Solid Body Electrics Made by Tokai with the Sigma Brand Name

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nickc35

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Hi everyone! I just found this site and thought I would pick your brains for any tid bits of information.

I just bought a couple of Sigma solid body electric guitars. It's so recent that I don't have them yet. But I was surfing the web trying to find some information on them. I found an article on vintageguitar.com stating they were made buy Tokai in the early to mid 1970's. I know very little about Tokai. I owned a Sigma 12-string acoustic guitar that wasn't bad. But I don't know if that was made by Tokai.

Does anyone know anything about these first solid body Sigmas made by Tokai?

Any info would be greatly appreciated.
Thanks!
Nick
 
Welcome to the forum, nick.

You might find something on your acoustic guitar from here: http://www.sigmaguitars.com/index.html

Here's a quote from Hans-J?rgen: "Tokai cooperated with Martin to build Sigma guitars for the American market in the early '70s, and one of the electric solid bodies was a Tele with Gibson-style headstock:

http://www.tokaiforum.com/viewtopic.php?t=4383

Obviously they also sold it under their own name."

Br, Jouko
 
Thanks for the info Jouko and for the welcome.

I no longer own the Sigma acoustic though. But it's nice to see a little more info on my new guitars.
 
Welcome Nick! I remember testing a new Sigma Les Paul in the early 70's, it was a great guitar with a set in neck. The price here in Sweden was quite high, a lot higher than for most copies at that time. I suspect it was a Tokai made Sigma because of the high quality.

Mike
 
Thanks Mike!

I have been trying to read up on Tokai guitars in general as there doesn't seem to be much written about old Sigmas. I am finding that Tokai guitars are highly respected instruments. I really knew nothing about them prior to my purchase of these two Sigmas except that they were/are a Japanese maker of Strat & LP copies. Now I have an interest in getting a Tokai guitar with the Tokai brand name on it. :lol:
 
Well the SG style Sigma showed up. I've have been playing it for about a week now and what a great guitar it is.

When it arrived the pickups were in really bad shape. A previous owner had put pickup rings on this thing when it's not supposed to have pickup rings. The pickup are suppoed to be attached to the pickguard like a Strat. When I took it apart to set up the pickups correctly I must have pulled some wires loose in them. They didn't work. I happened to have another set of humbuckers lying around from a Peavey T-60 guitar. I wired up the T-60 pups and strung it up with some new strings and this guitar plays and sounds awesome. It is definitely a nice quality guitar. There is one problem though. It has a Bigsby style vibrato on it. Unfortunately I can't use it. One push or pull of the whammy bar and every string instantly goes out of tune. I noticed that the bridge seems to wobble back and forth when I use the vibrato. I am assuming this is not a good thing. I may need to replace that bridge if I want to use this vibrato at all. Anyone have any advice on this?

Thanks!
 
i think recall a friend of mine has a sigma solid, i ll check and se if i can get some pics too
 

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