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Formerly TheGuitarWeasel ... Oil City Pickups ... Oil City Blog 7 String.org profile and message
Whilst both the Tokai's and JV Squier's were not DNA vintage replica's they were streets ahead of anything we'd seen before hand
Whilst Squire's were imported via the official Fender authorised channels, Tokai's were imported by those related to the Doncaster Mafia - But we purchased what we could, when we could get them in a host of colours - Bigger variation of colours back then from Tokai compared to Squier
Years later I think the hype, surrounding early 80's Jap Fender's is bigger than the reality - That doesn't mean they are poor instruments as they are not - But wearing my 'players hat' I could buy a good Mex replica today, for far less, hot rod it up as required - Have a comparable, maybe even better guitar, plus change - I agree £750/1000 covers both the collector and player market - 1.5K and above, IMO is crazy money
Back to the JVs and SQs from Japan - I too am old enough to remember them in period. Some of them were excellent - and after watching Alan Murphy and Steve Rothery get some incredible tones from them, I've sought them out a few times in my life. I gigged a battered sunburst one for a while and it *was* a better guitar than the equivalent US Fender of the period. The 80s weren't a good time for Fender, lets be honest...
I don't agree with the price hyping - and there *are* a lot of them around. I know of a pile of them in a loft in Kent - from when they were £50 a pop. They were gigged, enjoyed and when worn out added to the pile. The trouble is the vintage Stealers are now adding the Vintage Tax to them... and there's a lot of folks sucking on that cool aid (to use the parlance). As a result, the prices have skyrocketed with certain Stealers. Are they selling? Are they shite.
Are they better than a Mexican? Some and some. Are they better than a US? Depends on many factors. Put it another way, I took my much later Jap Squier Strat (mojo pickups and callaham bridge) to Coda a few years back as a 'datum' when trying Custom Shop Fenders. It sounded on a par, if not better in some cases - and because it feels like an old pair of slippers I preferred the way it played to most of the CS guitars Coda had. But thats just my opinion.
Is this guitar worth the asking price - not to me. But if someone picks it up and 100% connects with it... why not? I think guitarists (and blokes of a certain age) tend to get grumpy and fixated on things being the way they think those things should be, and pour scorn all too readily. As we all *know* (don't we), where something is made and when it was made is not a 100% guarantee of how "good" it may be. There are plenty of highly average 1960s Fenders out there - I know, I owned a very average 1965 one! It took a lot of internal convincing to realise my costly mistake...
:-)
But then, some people have no taste - some even like Teslas ;-).
I love a gadget, but modern cars seem to be filled with all the very worst ideas that just had nowhere else to go...
As for wether it’s worth the money, I wouldn’t sell my main ‘83 JV Squier Strat for £1500, it’s a better guitar than any of the 40+ Strats I’ve owned over the last 30 years, sometime it’s the guitar not the logo.