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

Deviser (Bacchus, Momose, Headway) Catalog 2003

Here is a link to a PDF of the 2003 Deviser Catalog. It has the Vintage Series Fender and Gibson copies. I don't know of any other links to older or newer catalogs.

Time machine Greco Spacey Sound SE-500 - D818100

A lot was going right on the Fujigen line to put out this combination of wood, metal and plastic back in April 1981. Aoyama Oyaji was just in Grade 6 back then and probably had never seen an electric guitar in person when Kenji Oyama was putting this together.

What happened here with the 2-piece ash body matched with a thick '54 style neck with some decent flame? I thought SE-500s were made with leftovers from the woodpile. It sounds like the specs of an SE-600 or even SE-800 aside from the thin poly, which feels pretty close to the nitro finishes they used back then anyway. I'll put it down to the Japanese work ethic at the time and some luck in whatever Kenji had on the woodpile at the time.

A number was stamped on bodies according to the model. Here the "5" stamp was used for this SE-500. If you think you might have a partscaster Greco check the neck pocket for the stamp.

This must have been stored in a nice place with air conditioning as there is pretty much no tarnishing or oxidation at all. Really "Mint" condition aside from a small bump on the upper back side.

It is also a light guitar at 3.4 kg which is pretty much perfect for my tastes. It has great sustain and the Excel pickups are wonderful strat replicas no matter what anyone says. Here are a few more pictures:

Time machine Greco Spacey Sound SE-500 - D818100

A lot was going right on the Fujigen line to put out this combination of wood, metal and plastic back in April 1981. Aoyama Oyaji was just in Grade 6 back then and probably had never seen an electric guitar in person when Kenji Oyama was putting this together.

What happened here with the 2-piece ash body matched with a thick '54 style neck with some decent flame? I thought SE-500s were made with leftovers from the woodpile. It sounds like an SE-600 or even SE-800 aside from the thin poly which feels pretty close to the nitro finishes they used back then anyway. I'll put it down to the Japanese work ethic at the time and some luck in whatever Kenji had on the woodpile at the time.

A number was stamped on bodies according to the model. Here the "5" stamp was used for this SE-500 If you think you have a partscaster Greco check the neck pocket for the stamp.

This must have been stored in a nice place with air conditioning as there is pretty much no tarnishing or oxidation at all. Really "Mint" condition aside from a small bump on the upper back side.

It is also a light guitar at 3.4 kg which is pretty much perfect for my tastes. It has great sustain and the Excel pickups are wonderful strat replicas no matter what anyone says. Here are a few more pictures:

Sonix Guitars - from the biggest music store in Hamamatsu and Deviser!

There are a few of these "Sonix" guitars out there. The background is that they are a store brand "produced" by Sonix store in Hamamatsu, Shizuoka prefecture in Japan. Hamamatsu also happens to be the home of Yamaha musical instruments and Tokai Gakki. As far as I can tell the Sonix guitars were made by Deviser and more or less matched the Momose line of guitars for specs. Sonix seems to have been one of the big dealers of Bacchus, Rivdrhead, and Momose guitars from the late 90's and you can see some examples of that series (one, two,  three, four) courtesy of the Internet Wayback Machine.

The Sonix brand seems to show up in 2006 with a Regular Spec line and a High Spec line. This link from 2009 has some beautiful LP-style guitars for sale.

I have seen a few Sonix guitars for sale over the last few years and managed to get the 62-style strat and SG two at reasonable prices. The specs seem to vary between the runs they did. The strat is basically a Momose-spec with a 2-pice body and nitro finish. It came with a nice set of Lindy Fralin Blues Specials but I think the last owner put those in along with the reproduction .1 mfd cap.
The SG has the same "Custom Craft" logo as Momoses and has a 1-piece mahogany body and nitro finish. There were models with Brazilian boards but this one seems to be Madagascar to me.

That is all I have on the Sonix story so far...

New Guitar Day

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.

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.

Aria Pro II LS-800 - Nice Surprise

Closeup of some honest play wear

Neck pickup with 9.5 mm polepiece pitch (53 mm hole to hole)

Rear pickup with 10 mm polepiece pitch  (55 mm hole to hole)