Tokai In Nagano 1980, 1981, 1982 ?

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That's the Tokai version.

The Dan Smith version characterizes the folks at Tokai as being "arrogant" and threatening Fender.

Dan Smith said. "A lot of arrogant companies, like Tokai, a lot of these companies basically told Bill Schultz and I that they were gonna bury us, that they were gonna be Fender, that whether we liked it or not they were gonna take over the marketplace"


https://www.fuzzfaced.net/fender-made-in-japan-mij.html



Who knows what the truth is? Probably somewhere in between?
 
On a side note, off topic, but still kind of relevant to the research we do, imo.

I was googling to try to find out something about the cultural background to these guitars. I've always suspected that Japanese/East Asian attitudes towards copying is somehow fundamentally different to those in the west. The amount of care and skill invested in what many in the West would just dismiss as "knockoffs" has always been kind of fascinating to me.
I haven't found that exact information (yet), but I stumbled on an interesting text here:

http://www.fuji-torii.com/column.html

The site's owner is a Japanese dealer in art and antiques, and in the text the writer editorializes frustratedly about the amount of false information around in his area of expertise. It seemed very familiar to me, trying to research MIJ guitars:

"... some generally held views on Japanese art today contain baseless information. As an art dealer, I have been quite concerned about this. Such false notions came into being because of biased opinions and elusory responses on the part of the Japanese to questions asked in the past by zealous foreign researchers and collectors. These dedicated researchers later made public comments or published research books including the misleading information, and many of them came to be acknowledged as established theories.
In my judgment, responding to innocent questions by foreigners with a simple "I don't know" would have been more sincere, no matter whether it concerned one's own country or not"
.

Now, I've never been to Japan (I actually had a trip booked for March 18th 2020 - you can imagine how that panned out...), but one recurring theme when talking to ppl who have been and/or spent time there is that it's often pretty pointless asking directions. You will get them, but half the time they're erroneous, almost like there is something shameful in admitting that you have no idea, and that it's always better to say something than nothing at all.
If this is a general attitude, it would make researching MIJ guitars problematic as well.

The writer at Fujii-Tori concludes:

" The irresponsible attitude on the part of the Japanese towards sharing information on Japanese art led to misunderstandings not only towards art but also towards Japan itself and its people as well."

Boom.

So yeah, seems there could be challenges here that we're not fully aware of. Then again, it wouldn't be much fun if it was easy, right? :D
 
https://www.youtube.com/@tokaimad3184/community

TOKAI MAD

I received a question from a viewer, so I will give the answer here. You can tell the difference from SS outsourced products because the manufacturing method is different when you remove the neck. I would appreciate it if you could refer to the image.


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IMG_7241.jpeg
 
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I posted that because it showed up on the Tokai Mad YouTube channel that I found.

I feel like these guitars were made under contract. Possibly with FujiGen.

There were other apparent crossovers with FujiGen seen here:

The Relaltionship of Tokai and Fujigen?

Japanese manufacturing is apparently a lot different than American mfg., etc. where rivals would not consider cooperating.

Different mindset in Japan I would think. Different goals. Different community and social mindset. Group over the individual I would guess.
 
Thanks for sharing, fun to read these. I will check mine.
I saw the different trussrod covers on lawsuit era LS guitars, anyone can tell me which made by tokai and which outsourced?
 
I found this the other day and thought it was interesting.



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Thanks for sharing, fun to read these. I will check mine.
I saw the different trussrod covers on lawsuit era LS guitars, anyone can tell me which made by tokai and which outsourced?
Can you post a picture of your LS so we know what you are looking at?
 
I'm a bit late to the party but...

The serial number on this Aria looks surprisingly similar to the font on the inkies...

Arai/Aria is yet another "factory-less" company that dealt with varying factories. Most of their guitars were certainly made by Matsumoku but if you look into their 1975 catalog you'll find strange cheapo guitars that were made in a, let's say (can of worms), Kawai-ish factory. Dowel tenons were not a Matsumoku thing though (they were the "bolted down tenon" factory).

Adding to the confusion, Kasuga....

Kasugas (at least of that era) have no tenon features visible from the neck PU cavity. The only LP copies known to have dowel tenons are the Fujigen-made Grecos etc. AFAIK.

You don't even have to leave the Nagano prefecture to find more factories that Tokai could've used (in theory), which is one reason why I find it highly unlikely that Tokai set up their own factory. Let me put it this way - "if Tokai had built their own factory in the valley, why don't the guitars look like they were made by Tokai?". That it's just of all the lower-grade models that would have been made in this new factory doesn't make this appear more likely either.

Why would they reinvent the wheel for a guitar like the SS-36, when pretty much all factories that made solid-body guitars at the time produced contemporary (70s style) Fender copies anyway? They were probably all capable of delivering guitars built to whatever specs or grade of refinement you ordered them.


Pic of the neckplate of a 1977 Aria Pro II ST-600 Strat copy. Identical to Greco plates, with "Matsumoku" added.

That Jazz Sound bass this refers to is quite certainly a red herring - the body, or at least the pickguard looks like made before 1976 ("tug bar" holes next to the high strings) and I thought Tokai didn't even make basses in 1977 yet?

It looks like "Matsumoku" embossed neck plates were used quite inconsistently and only 1977 and a few years later, the first (and only) time I've seen that was on "Vorg by Pearl" labeled guitars and basses. But I think meanwhile Fujigen has been more or less sufficiently identified as that "Nagano" factory, right?


Not sure if Reverb.com is still showing the same guitar under this link but this looks like a regular Hamamatsu with the high serial number for 1979 (9008992) and no under the hood pics?

I've always suspected that Japanese/East Asian attitudes towards copying is somehow fundamentally different to those in the west. The amount of care and skill invested in what many in the West would just dismiss as "knockoffs" has always been kind of fascinating to me.

Dismissal by people who wouldn't recognize quality if you'd hit them on the head with it. :)
I (I think we all here) share that fascination. Re the "attitude towards copying" - understanding that in a broadly generalized way is maybe not necessary or even applicable here, it's basically only a different view on what can be "owned", which is not even that unique to East Asian cultures.

I think the Tokyo High Court sentence in the 2000 "Gibson vs. Fernandes" lawsuit points at something. IIRC it basically says 1. Gibson came 20 years too late with their complaint and 2. that Japanese people are generally smart enough to distinguish between domestic brands making cheap copies of what they consider a "generic" design and genuine Gibson guitars using that design. (Full translation and interpretation (both utterly confusing though) can be found here.)

Another factor in this ruling was that e.g. the "genuine" guitars were always immensely popular in Japan, much more than the lookalikes (which is why those came into existence in first place of course) and never crossed interests with Gibson's target audience. However, no Japanese company would've even thought of making actual counterfeit guitars, which is what may distinguish Japan from e.g. China (and of course all the good people in the west putting F-decals and G-overlays on their guitars, then flipping them on eBay).

You surely know how Japanese electric guitars started out, before the Ventures came to Japan there were no actual attempts to fully copy any foreign designs. I think the "copy war" of the late 60s/early 70s was at least to one half propelled by US and later EU importers asking for cheap lookalikes, but even then there were still Japanese companies trying to establish their own designs with higher quality ambitions, many of them went extinct during the "chain bankruptcy" of 1967/68. I believe that making copies was not at all the initial intention of Japanese guitar makers, and that making cheap knockoff guitars for export (or domestic mail order businesses like Nikkoh) was never considered very honorable and "Japanese". That and the fact that they are indeed very secretive about their trade relations etc. is certainly contributing to the difficulties when trying to research these dark times.

Now fast forward to the "replica war" 10 years later - this should be seen in context: Unlike the previous lookalikes of contemporary models, these guitars were actually replicating (at that time) discontinued Fender and Gibson models, and they started doing that in a time when the vintage craze hadn't even really started yet - so this was maybe not even triggered by an overwhelming demand for such guitars (yet). Apart from the short transition phase when the innards seem still a bit behind the looks in importance, they wanted to replicate the "old" guitars not only as true as possible, they wanted to improve upon them with Japanese perfectionism and honor the original guitars that way, at a time when the companies perceivedly "owning" the designs had changed everything for the worse. I'm fully aware that this may sound like a petty excuse to some people living in a world full of crazy patent trolling and all, but that's (I think) how they really felt about it.

Cue the weird brass shielding plate on early Springys - not quite the full aluminum shield that Fender abandoned in 1968 but something Fender "copied" later on their own '57 reissues, just like the idea to reissue their own old guitars. :)
 
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But I think meanwhile Fujigen has been more or less sufficiently identified as that "Nagano" factory, right?

Then again, when I look at this...

https://www.tokaiforum.com/threads/inky-inkie-gallery.26469/page-2#post-205781
...I'm getting doubts. This is a neck with a dowel tenon and a body with a Tokai control cavity. The bridge PU cavity looks like the height screw recesses are a bit crummy, not all the way but a little like I've seen it on Kasugas. 🤨🙃

I was hoping to find a Nagano LP with pics of the control cavity, but without the PCB in order to (maybe) identify the routing style.

Edit: I just added another LS-50 to the "Inkie"-Thread that has what I deem the typical (for the "around 1980"-era) Fujigen control cavity routing outline. Alas the PCB is hiding the feature typically seen on Grecos of that time, the recessed routings for the bridge PU pots sitting in what looks like a continuous step on the upper half of the cavity.

Example (Greco_EG700GT_1980
Greco_EG700GT_1980_CC.jpg

As per usual, these indications are to be taken with a grain of salt and a lot of caution. For example, it seems not all Grecos said to be Fujigen-made have a dowel tenon (only up to EG-600/700?) and the control cavity can vary quite a bit, that "step" is missing on lower models with the "hollow" laminated top of course and it's much straighter and less pronounced on some. To illustrate, here's a "lower model" (a 1981 EG-500GT, many -500s are hollow, this one is not) showing another very typical shape of that bridge PU routing recess/step:

Greco_EG-500_GT_CC.jpg
 
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I would say that the 1981 SS36's are sufficiently ID'd as Fujigen builds. Beyond that, I personally haven't got a clue, I'm about 170 or so MIJ guitars in, and I've still never owned a Tokai Gibson copy. Bit of a Fenderhead, me. :)

But is there any reason to believe that Tokai ordered guitars from just the one Nagano-based manufacturer?
It seems we tend to assume that there were would be some degree of "partnership" involved to have another manufacturer make your product for you. And between two brand-owning companies with their own development and production facilities, that would probably be the case.
But in an OEM-based industry, it could be a lot simpler than that, basically a matter of the brand-owner putting out a tender with specs or getting an offer from a manufacturer, followed by a price negotiation and a handshake? I mean, it's not like Tokai ordered guitar types that the Nagano industries weren't already making. Basically off-the-shelf products, some adjustments required, sure, but no R&D involved, so place the order with the supplier with the right quality and price and the production capacity to deliver on schedule. Which might not be the same guys every time.

I mean, we see it in other brands. Notably Fernandes, who never had an overall partnership with a single manufacturer. Sure, Kawai made most of their Fender copies for ages, but Tokai supplied two models in 1978. Dyna Gakki made Burny LPs for abt a dozen years from 1987, but a some obviously Fujigen-made instruments turn up in 1991-92. Etcetera. It seems to have been pretty much standard procedure.
 
I'm about 170 or so MIJ guitars in
😮
But is there any reason to believe that Tokai ordered guitars from just the one Nagano-based manufacturer?
As per usual, at best in a "preliminary" way. Only one was kind of identified so far because Fujigen (and all other factories) made things in characteristic ways.

Like I said, if Tokai had built their own factory in Nagano prefecture, the guitars coming out of that factory would've likely had most if not all of the Tokai characteristics so we couldn't easily know in which Tokai factory they were made. It seems also unlikely that an existing factory would've completely "copied" the Tokai characteristics because that would mean they'd need to change jigs, tools etc. for a Tokai production run and there is no real necessity to do anything like that beyond what's needed to meet certain specs. That doesn't mean it's impossible though.

It seems we tend to assume that there were would be some degree of "partnership" involved to have another manufacturer make your product for you. And between two brand-owning companies with their own development and production facilities, that would probably be the case.

It would seem so but it might be more complicated. First off, I'm the least apt person to understand economy in general and I don't understand much of how the Japanese economy works (or worked through the key decades) but trying to educate myself in that matter a bit, a few things struck me that are hard to compute from a western capitalist POV, with all that rigid factory=brand=identiy thinking.

One is how interwoven industries were (I use past tense because I only tried to understand that for the guitar industry until the "lost decade") in Japan. Key people seemed to "know" each other in different ways than we are used to and their business relations may have been more complex than we are used to. Key people and factories were linked to each other via suppliers, store chains and export businesses with overlaps in ownership shares...yada, yada... the parts of the industry were competing with each other but with a sense of working together for the common good. That sounds too cute though, maybe "capitalism played hard but with a socialist touch"?

But in an OEM-based industry, it could be a lot simpler than that, basically a matter of the brand-owner putting out a tender with specs or getting an offer from a manufacturer, followed by a price negotiation and a handshake?

That sounds reasonable, at least for the domestic market. I believe "capacity" could have been another factor - many of the factories were e.g. busy fulfilling usually increasing export orders with priority, so maybe the next batch of guitars to be ordered had to be made by someone else?

I mean, we see it in other brands. Notably Fernandes, who never had an overall partnership with a single manufacturer. Sure, Kawai made most of their Fender copies for ages, but Tokai supplied two models in 1978. Dyna Gakki made Burny LPs for abt a dozen years from 1987, but a some obviously Fujigen-made instruments turn up in 1991-92. Etcetera. It seems to have been pretty much standard procedure.
Yeah, the same Burny RLC guitar made by 3, maybe 4 different factories and some of them possibly even at the same time, it boggles the mind. :) I just recently learned that the Aria 5522 cheapo LP copy was made by Fujigen, Matsumoku and Kasuga, maybe not at the same time or specific variants by specific factories but still... and I'm sure you can sprinkle in some Kawai or Kiso-Suzuki for other models.

The point I'm trying to make is that in our weird urge of explaining Japanese guitars in a brand->factory scheme to give even the most horrid plywood planks some kind of pedigree, these things get all shortened (or mutilated) to e.g. "Aria=Matsumoku" so much because the strange reality doesn't fit well into our concepts, even though much of it was adopted in a world of complex, globalized production.
 
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