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".

Case candy and an early ST-60 Tokai

"This is the exact replica of the good old strat"

With rare tag

I had to go have a look on some of the Tokai and MIJ guitar forums to see exactly what this one is about. It is an early 1978 Tokai ST-60 in the sub-600 serial range. These early Springy Sounds had a slightly narrower neck plate and also pre-date the use of the "E" stamped grey bobbin pickups.

I was able to confirm that indeed that the pickups were original; the solder is virgin and I had never seen the particular brass grounding plate that Tokai used on these guitars. 

It is a typical ST-60 with a centre-matched SEN body and one-piece maple neck with a nice thin poly finish. These really look to me like fresh nitro with the thin layer or poly letting the grain of the SEN come through.

It came with a rare "Springy Sound ST Series" hangtag that is actually a sticker. Nice to see one of these, I don't recall seeing them before so perhaps it was something from the early days.

Currently available in my Reverb store (click link below). Direct messages welcome as well!

Original "Type A" pickups

Stamped "ST-60" and a reverse ink transfer of the S/N stamped on the neck

Tokai assembly with pickup grounds soldered to the baseplate

Greco Vintage Commercials

Thanks to whoever uploaded these blasts from the past.

Not easy being green

Yes, it has been over 2 months since the last post here. Belated Happy New Year 2019, and Happy Lunar New Year while it is still the season.

This popped up for sale earlier this week and I couldn't resist getting it.  It is an ESP Japan guitar with all the goodness that entails, plus the amazing inlay work in the headstock, fretboard and body. As a nice touch it has a pair of Seth Lover Seymour Duncans which I really like for a PAF-like humbucker.

It is apparently an ESP 30th anniversary model from 2004. I found an old listing of this on Reverb from Ishibashi with a list price of $4648. The serial matches so it looks like someone bought it a couple of years ago and then traded in to another guitar store in Tokyo last week. 

There is also an e-bay reseller who is listing this very guitar for some reason. the pictures are different from the Ishibashi listing so perhaps the guitar was resold recently.

These Potbellys are available as ESP or Edwards models and this one at least has a great balance between body and neck.  Green is not my colour of choice for guitars but it works pretty well IMO for this one.