GOLD Jerry! GOLD!

Happy New Year 2020!

Stoptails, P-90s and gold. Gold Jerry! Gold!! 

 
Ok, excuse that Seinfeld reference.

Here are a couple of made-in-Japan tone machines that meet that recipe. The non-reverse Burny Firebird is an early 90's FB-65 or FB-75 (I think they adjusted the price at some point and the Crews is a recent model from around 2017 in the LS-02 series.

The Burny pickups sound really good to me. I'm not sure what the middle position switch does but will have to look under the hood some time. 

These are a slightly different shade of gold. I'm not sure what is more accurate to vintage Gibson colors. 

Both guitars have decent intonation all things considered with the stop-tails but full chords past the 10th fret just sound a bit off with the imperfect intonation. These are great blues and rock guitars though for single lines, bends and vibrato to make the intonation not matter too much.

The Crews is a Terada product and as usual is flawless in build has a perfect nitro finish and nice inlay and fret work.

I guess the Burny is a Dynagakki build from the routing and rough year but have no confirmation of that.

Gold Jerry! Gold.

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. 

Back in the land of the good old Greco

Aoyama Oyaji has returned back to the Aoyama base since last month and no sooner did the dust settle than I bought couple of nice Grecos from the early 80's. Both have a little bit of good old fashioned playing wear but with a string change and a cleanup are back in fighting shape.

1982 Greco TE-600 (guess) and 1983 EC-57-60

The tele in the black and gold style is an April 1984 tele which means the end of the line for Greco Fender copies since the partnership with Kanda Shokai and Yamano Music with Fender USA and Fujigen started up around that time.  This is a tone monster with some very nice tele pickups inside and great sustain. From what I can tell under the poly finish is a 3-piece sen ash body. There were a few of these D82**** models out there including the one pictured below from a few years back which suggests a free for all on the production floor or perhaps alternately these were new models planned for the 1982 "Mint Collection" era that didn't make it past the month of April 1982.

April 1982 SE-???

The Mint Collection EC57-60 is a version of the original 50's era Gibson black beauty Les Paul Custom that gives the warmth of the all-mahogany body construction, along with the weakness of the non-volute headstock. Fortunately this one has survived with no damage except a couple of finish chips on the neck.

It is just over 4.0 kg which is quite light compared to the two example I had before which were 10 pounders. The three Screamin' 1982 pickups give the three neck / out of phase middle+bridge/ bridge options.  It would be lovely to have an ebony board with MOP but this rosewood board is nice and at the price point there really are no complaints.

Classy pair of 30-something Grecos

Greco 8's Black + Gold

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...

Crews KTR Limited K&T NFS Bridge Pickup Demo

I forgot about this short recording I made a couple of years ago of the K&T (link to website here)NFS bridge pickup of this Crews KTR Limited. Not a great recording or terribly good playing, but I think the pickup character comes through regardless.

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!