Unknown Tokai PART 2

[bob2]

I guess you can teach an old dog! If I'm lucky pictures will either appear here or at least a link to the photo bucket site. http://s1102.photobucket.com/albums/g442/beanbag420/ Now for the story, Most of you have probably heard of the Acoustic Black Widow made by the Acoustic amplifier folks, this guitar was sold from 1972 to 1975 and was a pretty slick guitar in it's day. Most of the guitars were made by Matsumoto Moko in Japan with the last couple of hundred built by Semie Mosely in the U.S. The history of that guitar is pretty much recorded. But this is a Tokai, from what year? What was the model name? Except for some slight changes to the headstock design, color of the pad on the back and the color of the guitar it's the same as a Black Widow. The only other guitar I've seen built like this is a Hohner thinline fretless bass from around the same time as the Acoustic. I have been on the Acoustic web site and asked Harvey Gerst, the designer, and he assured me there was no connection to Tokai, I've been on the Tokai Registry website numerous times and received no answers, so come on, think hard, do you know this guitar? Unhappy ending, about 16 months ago I was living in Rome, Georgia and was having a setup done on the guitar when the guy up and dissapeared, and he took my guitar. As usual, thanks for any help. Guitars, who would have thought they could drive you crazy?

[VintAxe]

Hi bob2.

Sadly I don't know anything at the moment about your Tokai. However, I did notice that it has exactly the same headstock profile as the Ampeg "Stud" series built from 1971-73. I have seen it reported that Tokai built the Stud guitars for Ampeg and your guitar provides strong support that the report is true. The Ampegs were made of plywood. Do you remember whether your Tokai was plywood or solid? At least the neck looks like a laminate. Some of the Studs had solid necks and others had laminate.

Here is an Ampeg GE 100 for comparison:

[bob2]

They're probably siblings! Hell, they might even have been in production at the same time. I can't remember if that Tokai was laminated or not, the top looks solid but that's pretty normal. I blew the pics up and it was hard to tell, but it was really heavy and that makes me think it may have well been. The only time I had it apart was when I first got it, it was filthy, and the only thing I recall was the odd neck pickup and being weirded out by the neck mounting and the long neck tenon that went back to the bridge. Have you, or anyone for that matter, seen a neck connect that way? I've only seen it on Acoustic, Barth, Hohner and this Tokai. Two screws in the back and one on the top, strange, I wish I'd pulled the neck now just to see how that worked. I'm going to try and connect with Harvey Gerst again and ask him some more questions. I also put a few Black Widow pics on that photo bucket link to compare it to the Tokai. Thanks VintAxe, I appreciate the effort.

[VintAxe]

Well, Studs were known for being heavy, thought to increase sustain back in the day but in hindsight probably just promoted back problems

I'll keep an eye out for your lost Tokai.

[bob2]

Well Vintaxe, your the only one to poke your nose in here so I'm going to tell you what I think might be the story on this Tokai. You know Japanese Guitar companies, they'll build anything you want and it doesn't matter who you are. I got the word years ago from Harvey Gerst, the designer of the Black Widow, that the Black Widow was built by Matsumoku. I'm wondering if they may have farmed the job out to Kasuga, and when the order was filled they just recut the headstock, made a different pad for the back and used their own pickups to build some Tokais. What do you think? I'm just kind of grasping straws here. I can't really imagine that they would make a copy of the Black Widow, a Strat, a Les Paul, yeah. Black Widow, I don't see why, makes little sense, it was not a hot seller. In the dozen years I owned that thing I only saw one other, never in the music stores I'd haunt, not at guitar shows, once on e-bay from a guitar shop in Cologne, Germany. How many guitars have you looked at? Have you ever seen one? No, they probably only built them till the parts ran out. Here are two pictures of the German Tokai, and four pictures of a Japanese Black Widow. Think about it and let me know what you think. http://s1102.photobucket.com/albums/g44 ... 0Acoustic/[/img]

[DeMontGuitars.com]

wow! i love these. Tokai guitars are great.