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.

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. 

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

Grecomania strikes again

Aoyama Oyaji has been busy lately with what else but some new Greco golden age guitars. 

Not much to report in detail, just some new pictures of old guitars.

1980 Super Real Custom. It came with DRY-Z but in a moment of stupidity they were sold.

1981 Super Real EGF-1800? It came with a Super Real case but no pickups.

EGF-850 Super Sound. No, really! PU-2, veneer flame, MOP inlays, and "Super Sound" on the headstock.

Good old 1980 EGF-850 "Super Real". Double white PU-2 pickups.

1983 Mint Collection EC57-60. Oddly light at 4.0 kg.

1986 EG60-180 equivalent. It has "Custom Order" in the pickup cavity, solid flametop, 1 piece back, and real nitro with finish checking.

1990 solid flametop with nitro finish. 2-piece back and neck heel make it an odd high-end model.

Why do those Dry Zs sound so good? - About those Super Real Pots

Greco Super Real Custom 1980 with split block inlays

I admit it. I did something bad with my 1980 Greco Custom. I sold the Dry-Z pickups and replaced them with some PU-2 pickups. DRY-Zs are the bees knees but PU-2s are dear to my heart as well and I guess needed the money that the sale brought in.

So out came the Z's and in went the PU-2s. Sounded great, if lacking the upper mid bite of the Zs. Then I got to thinking why not replace the stock Greco volume and tone pots with 500k pots and wire it 50's style. You are probably thinking "why?" at this point since of course the Super Real guitars had 500k pots like the old Gibsons.  But did they?

Bye bye Zs, hello PU-2

For some reason Kanda Shokai went with the odd combo of 300k volume and 100k tone pots for the Super Real series. As far as I have seen this was the way it was until late 1981.

The catalog says the 300k volume pots "have a smooth volume change" while preserving the highs and the 100k tone pots "give a sharp tone change." My experience is that they definitely do give a sharp change from having a nice balanced high end at 10 to pretty much no hi-end at 8.

For all the mystique of DRY-Zs and how they sound so good, please remember that if you are listening to them through 300k volume and 100k tone pots on "10" it is more or less equivalent to a 500k volume pot at 8.5 and a tone control on 6.5. That is a sweet spot for some nice tones on an LP and the DRY-Z works well in that zone. Change the pots to 500k all around and it opens up some nice tonal areas for the neck and bridge and also gives a bit more output on the volume.

From 1980 Catalog

Just in case you came this far and still need some more proof, here are some pot-shots for you with meter readings....

Tone measuring in at 90.3K fully open

Volume measuring in at 331K fully open

Tone pot: Here the leading "1" means 100K

Volume pot: Here the leading "3" means 300K

DRY-Z Part 3: From the blog of Jun Takano

Sorry, finishing this translation of Jun Takano's blog posts on DRY-Z development slipped my mind. Better late than never!

Part 3 of the blog entry of Jun Takano regarding the "Z-DRY" development. Translated from the original Japanese.

Part 2 here.

Part 1 here.

The factory cost of the pickups we had developed up to that point was higher than the popular imported Dimarzio pickup of the time and it didn't make any sense to put them in the lower-priced guitar models so they were used only on the high-priced models.

Many guitars that had the pickups installed were passed to foreign artists. Among them were some people like Andy Latimer who didn't want a guitar but only wanted to have the pickups.  

Of course, I was still not 100% satisfied with what we had accomplished up to that time. I wanted to improve the specifications but I was unable to successfully negotiate this with the factory side and so the road for being able to suggest further improvements became closed.

I was able to improve the bobbins at the time of the Mint Collection ramp-up but that was the end.

Some time after the new bobbin was introduced the specifications were changed for the worse. The stock of wire ran out and they switched to plain urethane wire but I never had any report of this.

After that rich tone was completely lost, it never came back.

From http://ameblo.jp/ktguitarresearch/entry-10475069153.html