zbillster2
Member
- Joined
- Feb 27, 2017
- Messages
- 16
- Reaction score
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Unfortunately, I'm in the same boat as Lemmy. I bought a Tokai Black Beauty from the exact same ad on Reverb. Got it today and it has playing issues also.
I also have a 2013 MIC Tokai wine red LP Custom I bought in 2014 from Gary's Guitars West (the same model/shipment featured on Nick in the State's YouTube channel) to compare it with.
The wine red one is a really nice player with low action and decent fret board and sounds nice electronically, as good as my other guitars, but some funkiness shared with the black one from Music Express Canada (hard-to-turn tuners, sloppy binding, amateur soldering work, gaps in the nut mounting). The red one has crooked dots on the neck side binding; the black one is better in that regard but has some strange red spots in the neck binding. Black one's peghead is larger with two-screw trussrod vs. red one's three screw.
I can't get the black's action down as low as the red one's ... I get buzzing on the low e-string from the second fret. The curve of the body around the pickup switch also has a slight flat spot. Mismatched screws on the output jack plate. And the access panels on the back are the worst I've ever seen.
I spent time in Tokyo in 2014 and visited the guitar shops there, looking at new and used LP Custom copies. What I have with these Tokais is consistent with some of the lower end models I saw there. The higher end models in the $1000+ range were very nice, but with baseball bat necks ... not my cup of tea ... and the used high-end ones from the 80s and 90s were pretty worn.
I also contacted Tokai Japan with the serial number and photos of Music Express' product. I already have a case for this not being the guitar pictured in the ad (and the ad copy reading as if it is actual phone pics of the guitar for sale). I contacted the seller about the stains in the binding but no reply so far (they were very, very quick to respond before I purchased it). Next step is using Reverb's claim process, which sounds buyer friendly.
I also have a Korean Love Rock and several other Far East guitars of impressive quality (DeArmond, Greg Bennett, Ibanez Artist). Silly me wanted a Black Beauty sooooo bad ...
I also have a 2013 MIC Tokai wine red LP Custom I bought in 2014 from Gary's Guitars West (the same model/shipment featured on Nick in the State's YouTube channel) to compare it with.
The wine red one is a really nice player with low action and decent fret board and sounds nice electronically, as good as my other guitars, but some funkiness shared with the black one from Music Express Canada (hard-to-turn tuners, sloppy binding, amateur soldering work, gaps in the nut mounting). The red one has crooked dots on the neck side binding; the black one is better in that regard but has some strange red spots in the neck binding. Black one's peghead is larger with two-screw trussrod vs. red one's three screw.
I can't get the black's action down as low as the red one's ... I get buzzing on the low e-string from the second fret. The curve of the body around the pickup switch also has a slight flat spot. Mismatched screws on the output jack plate. And the access panels on the back are the worst I've ever seen.
I spent time in Tokyo in 2014 and visited the guitar shops there, looking at new and used LP Custom copies. What I have with these Tokais is consistent with some of the lower end models I saw there. The higher end models in the $1000+ range were very nice, but with baseball bat necks ... not my cup of tea ... and the used high-end ones from the 80s and 90s were pretty worn.
I also contacted Tokai Japan with the serial number and photos of Music Express' product. I already have a case for this not being the guitar pictured in the ad (and the ad copy reading as if it is actual phone pics of the guitar for sale). I contacted the seller about the stains in the binding but no reply so far (they were very, very quick to respond before I purchased it). Next step is using Reverb's claim process, which sounds buyer friendly.
I also have a Korean Love Rock and several other Far East guitars of impressive quality (DeArmond, Greg Bennett, Ibanez Artist). Silly me wanted a Black Beauty sooooo bad ...