Tell Us What Mods You,ve Done To Your Tokai(s)If Any?

[Ian Harvey]

Hi!

Well, I finally got round to fitting the Duesenberg aluminium/nickel plate stop bar, and I have to admit to a little disappointment.

I hadn't actually tried popping the posts into the slot in the bar. When I did I discovered that one slot was very tight and I couldn't even get a post into the other slot!

So I had to file away at the inside of the slot, taking off some of the plating, until I could force the bar onto the posts. On the plus side - there's a very positive connection between the two!

Another strange thing was the plating looks exactly the same as the plating on the Gotoh bar. I understood that one could see the difference between nickel and chrome - nickel having a yellow tint and chrome having a blue tint...

One more thing to note is that the slots are not cut as deep as on the Gotoh, so the bar sits slightly further away from the bridge.

While I'm here - I weighed the original Gotoh parts for those who like to know about these things:

Gotoh stop bar - 76 grams
Gotoh stop bar post - 16 grams each

Best wishes,
Ian

 

[Paladin2019]

That's odd... my gotoh lightwieght tailpiece retrofitted perfectly to the tokai studs. I know many people on the LPF have the same tailpiece as me and they have no trouble fitting it it US-made gibby guitars either. I thought that measurement was standardised on all TOM/stopbar setups.

You can see the difference between nickel and chrome, very clearly - chrome looks blue next to nickel. Tokai's MIJ lines have nickel parts already. That's why you can't see a difference 8) (unless the dusenburg is chrome)

Now the strangest thing of all - the weight of your original tailpiece. At 76 grams, that's aluminium territory. In fact, it sounds lighter... mine was about 90 grams. Are you sure about that measurement? When you pick it up, is it heavier than the Dusenburg? Does it feel like a piece of metal or do you get a shock when you pick it up becasue of how light it is?

How was the change in sound?

 

[Ian Harvey]

Hi Paladin!

Thanks for your input.

The problem seems to be two-fold; there's a molding line on the inside of the stop bar slot, plus to the naked eye it looks like the slots aren't perfectly at right angles to the length of the bar. Maybe I got the Friday afternoon one. :-?

I had thought that the Gotoh hardware was chrome for some reason - that it's nickel makes sense (especially as nickel hardware always seems to cost the same as chrome).

I actually weighed the Duesenberg stuff when it arrived and posted it in this thread. Used the digital postal scales at work which seem to be accurate.

Duesenberg stop bar - 34 gm
Gotoh stop bar - 76 gm

Duesenberg post - 16 gm
Gotoh post - 16 gm

I know what you mean about the weight of the aluminium stop bars - it's like picking up an empty suitcase that you expected to be full!

I've not put it through an amp yet (strictly a sofa player at the moment) but I'd say that the Gotoh was a little more twangy on the bass side and perhaps the notes sustained longer.

Best wishes,
Ian

 

[hans-j?rgen]

Now I'm looking for a Love Rock in Sunburst, because my band does now a ZZ Top-Projekt and just for the looks I want a Burst.

Hi Jochen, what's the name of that band, does it still exist, and is there a web site, too? I guess it's not this one: http://www.zottelweb.de/

I'm asking, because I'm editing the german ZZ Top category of the Open Directory Project, and if it's not listed there, I would like to add it under "Coverbands". 8)

http://dmoz.org/World/Deutsch/Kultur/Musik/Genres/Rock/Musiker/Z/ZZ-Top