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.

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. 

Thirty-six MIJ Guitars

Back at the old place in Aoyama the sun came through the window just right to take pictures of guitars on the wall hanger. Here are 36 Japanese made guitars from Greco, Tokai, Burny, Bacchus, Epiphone, Edwards (yes, an MIJ in there!), Orville by Gibson, Navigator (ESP) and a very rare Bison Golden Era reissue. I wish I had kept a few of these but they all have since passed on to new owners. 

And yes, I know I should have kept that Greco SG-800 Custom in cream.

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!