NGD

[FordFanJpn]

Actually, new guitar order day. I bought one of the guitars that Kurosawa Gakki had made, KLS-170F-LW. It has a few differences from the regular Tokai's, like a slightly different neck angle, period correct body carve, slightly repositioned bridge pickup, hide glue, hand carved neck (based on a '60 Burst that is owned by Kurosawa), selected woods and the pickups are coil tapped. The LW is supposed to mean Light Weight, but they tend to be a bit heavy. The one I ordered is 4.15kgs. It should be here in a day or two. I'll post pics if anyone is interested. This will be my 3rd Tokai Les Paul and 6th Tokai. Really looking forward to it.

 

[ned]

Nice. Be very interested to hear about the weight. I have a '79 GT that is a back breaker but it plays and sounds amazing.

 

[Sigmania]

Congratulations. Beautiful top. Hope it plays as good as it looks.

 

[FordFanJpn]

Quick update. I got a call from Kurosawa last night. Turns out the guitar I ordered had already been sold. But the guy went through their stock and found one with the same specs and a tad lighter (the one I ordered was 4.15kgs, the one I'm getting is 4.03kgs). Hopefully it will be here today. More when it gets here.

 

[FordFanJpn]

Another update on my belated NGD. It seems that the guitar Kurosawa found to replace the one I ordered (that had already been sold), was still at the Tokai factory. So there was a delay while the guitar was sent to Kurosawa and then Kurosawa sent it to me. It finally arrived yesterday and easily surpassed all my expectations. Unfortunately I've been busy with work and life and other interruptions, but I'll try to get some decent pics over the weekend and post them here, along with my thoughts on it. For now, here's a quick shot of her (being called "Ruby" for now) relaxing on my chair.

 

[Sigmania]

Beauty. Congratulations!

 

[felixcatus]

Nice, congrats. 8)

 

[FordFanJpn]

It's been a few days, but I finally got the guitar 'finished'. I ended up replacing the bridge, thumbwheels, tailpiece and studs with Faber parts. I also replaced the pickups with Bare Knuckle Mules, put in VIPots and Vitamin-Q caps. The original pots with the pull-up switches were almost unusable. No change at all from 6 or so to 10. I have the VIPots with paper in oil caps and 50's wiring in most of my guitars now and like the range. I haven't taken any nice photos yet, but here are a few quick snaps.

With the new pickups and hardware.

Original wiring.

New wiring.

 

[Sigmania]

Makes me want to play it. 8)

Bet it sounds nice. The word growl popped into my head. Maybe it's the tiger stripes/flame?

 

[FordFanJpn]

Makes me want to play it. 8)

Bet it sounds nice. The word growl popped into my head. Maybe it's the tiger stripes/flame?

It can growl, but it can sing sweetly too. It's currently vying for the #1 spot with my LS196. The LS196 has a set of Monty's PAF's.

 

[zbillster]

Were your stock pots long or short shaft? I may end up playing musical pickups with my new blue one.

 

[Paladin2019]

They will have been short shaft metric.

 

[FordFanJpn]

The original pots were short shaft metric, but I replaced them with pots from the US so I also had to replace the knobs.