1979 Tokai Springy strat...

[Seegs]

A guy wants my late 80s Burny Les Paul Jr. and wants to trade me his 1979 Springy strat for it...

He is sending the strat to me to look over and I can accept and send the Burny back or deny and send his strat back...

What can I expect tonally and feel-wise?

Are they alder or ash or both?

How much do they weigh?

How fat is the neck at the first fret?

How do the pickups sound?

Will I have to swap the electronics out?

Chow,
Seegs

 

[claudel]

I once had a Springy Sound that was almost an exact dimensional duplicate to the '55 Fender
I owned for 30 years and sounded almost as good at ~1% of the dollar value...

If I still had that one today I wouldn't change anything except strings...

 

[zztomato]

A guy wants my late 80s Burny Les Paul Jr. and wants to trade me his 1979 Springy strat for it...

He is sending the strat to me to look over and I can accept and send the Burny back or deny and send his strat back...

What can I expect tonally and feel-wise?

Are they alder or ash or both?

How much do they weigh?

How fat is the neck at the first fret?

How do the pickups sound?

Will I have to swap the electronics out?

Chow,
Seegs

Why are you asking us? He's sending you the guitar, you'll find out shortly for real.

Tokai is well known for their accuracy and quality- especially from that time period. I have a 1981 LS-80 that is about the best Les Paul I've played. It's pretty accurate to 1958 specs. Perfect neck.
I'm sure you'll be happy.

 

[Seegs]

Why are you asking us? He's sending you the guitar, you'll find out shortly for real.

Tokai is well known for their accuracy and quality- especially from that time period. I have a 1981 LS-80 that is about the best Les Paul I've played. It's pretty accurate to 1958 specs. Perfect neck.
I'm sure you'll be happy.

You really needed to ask that question?

Chow,
Seegs

 

[ianb]

Seegs,

You can expect a great guitar with a weird name......

Ian

 

[Ogre]

Hey Seegs- I have had one for many years, and liked it so much that I sold my real 1957 % 1964 Strats.

 

[Mark Wein]

I own one. Totally worth it. This is part of a review I did on the guitar a few years ago - more info in the link but this is the gist of it: http://markweinguitarlessons.com/forums/threads/tokai-springy-sound.1766/

This is something of a review of my very first nice strat. I had been playing guitar for only a few months in 1986 and was already looking past my $110 Memphis strat copy at Charvels and Kramers. I was taking guitar lessons at Sightsinger Music here in Orange and every Saturday I would drool over whatever they had on display. The guitar teacher I had at the time steered me into this Strat copy that he explained was part of what they bought from Fender wheen Fender moved out of the Fullerton factory...they blew out all the junk lying around that they really couldn't sell and this was part of a truckload of gear they had bought. I remember a bunch of the Starcaster semi hollow guitars lying around....

[​IMG]

This was obviously a "lawsuit" guitar in that every detail of a 1956 strat was slavishly copied. If you check out the headstock even the decal looks like the Fender but the you see things like "Springy Sound" in place of "Stratocaster" and "Oldies but Goldies" in place of "Original Contoured Body" smi

The story I had heard was that they had a trio of these Tokai guitars that had in fact been used as samples in their trademark infringement case in the early 1980's against Tokai. The decals on the back of the headstock (still there to this day) seemed to bear this out:

 

[zztomato]

You really needed to ask that question?

Chow,
Seegs

Yeah, I did. Why?

Do you know if it is a 50, 60, 80, 100, 120? You can consider those model numbers a quality rating more or less. 120 being the most accurate reproduction.

 

[scott944]

Here's Mark's in action. When I was considering one of these amps, I came across this vid. Bought the head.

 

[Mark Wein]

Here's Mark's in action. When I was considering one of these amps, I came across this vid. Bought the head.

hehe...I forgot that I did a video with that guitar and amp combo.

 

[slowerhand]

Of the 3 that I played, one is amazing and the other 2 really good. I'm comparing to the likes of Lentz, Yaron, Fender CS, K-Line and Navigator and honestly don't think a good one can be beat.

The bodies are often sen ash, although I've also seen regular ash. Not sure if they ever used alder. Either way, sen ash is a good wood.

The necks are a bit thinner feeling than I like. The ST80s are about 22mm at the first fret from memory but with the V shape feel smaller than that. IIRC, ST60s have C-shaped necks, but I could be wrong there.

ST80 and up are nitro. Above that is just more bling like 1P body, flame, gold hardware... So not necessarily better. I also have a couple of LS80 and my friend an LS150 and other than a nicer finish and fancier top, I didn't find anything to prefer in the LS150.

 

[slowerhand]

Is it the one in Estonia, by the way? There's a guy there who has one for sale.

 

[the_guitarboy]

A guy wants my late 80s Burny Les Paul Jr. and wants to trade me his 1979 Springy strat for it...

He is sending the strat to me to look over and I can accept and send the Burny back or deny and send his strat back...

What can I expect tonally and feel-wise?

Are they alder or ash or both?

How much do they weigh?

How fat is the neck at the first fret?

How do the pickups sound?

Will I have to swap the electronics out?

Chow,
Seegs

http://www.mylespaul.com/forums/oth...ead-rules-before-posting-254.html#post6520862

Is that the guitar? Beauty!

It's an ST50, so it should have a multipiece Ash or Alder body.

 

[Rumble]

According to the headstock, it will sound springy.

 

[telelion]

I love a discussion on the best of the early year(through 80's)MIJ guitars. I can't wait until I hear your report on the guitar Seegs but I don't know many MIJ that do not need a pickup change no matter how good a guitar.

My personal favorites in Fender style due to reasonable price, availability and excellence, are the SQ Squiers. But the Tokai Springy's and some Grecos of the similar era overall had an even better reputation. The amazing consistency was a trademark of the best early MIJ guitars, great necks, superb workmanship, and in the case of the SQ's and many Grecos(not sure about Tokai), I think one of the secret ingredients were the sen ash bodies (JV's were not sen as far as I know)as the bodies are so well balanced and "lively." Talk about a guitar sounding great acoustically. However sen is not a part of the ash family, in fact Japanese alder.

I went for a number of years in the past when they were a steal where I would refrain from posting about the MIJ gems as I was afraid it would affect my below the radar purchases, but have since acquired and kept the best of the best and many friends have the others so I now jump at every chance to spread the word though there are the naysayers. It's the reason I am not a big fan of modern MIC or MIM as I don't think they hold a candle to the aforementioned though for the record, I do prefer modern specs but I still like a few Fender style with vintage specs as it feels like home and the Gibsons do not have that issue.

Seegs, how is your Burny LP Jr.? I rate my late 80's Burny LP on par with the best off the rack production Gibson of today.

 

[Seegs]

http://www.mylespaul.com/forums/oth...ead-rules-before-posting-254.html#post6520862

Is that the guitar? Beauty!

It's an ST50, so it should have a multipiece Ash or Alder body.

Good catch...that's exact guitar!! Impressive use of the Internet...

Looks like the owner is back-pedalling and has an offer for it that he termed...not bad...he may buy my Burny or not...

I don't need to do this as my Burny is an impressive beast of a guitar in and of itself but I just don't use it much...

I was just curious about these guitars which is why I started this thread...to get info. about them...if this deal doesn't go through I may look for one anyway as they seem reasonably priced...

Chow,
Seegs