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Tokai springy sound12/26/2023 The TST-56 emulated the '56 Strat with a maple neck and the TST-62 likewise resembled the '62 Strat with a rosewood fingerboard. By 1982, Tokai introduced the TST-56 and TST-62 models. Tokai wanted to sell solid-body electric guitars in the USA and began selling altered versions of these early copy Strats that didn't violate any existing manufacturers trademarks. On the cover, the Tokai logo was removed, however, many music shops sell a poster of that album cover and "Tokai Springy Sound" is clearly visible on the headstock. It was taken while Stevie was playing a Tokai replica Strat. Also, an interesting piece of trivia concerns Stevie's Texas Flood (Epic 1983) album cover photo. Stevie appears on the cover of Tokai's 1985-1986 Edition of their Electric Guitars catalog. Several well known guitarists have played these Tokai replica Strats, the most famous being the late Stevie Ray Vaughan. Maybe the guitar wasn't an exact replica, but it has a cool vibe. Finally, at the knob end of the headstock the decal says, 'Oldies BUT Goldies' which substitutes for 'ORIGINAL Contour Body'. An original Stratocaster decal reads 'WITH SYNCHRONIZED TREMOLO', the Tokai has 'THIS IS THE EXACT REPLICA OF THE GOOD OLD STRAT.'. The words 'S P R I N G Y S O U N D' were used in place of 'S T R A T O C A S T E R' in block letters. Tokai replaced the backward F with a T (without a line through the letter). Upon closer inspection, 'Tokai' script is placed where the word 'Fender' would be located on a Stratocaster headstock. Looking from several feet away, the decal appears as though it is an old Fender 'spaghetti' logo. These guitars came with a 1950s Fender-style tweed case.Ī most interesting feature of these guitars is their headstock logo decal. First, these instruments were equipped with a five-way pickup selector switch and second, the adjustment end of the truss rod is not a screw type, but a metric Allen wrench socket. Tokai made two obvious changes to this guitar when compared to a true vintage 1954 model and were made to accommodate function over form. A single-ply, eight-screw pickguard holds the staggered-pole single-coil pickups. The hard rock maple V-shaped neck has a button string-retainer and single-line, Kluson-like tuners. With most Tokai 1954 Stratocaster-replica guitars, you notice a highly figured, light ash body finished in a 50s style two-tone sunburst with a deep rear-body contour. Tokai designed these guitars to be similar versions and not exact, carbon copies of the originals. Tokai initially introduced both a 1954 (maple-neck) and a 1959 (slab-board) style Strat copy. Also, Tokai built these cool reproductions as a tribute to the one of the most sought after vintage guitars and certainly the most copied body style in the history of solid-body electric guitars. Tokai's goal was to make an old-style Strat-style guitar available to local (Japanese) buyers at an affordable price point. These early attempts by Tokai to meet the markets demand for replica Stratocasters pre-date Fender's own reissue models by several years. Tokai's Strat-clones were available in Japan beginning in 1976 and were intended to be high-end guitars, not low-cost copies. Here is a little history from Tokai Guitar Registryĭuring the mid-1970s, Tokai helped satisfy demand in guitar market for look-alike old Les Paul and Stratocaster guitars. The decals on the back of the headstock (still there to this day) seemed to bear this out: The story I had heard was that they had a trio of these Tokai guitars that had in fact been used as samples in their trademark infringement case in the early 1980's against Tokai. If you check out the headstock even the decal looks like the Fender but the you see things like "Springy Sound" in place of "Stratocaster" and "Oldies but Goldies" in place of "Original Contoured Body" smi This was obviously a "lawsuit" guitar in that every detail of a 1956 strat was slavishly copied. I remember a bunch of the Starcaster semi hollow guitars lying around. The guitar teacher I had at the time steered me into this Strat copy that he explained was part of what they bought from Fender wheen Fender moved out of the Fullerton factory.they blew out all the junk lying around that they really couldn't sell and this was part of a truckload of gear they had bought. I was taking guitar lessons at Sightsinger Music here in Orange and every Saturday I would drool over whatever they had on display. I had been playing guitar for only a few months in 1986 and was already looking past my $110 Memphis strat copy at Charvels and Kramers. This is something of a review of my very first nice strat.
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