Gear

Forgive me for I have sinned. Six days without posting. That breaks all the blog rules. Still, never mind, I'm here now. This is such a CRAZY season.

I was wondering if you'd like to know a little bit about my guitar stuff. No? Sorry. It is what I do, after all! So all non-musos can go and have a cup of tea and come back in a while ok?

Acoustic guitar:
Tacoma JK28C. It's a big jumbo acoustic with a cutaway, Koa wood back and sides and a beautiful big sound with even tone across the strings. I bought it at Gruhn's in Nashville in August 1998.










Electric Guitars:
Firstly, the one previously mentioned on this blog. Yamaha Super Flighter SF500. Probably late 1970s. Modified with a Kent Armstrong humbucker bought from eBay in the bridge position.










Secondly, I have a Tokai Goldstar Sound, probably 1984. It is on loan from Tim, Chris Norman's brother. I borrowed it in 1990. So that would be about... sixteen years I suppose. Sorry Tim. It's great, and I'm still using it all the time ok?

Technically it is an exact replica of a 1954 Fender Strat. Except that Tokai substituted a five way pickup selector for the original three way item, and the truss rod is adjustable with a metric allen key instead of a screwdriver. The really cool thing about this guitar is that it changed history.

In the late seventies and early eighties, Fender was going through a really low period. Their guitars were being made poorly, and still priced very high. Tokai shocked them out of this by producing this guitar to a much higher standard than Fender's equivalent, and selling it much cheaper. This provoked Fender to start their Japanese manufacturing facility to compete with Tokai, and to make massive quality improvements in the USA plant to be able to justify the high prices on the guitars being produced there.

Okay, I'm going to bed now. I'll add more to this tomorrow.