1980s 1981-82 Tokai sales flyer
- Thread starter Voidoid56
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...and on the subject of Camel guitars, this sticker turned up for sale on YJA today.
So, Dyna Gakki manufactured them. This shows why you get burned when you jump to conclusions sometimes. The brand owners were Kyowa Shokai, their main brand was Fresher, which is associated with Matsumoto Union and Chushin as manufacturers. Which makes it easy to assume that they made Kyowa's other brands as well. Which they obviously didn't.
So an important piece of information. On a promo sticker. You never know where the good stuff turns up.
I'll do my best to get the catalog I have scanned and do a post on the Camel brand in due course.
So, Dyna Gakki manufactured them. This shows why you get burned when you jump to conclusions sometimes. The brand owners were Kyowa Shokai, their main brand was Fresher, which is associated with Matsumoto Union and Chushin as manufacturers. Which makes it easy to assume that they made Kyowa's other brands as well. Which they obviously didn't.
So an important piece of information. On a promo sticker. You never know where the good stuff turns up.
I'll do my best to get the catalog I have scanned and do a post on the Camel brand in due course.
Homer J. Simpson
Well-known member
Wow, that's one lucky find and a valuable tidbit of knowledge! 
Shows once again how little can be considered a fact in this game... now if we had detail pics of the innards of all the guitars they made to study (maybe some show up anyway sooner or later).
The story (or the lack thereof) behind this mysterious association being a manufacturer association (doing what?) but also "responsible" for some brands (so ) is yet another piece in the puzzle that just doesn't fit any other piece in its current form (and I have zero hope this will ever improve).
Shows once again how little can be considered a fact in this game... now if we had detail pics of the innards of all the guitars they made to study (maybe some show up anyway sooner or later). The story (or the lack thereof) behind this mysterious association being a manufacturer association (doing what?) but also "responsible" for some brands (so ) is yet another piece in the puzzle that just doesn't fit any other piece in its current form (and I have zero hope this will ever improve).
Yeah Matsumoto Union (or Association or Instrument Manufacturing Association) is a bit of a mystery. It's said to be some sort of joint venture between a number of unnamed small manufacturers. That's about as far as the info goes as far as I've seen.
A number of years ago (before I began saving intersesting pics 😢), I saw a Fresher Strat for sale, a late one, with the 4th generation logo. By that time, production is said to have been taken over by Chushin Gakki, only it came in a factory box clearly labeled Matsumoto Instrument MFG. Some sources claim that Chushin was originally a member of Matsumoto Union, that could lend some weight to that theory. Apart from that I've seen nothing whatsoever about who the member companies might have been.
A number of years ago (before I began saving intersesting pics 😢), I saw a Fresher Strat for sale, a late one, with the 4th generation logo. By that time, production is said to have been taken over by Chushin Gakki, only it came in a factory box clearly labeled Matsumoto Instrument MFG. Some sources claim that Chushin was originally a member of Matsumoto Union, that could lend some weight to that theory. Apart from that I've seen nothing whatsoever about who the member companies might have been.
Homer J. Simpson
Well-known member
I'm occasionally wondering if there was some (private) organization that coordinated what looks to me like a pretty dynamic distribution/allocation of production capacities for the export business, modeled on what the government's MITI/METI (very assumedly, no hard evidence on that either) did may or may not have done for the electronics industry.
Whatever it was, the industry seems to have been intensively networking anyway and my favorite speculation would be some sort of men's club where actually all of the Nagano big heads had regularparties erm...meetings. 🥂🍷🍾 They probably left no evidence for us to find!
Whatever it was, the industry seems to have been intensively networking anyway and my favorite speculation would be some sort of men's club where actually all of the Nagano big heads had regular
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Homer J. Simpson
Well-known member
A pic of the control cavity in this one, does not quite look like the typical Dyna-X:
reverb.com
This one looks more like it, but the top is plywood and the PU cavities are still a little bit messy:
www.mylespaul.com
Hard to tell on this one what the top is like:
www.mylespaul.com
That's about all I could find so far (with interior pics), I wish people would use their screwdrivers more. On the way I found that you can turn your Strat into a camel:
rockskins.com
CAMEL 1978 CLP-800 Lawsuit Singlecut Les Paul | Reverb
CAMEL 1978 CLP-800 japanese lawsuit LP Extremely RARE!!! made fore a short time(1977-80) , it was the Kyowa company who made fresherthey then started the higer end CAMEL brand , wich was short lived due to the fact they could not compete with the bigger company`s , such as T...
reverb.com
This one looks more like it, but the top is plywood and the PU cavities are still a little bit messy:
Camel les Paul
Went to other side of country to pick up this one. Not much to be found on the interweb on these. I have no idea what is original and what not. If anyone can tell me the function of the mini switch .... Could this be a CLP-60CS? Body is Mahogany type wood build in layers. Maple top. 3 piece...
Hard to tell on this one what the top is like:
NGD Camel les Paul
After posting in the pending... this Les Paul just arrived an hour ago. Don't know anything about Camel Les Paul except what Music Trade tells... "Kyowa offered Fresher guitars mainly in 70's. Then, they started "Camel" brand as their high grade brand. It was very good quality guitars...
That's about all I could find so far (with interior pics), I wish people would use their screwdrivers more. On the way I found that you can turn your Strat into a camel:
Camel Guitar Wrap
rockskins.com
I have a Camel CLP-800 but I don't have any cavity pictures. I'll dig it out of storage and take some.
A pic of the control cavity in this one, does not quite look like the typical Dyna-X:
CAMEL 1978 CLP-800 Lawsuit Singlecut Les Paul | Reverb
CAMEL 1978 CLP-800 japanese lawsuit LP Extremely RARE!!! made fore a short time(1977-80) , it was the Kyowa company who made fresherthey then started the higer end CAMEL brand , wich was short lived due to the fact they could not compete with the bigger company`s , such as T...
This one looks more like it, but the top is plywood and the PU cavities are still a little bit messy:
Camel les Paul
Went to other side of country to pick up this one. Not much to be found on the interweb on these. I have no idea what is original and what not. If anyone can tell me the function of the mini switch .... Could this be a CLP-60CS? Body is Mahogany type wood build in layers. Maple top. 3 piece...
Hard to tell on this one what the top is like:
NGD Camel les Paul
After posting in the pending... this Les Paul just arrived an hour ago. Don't know anything about Camel Les Paul except what Music Trade tells... "Kyowa offered Fresher guitars mainly in 70's. Then, they started "Camel" brand as their high grade brand. It was very good quality guitars...
That's about all I could find so far (with interior pics), I wish people would use their screwdrivers more. On the way I found that you can turn your Strat into a camel:
Camel Guitar Wrap
Agreed, quite a few differences. On the other hand, we have the Dyna X-rout from post-1986 Burnys, these guitars are like 8-9 years earlier. I imagine production practises could have changed quite a lot over that time, with new machinery coming in etc?
It would be good to know what Dyna were up to in the interim, but personally I've no idea. But it's recently been established (by ads actually crediting the manufacturer) that Dyna produced instruments for Daion's JooDee brand at about the same time as they made the Camels. A bit surprising, given Daion's strong association with Yamaki, but Yamaki was a small manufacturer and the JooDee brand seems to have been an attempt at challenging Greco and the other big players, so I suppose capacity was an issue.
Cross-referencing with JooDee Les Pauls could be worth pursuing. But it seems Yamaki still made some high-end JooDees, I have a JST-800 Strat with Yamaki on the neck plate, so there's a potential pitfall there.
Homer J. Simpson
Well-known member
Thank you! But no need to hurry and take your guitar apart, a few Camel cavities pics showed up on the net after all.
What I'd love to see is a look under the pickguard of various Strats, Teles and basses, they are much harder to identify (I really struggle with it anyway).Yeah, I actually meant to write "no Dyna-X yet". That they (probably all) did things differently in different production periods seems obvious, but it's so rare that we can attribute these features unambiguously to a single factory. That's why it's so great to see how Dyna made things differently in that time and while I googled some examples yesterday I too stumbled upon the apparently new-ish knowledge that some Joodee guitars were made by Dyna as well (thanks for the pic of the Yamaki-made, EMP-safe shielding bunker BTW!).
Anyway, that sticker answers one of my favorite questions a little..."what did factory X do before YYYY anyway?", I mean there were so many existing factories already, what did they all do in the particularly hazy period 1970-1977, yet they still built new ones like Dyna, which is certainly not the biggest but it's not a basement workshop either.
Voidoid56, I had them add a couple of sections for catalogs and flyers. Yay!
Please feel free to post anything you feel comfortable sharing.
As of yet I have not watermarked any of my own scans, but that may change. Will see if people try to rip them off and sell them. Hopefully they won't.
Next project ifs to overhaul the Registry...
Please feel free to post anything you feel comfortable sharing.
As of yet I have not watermarked any of my own scans, but that may change. Will see if people try to rip them off and sell them. Hopefully they won't.
Next project ifs to overhaul the Registry...
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