Possible Tokai Breezysound neck (dated with a Fender stamp)!

[GemQuinn]

Hi. I 'm new here, so thanks for this forum, it looks great. It's really good to see some lovely quality Japanese craftsmanship in these guitars. Having owned a few Japanese instruments, I know how much care and attention goes into making them.
I have a guitar I bought several years ago, and was told by the seller that it was a project build using a Tokai neck, and a 3 piece ash body (it was badly painted sonic blue, so badly, I had too remove it, even tho I liked the colour). Move forward a few years, and I'm intrigued as to why the neck has a fender date stamp (3 Dec 65B) 3 and B being different signifiers. Its definitely the font used, and its under the lacquer, which is nitro. (I know this, as I've tested a small patch with Acetone on a cotton bud) the machine head screw holes underneath the ones that are now on it (possibly Gotoh's) seem aligned for a Jap instrument Trapezoid shaped covers, but the back of the neck shaping and headstock look very Fender. Please help me discover where this neck was made. I can get a picture of the whole guitar, with what I think is an old Celluloid pick guard, as it has tooling marks on the edge, and looks pretty old, bur in great shape, all the rest of the parts are pretty new, I think. Many thanks.
Gem

 

[Sigmania]

Welcome Gem!

That is definitely a Tokai neck. Pretty wild Fender date stamp!

Is it a soft V shape?

The Tokai stamp looks like "8 = 12 A" ?

The 8 is August.

The A I believe is for lacquer.

Would need the serial number to know what year it is.

Model for the neck is TE/TTE80 or above.

 

[Sigmania]

Also, inside the body cavities there was at least one stamp that matched or was similar to the 8 = 12 A on the original body.

Hopefully if it is the original Tokai body they did not paint over those.

There are other tell tale signs on the body, so would be great to see it.

 

[Homer J. Simpson]

I wonder what the "project" objective was? I have a hard time believing that Tokai put that Fender date stamp on it, on the other hand why would someone strike through the Tokai neck stamp with a sharpie and put a ginormous Fender style date stamp with the wrong typeface on it? BTW, '3' means Telecaster and I think 'B' is the neck width. Curious to see the body details (all cavities etc., did someone add dowel pin and nail holes?) too.

 

[Sigmania]

And you can see how they stamped it over the finish because the ink didn't absorb and pooled up in places.

Not sure why you would do that except to deceive a buyer? Not something you can see unless you pull the neck off. Then you would see the Tokai stamp under the magic marker. Weird.

 

[GemQuinn]

And you can see how they stamped it over the finish because the ink didn't absorb and pooled up in places.

Not sure why you would do that except to deceive a buyer? Not something you can see unless you pull the neck off. Then you would see the Tokai stamp under the magic marker. Weird.

Great sleuthing, thanks. makes sense abut the stamp not soaking in, and pooling up in places. I'm sure I mentioned that this was a project that came with a different body, much newer 3 piece ash.. so unfortunately no serial number.

 

[GemQuinn]

I wonder what the "project" objective was? I have a hard time believing that Tokai put that Fender date stamp on it, on the other hand why would someone strike through the Tokai neck stamp with a sharpie and put a ginormous Fender style date stamp with the wrong typeface on it? BTW, '3' means Telecaster and I think 'B' is the neck width. Curious to see the body details (all cavities etc., did someone add dowel pin and nail holes?) too.

Thanks. No, I don't think tokai did the stamping.. and Im pretty sure its the correct font for a fender neck looking at other fender date stamps. So, presumably it started with the 8=12A, then was lacquered, then someone scribbled over it with a green felt marker.. pre-sharpie? .. then stamped the
3 DEC B, having found or made a rubber stamp, and then lacquered it again? very strange, as if I was going to do that, I'd go back a stage, to get rid of the orig stamp first.. not that I would, but it makes it look ambiguous, I suppose..
The neck profile is not a soft V, I'd say it was more a shallow D..
Thanks for your help. It's been bugging me for some time.
So a TE/TTE80? possibly?

 

[GemQuinn]

Looking at other posts, if it was a TTE80 it would be based on a '64 with a U neck profile? but its quite shallow.

 

[Sigmania]

Interesting. The "A" stamp I have assumed is for the lacquer finish.

The Tokai Teles with lacquer finish are TE/TTE80 guitars. The ones with the maple board should be a V. Hmmm. I need to think about this.