donky_kong
New member
- Joined
- Feb 9, 2005
- Messages
- 4
- Reaction score
- 0
Hi, I'm new to the group and have seen some questions about the new 52 butterscotch blonde tele replicas, made in Korea. Are they good? Are they not good? Well, as a new owner of one, let me give you the honest scoop:
This guitar is atrocious. I ordered it from a place after reading some good reviews on it and taking his word that is was indeed a great value. Here is why it's so bad, component by component:
- Body: The body was described as "solid ash". It's nothing like any ash I've ever seen. Not only is it not ash, it's four pieces of ash. Instead of the typcial 2 piece with matched grain, its a sloppy, blurrry, 4 pieces of some kind of asian hardwood.
- Neck: I don't know about you, but when someone tells me a guitar is a replica, I expect fairly close match with the real thing. No so here. There is no skunk stripe, and the neck is two piece! Yes, they put a second strip of maple on top to make it a maple fretboard. Not only that, it can't be played without sever buzzing unless you put a very high nut on it. Then your intonation is terrible.
- Tuners: These aren't too bad.
- Controls: They used some cheap 500K pots with the sloppiest and scariest soldering/wiring I've ever seen, and they're split shaft. They didn't even care to snip off the excess wire after the solder cooled. The switch is very very flimsy.
- Knobs: The knobs are plastic split shaft with a metal over sheath. Cheap cast metal with chrome coating. The switch knob is just plain pitiful. Something so simple as a decent plastic knob could have been used.
- Control plate: This is probably no worse than the real fender model. HOWEVER, it was very crooked when compared to the bridge. This really pissed me off. The screw hole was off center from the routing.
- String ferrules: Neither flush nor protruding, but halfway in-between.
- Bridge: cheap, just like the original fender, so not so bad here.
- Saddles: cheap chrome plated things with grooves in them. Not sure how bad that is.
- Pickups: Ouch! they sound thin and harsh, no bounce, and no tele sound to speak of. Also weak. It doesn't even come close to a tele sound! And the neck pickup isn't even mounted straight!
- Neck nut: Ouch! This is awful! cheap molded, hollow plastic with shavings coming off from tuning the strings up to pitch. It's no less than a quarter of an inch from the string to the fretboard, so the intonation is terrible. Upon removing the GLUED IN plastic nut, I replaced it with a stock fender tusq nut and immediately improved things. How hard is this? The advertisement said "professional set up". By whom?
- Neck plate: Not even centered over the neck. Geez, can't these guys do anything right?
- Jack plate: This is atrocious. It's a football jack! And the jack is very cheap and flimsy. I removed it to install new controls and noticed that the screws where not straight in. Very very sloppy.
- Pickguard: Oh this really horrible. It's cheap polypropylene or similar plastic. That's not so bad, but one would expect the holes to match up and the curves to be curves and not pointed.
The place advertises these things as having "amazing tone and playability". Neither is true. "High quality vintage styled hardware". This is far from true.
In short, from everything I've read and heard about Tokai, this particular guitar is not up to their reputation. Admittedly, when I buy a strat or tele, I generally replace the pickups and the bridge or trem block to suit my own tastes. But in this case, this guitar isn't even good enough to gig with. I can hardly even enjoy it. I'm appalled that anyone would pass these off as great or even mediocre guitars. If Tokai is known for making great sounding and playing replicas, it can't be from examples like this!.
DK
This guitar is atrocious. I ordered it from a place after reading some good reviews on it and taking his word that is was indeed a great value. Here is why it's so bad, component by component:
- Body: The body was described as "solid ash". It's nothing like any ash I've ever seen. Not only is it not ash, it's four pieces of ash. Instead of the typcial 2 piece with matched grain, its a sloppy, blurrry, 4 pieces of some kind of asian hardwood.
- Neck: I don't know about you, but when someone tells me a guitar is a replica, I expect fairly close match with the real thing. No so here. There is no skunk stripe, and the neck is two piece! Yes, they put a second strip of maple on top to make it a maple fretboard. Not only that, it can't be played without sever buzzing unless you put a very high nut on it. Then your intonation is terrible.
- Tuners: These aren't too bad.
- Controls: They used some cheap 500K pots with the sloppiest and scariest soldering/wiring I've ever seen, and they're split shaft. They didn't even care to snip off the excess wire after the solder cooled. The switch is very very flimsy.
- Knobs: The knobs are plastic split shaft with a metal over sheath. Cheap cast metal with chrome coating. The switch knob is just plain pitiful. Something so simple as a decent plastic knob could have been used.
- Control plate: This is probably no worse than the real fender model. HOWEVER, it was very crooked when compared to the bridge. This really pissed me off. The screw hole was off center from the routing.
- String ferrules: Neither flush nor protruding, but halfway in-between.
- Bridge: cheap, just like the original fender, so not so bad here.
- Saddles: cheap chrome plated things with grooves in them. Not sure how bad that is.
- Pickups: Ouch! they sound thin and harsh, no bounce, and no tele sound to speak of. Also weak. It doesn't even come close to a tele sound! And the neck pickup isn't even mounted straight!
- Neck nut: Ouch! This is awful! cheap molded, hollow plastic with shavings coming off from tuning the strings up to pitch. It's no less than a quarter of an inch from the string to the fretboard, so the intonation is terrible. Upon removing the GLUED IN plastic nut, I replaced it with a stock fender tusq nut and immediately improved things. How hard is this? The advertisement said "professional set up". By whom?
- Neck plate: Not even centered over the neck. Geez, can't these guys do anything right?
- Jack plate: This is atrocious. It's a football jack! And the jack is very cheap and flimsy. I removed it to install new controls and noticed that the screws where not straight in. Very very sloppy.
- Pickguard: Oh this really horrible. It's cheap polypropylene or similar plastic. That's not so bad, but one would expect the holes to match up and the curves to be curves and not pointed.
The place advertises these things as having "amazing tone and playability". Neither is true. "High quality vintage styled hardware". This is far from true.
In short, from everything I've read and heard about Tokai, this particular guitar is not up to their reputation. Admittedly, when I buy a strat or tele, I generally replace the pickups and the bridge or trem block to suit my own tastes. But in this case, this guitar isn't even good enough to gig with. I can hardly even enjoy it. I'm appalled that anyone would pass these off as great or even mediocre guitars. If Tokai is known for making great sounding and playing replicas, it can't be from examples like this!.
DK
... the suhr pickups were actually quite nice too and i doubt that i woudve replaced them if i had bought the suhr ... i really like the 4 way switching too ... the series position is as loud as the parallel combination, just a little less top end sparkle, perhaps a touch more low-mids .. 
