brokentoes said:
Here in Canada it seems that Tokai is usually associated with Fakai's. There are real ones around too but no one has heard of them which makes me wonder why anyone here would fake an unknown brand ??
IIRC and AFAIK the odd Canadian "Fakai" story is a somewhat touchy issue in some forums (including this one), so let's not go there.
Just so much - anything with a certain "WANT!!"-factor has been faked and will be faked, in particular stuff that's not very well documented and relatively easy to fake. That there are Kokais and Chokais and all the special run and order made Tokais out there is not exactly making things more transparent. Every now and then I see "Fakais" on German platforms too, not to mention all the offers with a convenient error in the model designator or other lame attempts on squeezing a few bucks more out of the deal. That's why this forum is so important.
brokentoes said:
Most people here would rather pay $1600.00 for a Gibson Studio with a bad plek job and numerous QC issues just because it says Gibson.
Sadly, this is obviously a global thing. According to this (apparently paid for by G.) article even in Japan:
https://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2006/08/19/national/for-guitar-loving-japanese-its-gotta-be-american-and-it-better-be-gibson/
If you check the U-BOX inventory, at least half of the guitars are MIA. Now this can mean a lot of things (for example "Japanese guitars are keepers, people try to get rid of the inferior stuff") but it's most likely indicative of sales anyway. It takes a lot of learning to assess the quality of a guitar properly and many people don't recognize quality if you hit them on the head with it. So they rather spend 4,000€ on e.g. a very mediocre "Teambuilt" Strat from the "Custom Shop" because they think they represent "higher quality", while they actually come with too wide neck pockets and at best standard fretjobs and were likely made from the same parts as the regular F. models. Sadly, even if they knew how much quality they
could get for that kind of money elsewhere (not only in Japan), most of them would still buy the CS for the bragging rights and fake sense of individualism.
But BTT, maybe people have to be old enough to understand how Tokai changed the game as the visible spearhead of the Japanese replica guitar industry in the early 1980s. It sure left its marks on me - the guitar I described in
this thread sparked my interest because back in the 80s a pic of this Tokai caused the worst fit of GAS ever for me:
Apparently I wasn't the only one who found this attractive, here's the full story on my favorite guitar related blog:
Link
The only other guitar that looked like that back then was the Fender "Strat", our frontman had one of those in CAR and that was some awful guitar, heavy and full of problems. Of course I could never get a hold of a Tokai like that but I never forgot it. A more remarkable Tokai story is my "Jazz Sound" bass, which I played in one of my bands back then. One day we were the opener for another, better known band and after the gig, the bassman of the other band wanted to trade his brandnew 1300 Deutschmark Washburn S1000 "Status" bass for my 500DM Tokai. He didn't want any money on top, so we both left the place with a different bass, probably both thinking "sucker".
But that's how the hype about Tokai was in those days.