Tokai ST50 1978 on the way

[bigbadjohn]

under last fret its stamped 60 its a normal size neck plate I have some pics I will try and find when I took it apart when I got it I will post, if it was a postal stamp it would be worth a fortune

 

[bigbadjohn]

I took it apart but not the neck off if I find neck picture from before I will post it

 

[bigbadjohn]

Take neck off later

 

[bigbadjohn]

sorry double posted

 

[Sigmania]

Looks like one of your tone pots was changed?

 

[Omiewise65]

You’ve got a lovely Tokai ST60 there !
So clean and shiny , looks nearly untouched ! Congrats .

 

[bigbadjohn]

Maybe mine was 690 the guitar made was 78 first year, I think something went wrong with the numbering it was about the time they changed the neck plate size
I recently bought an 82 JV Squier and did some calculations with dates and serial numbers I came up with them making about 1000 a day
it was a large-scale operation it would be the same with Tokai they would have 2 shifts. With all those JV and Tokai's you hardly ever see any for sale I guess people like me would never sell.

 

[Sigmania]

Maybe mine was 690 the guitar made was 78 first year, I think something went wrong with the numbering it was about the time they changed the neck plate size
I recently bought an 82 JV Squier and did some calculations with dates and serial numbers I came up with them making about 1000 a day
it was a large-scale operation it would be the same with Tokai they would have 2 shifts. With all those JV and Tokai's you hardly ever see any for sale I guess people like me would never sell.

It wasn't the same with Tokai. They never did anything close to Fujigen numbers. More like a few thousand a year. It varied.

There were peak years around 1980, but we are talking 1/100 the scale of production at Fujigen.

In fact they couldn't handle their own production demands and seemed to have contracted out the Nagano guitars (with Fujigen possibly) around 1980.

Check out this thread:

Early Serial Numbers and Production

And this one so you can see how big the Hamamatsu factory was/and still is:

Tokai Factory in Hamamatsu, Japan

And Nagano guitars:

Tokai In Nagano