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skydog

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I've had my first Tokai a little over a week now. I'm very impressed! The quality is second to none. I feel a little guilty that deep in the back of my mind I wish it was a Gibson. Why? Certainly not quality! Prestige? Brand recognition? IDK. All I know is I've played quite a few Gibsons and this Tokai exceeds all of them. I'm really impressed! End of rant.
 
skydog said:
I've had my first Tokai a little over a week now. I'm very impressed! The quality is second to none. I feel a little guilty that deep in the back of my mind I wish it was a Gibson. Why? Certainly not quality! Prestige? Brand recognition? IDK. All I know is I've played quite a few Gibsons and this Tokai exceeds all of them. I'm really impressed! End of rant.

It takes a little while to get over not having the Gibson or Fender decal on the headstock, trust me we've all experienced this.
In fact I know guitarists who own Gibsons who took a year before seeing the light.

Keep in mind, Tokai is one of the most famous guitar brands in the world, every guitarist knows the name Tokai, it's a legend just like Fender and Gibson...I'm proud to play guitars with the Tokai decal on the headstock.

I love watching the reactions when a guitarist gigs with his Tokais, it creates a lot more discussion than when he gigs with a Gibson.
 
I've had mine for a year now. I just keep being more impressed with it. The quality to price ratio is extraordinary. And recent Gibsons (certainly the USA models, but even some of the Custom Shop models, to my amazement) just don't stack up.

Gibson forums are full of excuses: "It's a guitar. You can't expect perfection," while with Tokai, any flaws are so rare and small, that no excuses are necessary. We get very close to perfection - and we pay less. So, for me, the Gibson excuses don't stack up. Yes Tokai produces smaller numbers, but they're also cheaper, so they shouldn't be so consistently better than Gibsons. But they are.

So while I'll keep my old '83 Gibson for ever, Gibson would have to do something exceptional for me to consider buying another. The Gibson brand on the headstock may carry the historical weight. But to pay that much for guitars that are put together so carelessly is just foolish IMO once you know what Tokai can do.
 
singemonkey said:
I've had mine for a year now. I just keep being more impressed with it. The quality to price ratio is extraordinary. And recent Gibsons (certainly the USA models, but even some of the Custom Shop models, to my amazement) just don't stack up.

Gibson forums are full of excuses: "It's a guitar. You can't expect perfection," while with Tokai, any flaws are so rare and small, that no excuses are necessary. We get very close to perfection - and we pay less. So, for me, the Gibson excuses don't stack up. Yes Tokai produces smaller numbers, but they're also cheaper, so they shouldn't be so consistently better than Gibsons. But they are.

So while I'll keep my old '83 Gibson for ever, Gibson would have to do something exceptional for me to consider buying another. The Gibson brand on the headstock may carry the historical weight. But to pay that much for guitars that are put together so carelessly is just foolish IMO once you know what Tokai can do.

Well said.
 
A few years back I decided I needed a '335' and immediatly trawled around for a Gibson, couldnt find one I liked enough, well not without having to re-mortgage the house. I then stumbled on an ES130 N and found something that I had hoped to have found in a Gibson.........and that something was.... quality.

I have sinse bought 6 other Tokai's and have never been dissapointed.
 
I bought what I thought was going to be a "beater" LPalike a few months ago (s/h gold top LS65) and since there is not really a lot of magazine space devoted to Tokais in the UK I didn't really know what I was getting into. The idea was to have something to mess about with, maybe change the pick-ups and pots and what have you. If it got dropped I wasn't going to get too fussed as it was a cheapie rip off, right?

Wrong! the thing sounds amazing and is built as well as anything Gibson put out. I should know as I have a bunch of Historics and it holds its own very well in such company. Unfortunately for the guitar shop I bought the Tokai in I've rather gone off paying huge amounts of money for "brand" makes since and despite being one of their better customers in the past haven't purchased anything new since I acquired the Gold Top.

Heaven only knows what a top end Tokai must sound like. I guess I'll have to find out one of these days. In the meantime I've been more or less cured of expensive U.S. GAS.
 

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