New Tokai LS-80 and New Camera

Tokai LS-80 1981

I lined up for a couple of hours at Kurosawa Gakki in Shibuya on January 2 for their New Year's sale. There was a rare "Limited Edition" Greco from 1979 with a solid flametop and a cracked neck - only 42000 yen. I was number 6 in line and it turns out that number 3 was going for the Greco. Lucky for me as I ended up getting this lovely 1981 Tokai LS-80 goldtop as a consolation prize. In retrospect I think I may have gotten the better deal as the Greco was not that good looking and had a 3pc back and no Dry-Zs.

The Tokai came with original green-lined case, some Greco Grover-style tuners, newer Dimarzio DP103 pickups, chrome aluminum tailpiece and chrome ABR-style bridge. I ended up putting in a Tom Holmes H453 in the bridge and H450 in the neck,  replacing the tuners with Gotohs and then replacing the tailpiece and bridge with all-parts nickel hardware.

With a nice fat neck and great sustain this LS-80 is one of the best LPs I have ever played. I ended up getting a new Nikon as well so here are a few shots through a D5300.

Tom Holmes H450 and H453

Peter Frampton - Festival de Viña del Mar 2008 [FULL]

Great Peter Frampton concert from 2008 with Audley Freed on second fiddle! Go to the 54:30 second mark to see Audley give a good lesson on sparking up a solo slowly and then turning it up to 10....

Peter Frampton is one of those guys who don't get their due, and Audley Freed is another one.

Good playing and great tone!

Flippin' Flyin' V!

1982 Greco Flying V. Model unknown.

The mystery V I purchased way back in September finally made its way to Singapore. It is a bit of a player's piece for sure with some good honest wear on the frets and the board but the neck is straight and fat which makes for a good flying V.

Mirrored pickguard

There are lots of bumps and dents on this one but it all looks like it belongs. I changed the radio knobs to the dish ones as I just like the look better.

Nicely aged hardware

Scream'in 1982 pickups under the hood.

The Scream'in 1982 measure around 7.6 k each and with the pickguard you have to keep them a bit lower than I would usually have humbuckers or the covers will come out of the pickguard. They sound pretty good as is and I think they will stay where they are.

Invisible tenon (under the paint?) and a nice rosewood slab board.

Fujigen used some nice woods on these 1982 Mint Collections. I'd guess the board is Indian Rosewood. No veneers here, you get a full slab board.

Hard to say what this model was supposed to be. I think Paul Stanley had a V with a mirrored guard so maybe that is what this is supposed to be.

Cheers,

Aoyama Oyaji

Topwound for kicks

Happy New Year - あけましておめでとうございます！

Happy New Year everyone. Aoyama Oyaji spent the holidays in Japan as usual and had fun going around to some of the great music stores in Japan. Even if I didn't really find many interesting deals in the stores this time it is always great to go and visit some of the good people who work at Japanese music stores. Taku-san at Nico Nico Guitars, Akiyama-san at Studio102 and the great little vintage shop Nancy in Shibuya. Unfortunately Kishida-san wasn't there when I dropped by but I did pick up his CD Northern Song from 2014. I haven't listened to it yet but am sure it is up there with all his other stuff. Here is a YT video of Kishida-san from 2013 playing his 1959 burst "Jessica", previously owned by Dickey Betts who played it on the Allman Brothers "Brothers and Sisters" album.



One more from Kishida-san, playing one of my favourite ABB songs, "Jessica", on the Les Paul "Jessica".



I also popped into Shibuya Ishibashi today and chatted with Jason who does a stellar job in making it easy for non-Japanese people to shop for guitars at Ishibashi. He is also an amazing video producer and pointed me to the multi-cam GoPro video he did of Steve Vai in Tokyo. While I am not a big Steve Vai fan per se the video gave me a new appreciation of his playing and is just a cool piece of work from Jason.

It is time to go to sleep in Yokohama, but before I do I will check out some more of this video.

Happy New Year everyone, have a great 2015 and may your guitars never be left unplayed.

Good times! - mystery Japanese guitar #2

Good Times

Or is is "Good Tunes"?

This Les Paul "Love Rock" looks like it would have been a custom order or something made in-house at Tokai. It has typical Tokai construction with a multi-piece back and 2-piece maple top. I guess it would have been equivalent to an LS-60. I can't recall if it had a serial number or not. My guess is from around 1990 from the codes on the potentiometers.

Tokai seems to have done a lot of custom orders and shop runs over the years with models for Mizuno, Pacifix, Hibiki, Kurosawa and Real Standard in recent years.

Typical Tokai routing and tenon

3-piece back

1989 pot codes?

Gold colour backplates

Decent maple top

Rosewood board with some decent grain

Bison Golden Era Reissue: mystery vintage Japanese guitar #1

Bison Golden Era Reissue. No bells ringing? I didn't think so. There are very few of these out there.  It was a good idea to name them after an animal that can only be found in small numbers.

I found this one on Yahoo Japan in 2011 and owned it for a while before selling it on to someone in Singapore. From there it went to France and again changed hands, currently residing with General Unrest at Japan Guitars.

Since this guitar surfaced I have seen a couple of others. One was sold in the US and one was in Hawaii and was on Ebay.

I have done a lot of looking in Japanese and couldn't find anything about the brand. Based on the low serial numbers and absence of anything but LP examples it looks like a special run for a store or possibly a new line of guitars that started and never took flight in 1980. It is easy to see why when Tokai, Greco, Aria Pro and Burny models were available in large numbers.

The next question is which manufacturer made it. Looking at the pots, caps and stamped Maxon pickups the answer would seem to be Fujigen. However, looking at the Tokai-stamped tuners, the serial number stamping and the neck base there are some doubts. Look at this odd Tokai listed for sale by Guitargai.  It has the same Golden Era reissue name but different script.  They were making Tokais in Nagano around this time so perhaps the Bison was a collaboration between different factories in Matsumoto.

Here are some photos of the bits and pieces. Keep on the lookout for these rare LPs.

From guitargai website

Coincidence?

Looks a bit like a fat LS-80 neck base

Typical Fujigen wiring and caps from early to late 80s

Fairly rough routing and drilling. 

Dowel-reinforced tenon similar to Fujigen style at the time

Maxon ceramic magnet pickups. Could be U-1000.

Filing marks typical of Fujigen fret binding finishing.

Beautiful lightly flamed maple

Typical Tokiwa hardware found on Fujigen guitars at the time

Yes, it is a solid top. No veneer here.

Nice variation in the top in different lighting

With Fujigen cousin EGF-1200.

With a pair of DRY-Z installed

Classic Bacchus Strat

Matching Headstock

I found this one for sale on Yahoo Japan in a modded state. It had just a single P-90 in the bridge position and no singles. I thought that might sound pretty nice in a LP Jr type of way. When it arrived it was pretty clear that the standard P-90 polepiece pitch was not wide enough to be centred under each string on the guitar. The result was that the high e and low e strings noticeably lacked output compared to the rest. Too bad as the routing and mounting was done professionally. In the end, I took out the P-90 and put in a set of Yutas that were from a Momose strat with a new pickguard. 

I think a mini-humbucker with the wider magnetic field would be great as a future possibility but for now it is back to a standard strat.

This has a nice thick neck and great frets. It has nice rounded fret ends that you usually see on more expensive guitars.

A few bumps and dents

Is this Inca Silver finish?