The Goldstar Sound I bought for $250.00

[Kenmac]

Seeing as how this is my 100th post I figured I'd make it special and show and tell you about the very first Tokai I bought back in 1985 for $250.00. The ad was originally posted in the Buy & Sell newspaper and at that time I'd heard of Tokais but I never saw or tried one out. So I went to this guys place and tried it out. The action was a little on the high side for me but it sounded good in most pickup positions. (More on that later.)

I was pretty impressed with it and bought it. It came with the original Tokai tweed case but the person who owned the guitar prior to the guy I bought it from made some modifications. He installed a Kahler copy vibrato system which I never really bothered with and he replaced the bridge pickup with an Evans Eliminator Lead pickup. To be honest I didn't like the sound of that pickup even though I know that Evans pickups are revered by a lot of guitarists. It sounded too trebly to me. So there's the first two mods, the vibrato system and the bridge pickup.

Now here's where we get into my modifications. I hope you guys don't flip out over these. A couple of years after I got the guitar I had some stickers laying around. One was a gold star and the other was a musical staff with notes on it. I put both of them on the headstock of the guitar. Hey "Goldstar" and the notes denote "Sound" right? :wink: About two years after that I decided to change not just the Evans pickup but all three of them for Fender Lace Sensor pickups. I also had a guitar tech add a 22nd fret to the guitar because (and I know this may sound silly) I felt like I was getting ripped off in a way with a 21 fret guitar.

The thing to remember about the mindset of the mid to late eighties was that Tokai made good copies of Fenders and Gibsons but at the time people didn't take them as very good guitars in their own right. The last modification I made was to install a Roland GK-2 pickup on the guitar as I sometime use a Roland GR-33 guitar synth and I had the tech set the action up for slide guitar but not so high that you couldn't play it normally. Now having said all this, IF and that's a BIG if, I were to sell this guitar a person would have to be a pretty hardcore Tokai fan to want to buy this. But truth be told, I'm not selling it. Anyway here are the photos. I've included a couple of the case for those of you who have a case fetish. :wink: In one of the pictures the sun made the colour of the fur lining bloom a bit. It's actually more of a crimson red as you see in the first two photos.

 

[stratoVintage]

Another 22 fret goldstar model like mine ??? hmmmmm interesting !! lol

 

[Anonymous]

Interesting post. I'm still not clear how the 22nd fret was added - was the fretboard extended as an overhang? Having looked at my Goldstar I can't see enough room for an extra fret.

Mike

 

[Kenmac]

Did yours come with a 22nd fret? As I said, the guitar tech I was going to at the time added the extra one at my request.

Another 22 fret goldstar model like mine ??? hmmmmm interesting !! lol

 

[Kenmac]

I think he added an extra bit of wood at the end then he probably glued it on. I really should have asked him what he did. He was a very good tech but he moved a couple of years after I had this done.

Interesting post. I'm still not clear how the 22nd fret was added - was the fretboard extended as an overhang? Having looked at my Goldstar I can't see enough room for an extra fret.

Mike

 

[Anonymous]

Did yours come with a 22nd fret? As I said, the guitar tech I was going to at the time added the extra one at my request.

Most of my Strats have 21 fret vintage type necks, but I do have a Mighty Mite 22 fret Strat neck with an ebony board. I took some pics today, & you can see that the 22nd fret is on an overhanging bit of the board. I think the new Fender American Series Strats have this, but I don't like them, so I don't have one!

If I remember correctly, the earlier post about a 22 fret neck suggested that the extra fret was added onto the existing board, without an overhang, & that was what surprised me, as I can't see that there's room.

Hope this makes sense.

 

[Anonymous]

IMHO the 22nd does not fit if you keep the 57/62 spec. You'll need the overhang.

Rockinger started to do it in the late 70s.

Cheers! Rup

 

[Anonymous]

I tried a 1981 Breezy neck (60 correct, to a 10th of a mm) on a Rockinger body. As you can see there is a small gap between the end of the neck and the body.

My guess still is that this is a problem between imperial and metric. Tokais were built to imperial measures (inch based) between 1978 and 1985. Then they went to metric, like Epi. All high-ends after 1998/1999 are imperial again.

You'll find a similar problem when you try to fit a genuine ABR-1 on a 1995 Tokai. No way.

I believe that's the reason for the "overhang". Manufacturing.

Cheers! Rup

 

[Anonymous]

MIKs are precisely metric. CNC machines.

 

[WVNicholson]

I'm curious about your experiences with the modifications on your Tokai. You say that you changed it to all three Lace Sensor pickups and later added a Roland GK-2 pickup. One of the advantages of the Lace Sensor pickups is supposed to be that their low magnetism allows a much longer sustain. Did you notice if you lost any sustain when you added the Roland GK-2 pickup (a magnetic hex pickup)? I'm thinking about modifying my strat-style guitar in a similar way i.e. having the three Lace Sensor pickups and a GK pickup. I'm wondering if the GK pickup will end up losing me some of the sustain I get with using Lace Sensor pickups. (An alternative is to use completely non-magnetic piezo pickups instead of the GK for MIDI/ synth guitar but that is expensive.)

By the way, I was wondering how the relatively more recent crop of Korean strat copies stack up against the old Japanese strat copies by companies like Tokai? (My guitar is actually a Crafter Cruiser ST-120. Its body is made of basswood - apparently even the Korean basswood is considered inferior to Japanese basswood...) Attitudes to the Korean strat copies do generally seem to be similar to how Japanese strats were regarded in the past. Of course, Japanese guitars are generally regarded as okay these days,
William

Now here's where we get into my modifications. I hope you guys don't flip out over these. A couple of years after I got the guitar I had some stickers laying around. One was a gold star and the other was a musical staff with notes on it. I put both of them on the headstock of the guitar. Hey "Goldstar" and the notes denote "Sound" right? :wink: About two years after that I decided to change not just the Evans pickup but all three of them for Fender Lace Sensor pickups. I also had a guitar tech add a 22nd fret to the guitar because (and I know this may sound silly) I felt like I was getting ripped off in a way with a 21 fret guitar.

The thing to remember about the mindset of the mid to late eighties was that Tokai made good copies of Fenders and Gibsons but at the time people didn't take them as very good guitars in their own right. The last modification I made was to install a Roland GK-2 pickup on the guitar as I sometime use a Roland GR-33 guitar synth and I had the tech set the action up for slide guitar but not so high that you couldn't play it normally. Now having said all this, IF and that's a BIG if, I were to sell this guitar a person would have to be a pretty hardcore Tokai fan to want to buy this. But truth be told, I'm not selling it. Anyway here are the photos. I've included a couple of the case for those of you who have a case fetish. :wink: In one of the pictures the sun made the colour of the fur lining bloom a bit. It's actually more of a crimson red as you see in the first two photos.

 

[Kenmac]

No, I'm not aware of any loss of sustain as things have stayed pretty much the same as when I had the original "U" pickups and the Evans Eliminator in the bridge. I forgot to mention that since this guitar is set up for slide it uses .012s.

I'm curious about your experiences with the modifications on your Tokai. You say that you changed it to all three Lace Sensor pickups and later added a Roland GK-2 pickup. One of the advantages of the Lace Sensor pickups is supposed to be that their low magnetism allows a much longer sustain. Did you notice if you lost any sustain when you added the Roland GK-2 pickup (a magnetic hex pickup)? I'm thinking about modifying my strat-style guitar in a similar way i.e. having the three Lace Sensor pickups and a GK pickup. I'm wondering if the GK pickup will end up losing me some of the sustain I get with using Lace Sensor pickups. (An alternative is to use completely non-magnetic piezo pickups instead of the GK for MIDI/ synth guitar but that is expensive.)

By the way, I was wondering how the relatively more recent crop of Korean strat copies stack up against the old Japanese strat copies by companies like Tokai? (My guitar is actually a Crafter Cruiser ST-120. Its body is made of basswood - apparently even the Korean basswood is considered inferior to Japanese basswood...) Attitudes to the Korean strat copies do generally seem to be similar to how Japanese strats were regarded in the past. Of course, Japanese guitars are generally regarded as okay these days,
William

Now here's where we get into my modifications. I hope you guys don't flip out over these. A couple of years after I got the guitar I had some stickers laying around. One was a gold star and the other was a musical staff with notes on it. I put both of them on the headstock of the guitar. Hey "Goldstar" and the notes denote "Sound" right? :wink: About two years after that I decided to change not just the Evans pickup but all three of them for Fender Lace Sensor pickups. I also had a guitar tech add a 22nd fret to the guitar because (and I know this may sound silly) I felt like I was getting ripped off in a way with a 21 fret guitar.

The thing to remember about the mindset of the mid to late eighties was that Tokai made good copies of Fenders and Gibsons but at the time people didn't take them as very good guitars in their own right. The last modification I made was to install a Roland GK-2 pickup on the guitar as I sometime use a Roland GR-33 guitar synth and I had the tech set the action up for slide guitar but not so high that you couldn't play it normally. Now having said all this, IF and that's a BIG if, I were to sell this guitar a person would have to be a pretty hardcore Tokai fan to want to buy this. But truth be told, I'm not selling it. Anyway here are the photos. I've included a couple of the case for those of you who have a case fetish. :wink: In one of the pictures the sun made the colour of the fur lining bloom a bit. It's actually more of a crimson red as you see in the first two photos.