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leadguitar_323

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Looks like Tokai may be going back to a fender style scratch plate for their strats... :wink:

http://www1.odn.ne.jp/tokaigakki/products/traditional/ast33.html
ast2.jpg

ast3.jpg

ast4.jpg

ast1.jpg


Mick
 
Well that's a step in the right direction. I wonder which countries they will be able to sell them in?

Mike
 
Has anyone bought/played/owned this (basswood) series? I'm curious about the build. Might these be like MIM Fenders, or more likely the Fender Squier line. My guess is they are better.
 
My MIJ 62 RI in basswood is the coolest Strat I've ever owned...I love basswood, so do John Suhr, James Tyler, even the Ibanez JS1200 is basswood.
It's a great guitar wood, IMO.

Those ST33 models look like great bargains, I'm assuming at that price they must be made in China, and the ST70 in Japan?
 
Telecasters looking good too

http://www1.odn.ne.jp/tokaigakki/products/vintage/ate76b.html

http://www1.odn.ne.jp/tokaigakki/products/vintage/ate70.html

http://www1.odn.ne.jp/tokaigakki/products/vintage/ate78.html
 
JVsearch said:
As long as they don't use the Fender headstock design they can sell them anywhere.

Is it only the headstock shape that is covered by copyright? I thought Fender had some sort of rights to the scratchplate shape & the body shape (silhouette) as well?
 
Diamond said:
My MIJ 62 RI in basswood is the coolest Strat I've ever owned...I love basswood, so do John Suhr, James Tyler, even the Ibanez JS1200 is basswood.
It's a great guitar wood, IMO.

Those ST33 models look like great bargains, I'm assuming at that price they must be made in China, and the ST70 in Japan?

Well I respect your opinion but I don't agree with you. I think this is why I've always preferred Tokais to many of the early Fender Japans - using alder or sen gives a more "authentic" vintage Strat/Tele tone than basswood does, & that's what I like. I think my 80s MIJ Tele is basswood - the two sen Tokais I now own are streets ahead in authentic Tele sound terms.

Basswood makes a decent guitar, but it's more of a modern mid-rangey sound - to me alder & sen/ash are the best woods for vintage copies.
 
Hi everyone, there's a new kid in town...

Actually, this "unauthentic scratchplate thing" of Tokai strats was a new thing for me before I started to visit this site last summer. Has it been like that for a long a time?

Here in Finland Tokai strats have had f-style scratchplate all the time:
http://www.musamaailma.fi/epages/musa.sf/en_GB/?ObjectID=113050&ViewAction=View&PageSize=20

I have a AST-50 w/ maple neck ('57 specs I suppose) from 2005, fantastic guitar!!!
 
stratman323 said:
JVsearch said:
As long as they don't use the Fender headstock design they can sell them anywhere.

Is it only the headstock shape that is covered by copyright? I thought Fender had some sort of rights to the scratchplate shape & the body shape (silhouette) as well?

AFAIK it's a grey area about the scratchplate because it wasn't tested in court, but ownership of the body shape has been lost by Gibson and most likely by Fender too. The law suit was about a LP type copy and it was decided that Gibson only had ownership of the open book headstock (and their logo of course). The body shape was said to be too vague for someone to own because if you think about it the LP resembles several other earlier guitars, and there wasn't anything specific about the shape that didn't derive from trying to make an ergonomically shaped guitar. If the LP didn't have a cut away it would have looked like a small acoustic guitar shape that were already common. So the body shape was said to be already in the public domain. Another factor was the length of time that had passed before they tried to assert their rights - too long.

Fender might have a slightly stronger case for their Strat body (no hope for the Tele shape) but I doubt they'd get anywhere, it's just been too long and it's well accepted that most guitars have a rounded butt with a curve to balance it on your knee as well as fit against your body, and cutaway(s) to allow upper fret access. As this is what anybody would be trying to do, and already had been doing, when making an electric guitar it would be grossly unfair to allow one company to own these features as their "design".

The headstocks, on the other hand, are pure visual design - you don't need a Fender or Gibson shaped headstock to make a guitar, it makes no difference whatsoever to the ergonomics or tone of the guitar.

**Edit - in fact Fender have just lost an appeal earlier this year over the Strat body shape, it was held to be SO common in the guitar building business that it was generic. Unfair? Not really, but Fender should have protected their design worldwide from day one and there'd be no issue today, but it was a simpler and more innocent time back then. Also protecting it would have cost a lot and maybe the prices of their guitars would have been higher thus allowing a competitor to get ahead of them, and maybe something else would have ended up as the icon?!
 
greco_burst said:
Telecasters looking good too

http://www1.odn.ne.jp/tokaigakki/products/vintage/ate76b.html

http://www1.odn.ne.jp/tokaigakki/products/vintage/ate70.html

http://www1.odn.ne.jp/tokaigakki/products/vintage/ate78.html

sweet :D Hopefully they'll get them over here soon, and hopefully they'll not be about ?800 with the current exchange rate.

EDIT: is there a colour scheme key anywhere? I had a quick look but couldn't find anything, some of the abbreviations are fairly obvious, but some aren't... :oops:
 
Dave_Mc said:
EDIT: is there a colour scheme key anywhere? I had a quick look but couldn't find anything, some of the abbreviations are fairly obvious, but some aren't... :oops:

The ones with S in are sunbursts, though I can never remember which is 2 tone & which is 3 tone. BB is black, MR is metallic red, its the VWH I can't work out - not a code I've heard before. Some sort of vintage white maybe?

Thanks for that info. JV - very interesting.
 
VWH comes from Crafted in Japan Fenders, Vintage White, have a CIJ 68RI in VWH...awesome guitar.

Tokai have been making some of the CIJ Strats and Tele's since 1997, so Im pretty sure they have permission from Fender Japan to produce and sell these AST Strats and Tele's as is scratchplate and all.
 
That's not bad at all. :D Is it my imagination, or have they softened the straight bit on the headstock? It seems more Fender-ish than the earlier altered headstock. Slab board I see - the earlier Goldies had a cap board.
 

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