Thanks for all the info!
Back to the te-150. This one is different from the others i have seen.
I did some research and actually got a mail back from Gene Parsons!
So here is another mystery for you experts.
Ok, so the back cover is different from the 3 other te-150's i ve seen pictures of. They all have the logo on them, while mine has a back cover saying Parsons/ White string bender.
The weird thing is this back cover predates the ones with the logo.
(a cover alone like this was just sold on ebay for $300)
I'm not sure when the new style cover was introduced.
Gene was pretty sure that the tokais all had the logo cover,
but he also recognised the bender mechanism as the real deal.
So either I have a real early one, or someone installed an older parsons/white bender into a te-80.
Someone at tdpri was pretty sure it was a original Gene Parsons build,
Gene doubts that. But i can't even remember what i did last week so who knows..
So for now I think it's a tokai build te-150, and somehow an older probably left over back cover slipped between the newer style covers.
Ofcourse pure speculation.
Some other facts:
My guitar was first finished, then routed for the bender.
I think i see some bare wood in the route on a pic from another te-150, but can't be sure.
There are some markings in the rout, guess it sais '#7 ok'
I emailed a japanese tokai owner who had a tokai eb bender, and a tokai b bender. He didn't have more pics and my japanese isn't that good
, but i think he said he ordered them both from tokai at the same time, and had to wait 6 months to get them.
That's all i found out. Either way, the guitar is staying. I forgot how great teles were. Only thing i might be changing is the bridge. I like the ashtray model better. Have to find out if they align.