After a long and pointless ordeal with the seller and TradeMe, the Tokai is resurrected and alive.
To cut a long story short the seller sold me this for $900, shipped it in a folded cardboard sheet, didn't explain any of the issues (including how it was reradiused and refretted on a kitchen table and the worst job imaginable), ghosted me, and then left me bad feedback.
My mate called it a "pump and dump screw job" which is about right.
Anyway. After a refret, cleaned up radius, new nut, and setup by Ramsay, and a rewiring by me it's almost back to it's former glory albeit with a 20" radius.
I always wanted a white/rosewood strat, but in lefty they're hard to find as Fender only made them for very limited years and the MIJ ones aren't really to my liking so when this came along I was pretty smitten.
The Goldstar sound was what used to be the Springy Sound, which is what SRV is holding on the cover of Texas Flood. In later years they photoshopped the logo off of the headstock but you can see it here on a poster from the original run:
But now?
That's by the by I guess.
These are made in Japan and allegedly a replica of 1962 strats, which Tokai allegedly deconstructed, analysed, measured, then cloned. They must have been doing something right as Tokai was then awarded the contract by Fender to make their Japanese line so if you've got a MIJ Fender strat from the 80s and into the 90s, it's the same guitar as this but with different hardware.
I'm all over the place. Sorry.
Check these tanlines:
You can see the little codes they used in the cavity too, which further points to the early-mid 80s era and lists the CNC profile, the CNC machine, and the finish used. In this case OW means Off White. The Y after that is the source of much debate, allegedly it denotes JDM market and not export, but Tokai have never said.
The neck was badly reradiused and fretted as a 20" neck (Ibanez RG use 17"). Since these copied the 62 Fenders they had the same 'veneer' rosewood board which is just a thin strip glued to the maple. You can see here how they very nearly went through the rosewood and how it compares to the original radius:
It plays great now though, and as a hater of vintage radius and vintage frets this is so far hitting that sweet spot of vintage looks but a bit more modern playability.
Nut width is 42mm and the back contour is a thin C. It's slightly skinny, but not too bad at all.
Obligatory floor and sock shot:
More:
Nice thing. Plays nicely, sounds exactly like you'd think a strat should with the VII pickups (A5 and 5.7k each) and it's an incredibly resonant guitar, there's a definite 'something' going on with it where it feels slightly more alive than my other guitars.
Overall, a shit beginning with a happy ending that resulted in a fantastic guitar.
