pickups he told me that he wanted to borrow it so he could show it to some foreign musicians.

There was no particular plan to put the guitar for sale on the market so I agreed and left the guitar in his hands.....

After a few days had passed word came from my friend that he had shown the guitar to Don Felder (Eagles) who really liked the sound and wanted to have one himself.

After that we sent out a newly built guitar with a set of pickups installed. We were both pretty happy to have the pickup get some recognition.

However, there was still some way to go yet. While it was close to the essence of the sound that I was aiming at, there was still a substantial gap to overcome.

On the occasion of the next business trip to Matsumoto I had another meeting with the previously-mentioned Ushimaru-san.

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Photo of a winding machine from 1981 Greco Catalog: "The R&D Department; continually developing and building prototypes. The passionate pursuit of sound using the know-how accumulated over the years has given birth to pickups like "DRY", "Screamin'", "The Groove" and "Baby Gang."

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Ushimaru-san firmly grasped the sound I wanted and we resolved to change the specifications of the magnet.

Around that time I was personally pretty well connected with the music business. There was a very big name in the music business (who everyone probably would still know today) who was a busy producer and studio musician so I passed one of the guitars to him.

A few days later he let me know that he was really satisfied with the guitar. At the time he was playing on a prime-time TV show and had ended up using the guitar all the way through the whole show.

Another proposal came from Ushimaru-san. 

There was a small amount of US-made wire that was a sample (for prototyping).  Right away we went to making a third prototype......

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Winder picture from the 1981 Greco catalog: "There is a dedicated prototyping production line in the Greco R&D Department.  With all the machines needed ranging from those for prototyping bodies to the coil winders for numerous coil and pickup combinations,  refinement of sound goes on until it it is completely acceptable."

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The result came out to be extremely close to what I wanted. 

Santana ended up trying it out and wanted a set so a few days later I sent them off.

Up to that time the pickup had more recognition by foreign musicians than within Fujigen itself and more and more foreign guitarists gave good feedback.

At a planning meeting it was decided to put the pickup into production.  It was now time to name the pickup as a crystallization of the efforts we had made. I really didn't like the inorganic names like U-3000 and PU-2 that had been used up to that time. Respecting that "the name should demonstrate the voice" it was given the name of "DRY" to most closely match the tone. This was way before Asahi Beer did it mind you!

Part three to follow.

Dry-Z : From the blog of Jun Takano

There is a lot of speculation on what makes a DRY-Z sound like it does. Nobody really seems to know what that is except perhaps the persons who designed it way back in 1979. 

Jun Takano (高野順)was one of those people and is well-known today as a boutique winder for K&T pickups.

Jun Takano from http://www.musicland.co.jp/content/ktr/img/about/takano.png

Fortunately, he wrote a few pages about the development of the DRY-Z. There are unfortunately no secret recipes revealed. The following is translated from the original 2010 Japanese language blog entry of Jun Takano.

Z-DRY
It's been already 30 years since the birth of that humbucker. It is pretty well known that I had a close relationship with Greco at the time and is not a secret so I am going to tell it like it happened. 

At the time Greco guitars were made by Fujigen Gakki, now known as FUJIGEN. I was making regular business trips to Matsumoto for development and improvement as a non-regular employee.

I was younger and had a lot more stamina back then.:-)

The person who best understood my demands and offered his collaboration, while also matching my arrogance and self-centeredness, and with all the respect due to him as a top engineer, was the "hard-working genius" Ushimaru-san.

More than being limited to woodworking, Ushimaru-san had a deep knowledge of electronics and was second to none in skill, as shown by his development of the GR guitar synthesizer.

It was the summer of 1979 when Ushimaru-san and I started prototyping a new pickup. Even now the memory is fresh of the brilliant green of the rice fields of Matsumoto.

Fujigen factory (from http://www.fgnguitars.com/images/history/11.jpg)

We took this up during a one week business trip. At the end of so many meetings that it was getting to be too much, the pickup we made ended up looking from the outside like a regular humbucker.

We put the prototype we had made into in an original shape solid guitar and had it sent off to Kanda Shokai. That became unit #1.

That was the beginning of a very busy time in many different ways.

Part Two to follow.

DRY-Z Innards

I have a couple of DRY-Z that came with plastic shielded leads and changed them over to the braided wire yesterday and took a few pictures along the way.  According to the seller the pickups were from an ESP strat, hence the plastic shielding to avoid problems with accidental grounding.

Up to now I had the Zs in my Tokai LS-150 and they completely lived up to their reputation for clarity and responsiveness. So why take them out? I have a nice set of Seth Lovers that I wanted to used in the LS-150 and I want to use these Zs in my Tokai LC-100 or Greco EC68-80. To deal with the lack of gold hardware I also traded the polepieces and covers with those from a set of PU-2s in gold I got from Yahoo Japan recently.

After measuring the resistance I realized that the one that had been in the bridge (with a shorter lead) has lower resistance at about 7.7k compared to the neck at 8.3k. The bridge needs a bit more volume so I switched them around.

From the numbers on the baseplates these pickups were made about 5 months apart. 210509 should be May 9, 1981 and 201106 should be November 6, 1980 if I am not getting things confused. The "2" is a production line number as far as I have read and doesn't indicate the model. These were not made They could have been purchased as after-market parts which may explain the different dates.

Here are some pictures to show the innards of these pickups.

With polepieces and bobbin screws removed

Outer tape layer removed.

Double black bobbins.

210508 with bobbin removed. Maple and mahogany spacers?
Note light wax potting and polished roughcast magnet.

Back of the magnet showing some rough edges.

Wax potting and very rough magnet surface. I didn't take this out to see if the back was the same.

Back of the bobbin of 201106

Ready for installation in the Greco EC68-80.

New Momose LPs from Deviser at Guitar Planet

You could definitely do worse than getting one of these Momose MLS1-STD/NJ Les Paul-style guitars. Links here and here to Guitar Planet in Ochanomizu. Photos from Guitar Planet. No affiliation with the store, I just like the guitars.

Here is a link to the product page on the Deviser site.

Greco Custom EC68-80