The one I bought in '86 was. And it was a cracking guitar.

BTW.... If anyone out there finds a mid-80s MIJ Strat, black.rosewood with a cloisonné yin-yang symbol inlaid into the pickguard, tell me where to find it. It was last in the possession of someone in Indianapolis, IN, USA, about 20 years ago.... loaned to this person by it's second owner, I don't even know the name of the last person I knew had it.

If I see anything like that, I'll tell you!

This was an interesting thread/topic. However, once again, I had to be the first guy to say "fake." It feels so negative!

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Member #26797
My other guitar is a Strat.

It's a dirty job, but someone has to do it...

Cheers - C

wOW I wonder how I missed this post. But I have to say reading it from begining to end was really enjoyable. I have to say the one thing I knew for sure was that it was no 57. But damm this case was solved like a homicide.lol I have to admit it is a real nice looking ax and I bet it sounds and plays great to. Those Japanese guys did do some amazing work. Well at least the kid has a nice ax I just wish it had the right decal so it would be worth more for him.But those Tokai Strats are in demand and he can probably get a good offer or swap with a player.

Thanks for the reply on the price but i doubt he would want to sell it anyway as it is still a nice guitar even if its not an actual Strat, its good to have an idea of value tho.

I never knew about Mark Knopflers guitar, that's a little surprising so i tried to look for some videos of him talking about that guitar but all i found was some sites pretty much saying the same as yourself.

How 'rare' are these fakes? are there many going about at all?
Regarding the comments saying that someone has later taken the guitar and suck the Fender logo on the headstock, im not so sure.
It looks very professional put on, when comparing with other guitar around that time i cant see much difference so i figure it was produced like that in the factory.
Anyone know if these fakes were well known? do you think it could have started out in a guitar store who were selling it saying it was real?


I would also be grateful if someone could have a look at the pictures of the inside of the guitar and neck and possibly address the numbers/writing i found and explane what they mean.
Previous posts say its possible that this guitar was a parts guitar or the body could possibly be off an original fender?
I just don't want to leave no stone unturned and hopefully try to trace this guitar back as much as possible!

Thanks again for everyone's help, i appreciate everyone's time and knowledge as it has helped a lot.
I think il be sure to stick around here in the future.

traycat113, glad you enjoyed the read, i did too! haha.

The codes on the body and neck match, indicating that they started life together (as a Tokai '50s strat copy).

As for the meaning of the codes, 11=12 supposedly means it was from batch 12 in month 11 (November). The serial number puts it at 1983.
The FO is the color code: flamingo orange.

Someone did a great job of installing the decal. We have quite a few forum members who could do that.

Cheers!

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Member #26797
My other guitar is a Strat.

Thanks for these answer! one thing tho.. how do you know it was 1983? i have been reading that it is very hard to date old tokai fender style guitars.
Infact i just finished reading a recent interview with the owner of tokai and that's pretty much what he said.

The link that nikininja gave had a table of serial numbers and years.

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Member #26797
My other guitar is a Strat.

OK, this is for Nikininja really, but it fits in with the thread... with all the talk of Springy Sounds going on I thought I'd take a look to see if any were available locally... Two beauties, a Candy Apple/Maple and a Sunburst/Rosewood, both practically on my doorstep, and both will probably go for the AUD $1,000 starting price or lower.

local pickup only means 54 hours of flight time for me . I'd best return to my european hunt.

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No no and no

Ah, sorry, I did mean local for me ... probably by the time you sorted out import duties and the like the price would no longer be good. It was more that I was surprised to see a couple right away after having forgotten about them all these years. My original guitar would have been made a few years after the Springy Sounds, but I still wish I had it back. $609, direct from the factory..! If anyone ever has actually found a viable way to have guitars sent to them on the other side of the planet, you'll have to let me know... it doesn't seem fair that Europe is starved of the best Japanese reissues...

*edit* heh... that dude just dropped his opening bid to $950 on both guitars...

At this moment I count five early '80s Springy Sounds on UK Ebay (all from Japan), all but one of them in the £300-400 range.

Hmmm. There was a time...

Cheers - C

YOU probably mentioned the colour,it looks the same colour as my mark knopfler sig strat (didnt have time to read everything) Is the colour of this strat ,fiesta red or hot rod red?

Tokai called that color Flamingo Orange. The code for that was FO.
It was a custom color. They charged 5000 Yen more for it!

Check out the link in one of nikininja's first post in this topic.

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Member #26797
My other guitar is a Strat.

What Niki says sounds right.I think I may have confused a couple different guitars. I am trying to Email, my buddy with the Tokai, and see what he has to say. I haven't seen him in years, we live on different ends of the country now.

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I'm not an expert, but I play one on the internet.