Tokai Custom Edition

I got this guitar back in '92 or so from The Guitar Shop in Glasgow and it really is a superstrat of it's time. Pointy headstock, floyd licenced vibrato, 2 single coils and a humbucker and a gorgeous deep metallic purple finish. As one other reviewer mentioned - I thought it was black until I got it under decent lighting.

It's a 3 piece body judging by the seams in the finish on the back, but it's an unknown wood -probably basswood but it's a bit heavy for just that. The next is 21 frets, maple with a rosewood fingerboard. Frets are jumbo and used to be pretty high - but not that durable.

I'm gonna rate this a 9 - it's a good guitar for the price I paid (about #280)

This was my main guitar for recording and gigging for 15 years until the frets wore down too far. I play mainly prog metal and this guitar had just the right sound with the bridge pickup - tight bottom end, bell like middles and cutting top end without being screechy, the other pickups I used... occasionally - and they were OK after I'd had them wax sealed. I did find the top E could be a bit quiet but biasing the pickups higher for that string made a huge difference.

The floyd was pretty good at staying in tune and didn;t seem to cut the sustain too much.

I generally used it through a Marshall JMP-1 and 8008 valvestate power amp with 2 Marshall 2x12 cabs (easier to carry than a 4x12 :-). For live work this guitar cut through without being strident, could chug away under vocals without muddiness and cold give a very musical sustained feedback when driven hard.

Recently it developed a problem with feedback at high gain settings but it could just be the pickups need re-sealing or there's a dry solder joint somewhere.

I keep trying to find another guitar with the 'growl' that this guitar has - it's not too dull, not to harsh but it's got real body. I would say it suits my style perfectly but it may well be that my style evolved to fit the guitar... So I'll give it a 9.

The finish is great and durable, it's got a few nicks and bumps round the edges but it's in better nick than some of my newer guitars that haven't been gigged. I've forgotten how it was setup when I got it - I've changed the setup many times since then (detuning, dropped D, lighter strings, heavier strings) and it's usually been easy to setup. Tuning stability is good and at one point I could get away with using the fine tuner to drop the bottom e to D whilst gigging.

THe metal of the floyd is not the best - it's fared least well of all of the fitments. I've stripped a couple of threads on the string clamps but they can be replaced with other floyd lookalike parts. The fit of the bar was a little high so I got it bent and then used paper to get the arm swivel right.

I looked into getting a proper floyd replacement but then just bought a new guitar instead.

The action has always been good - very stable.

This guitar withstands live playing, and kicking, and beer, and people standing on it. It's fallen off the stand several times, it's been knocked, bashed, dropped, drooled on (don't ask) and still looks damn good.

Eventually, the frets wear down and while this is a good guitar it's probably not worth getting a re-fret (although, I have to convince myself of that every so often) so that limits the useful lifetime - to about 15 years...

I've had no contact with Tokai.

I've been playing for 20 years now and this is still my favourite guitar. I finally splashed out on a used Ibanez JS1000 which is my main axe now and it's great - but in different ways. I miss the growl but I don;t miss the weight but I'm still trying to recapture the solo tone that the Tokai had. I'd get one again if I saw it. But it would be on the shelf next to the hens teeth...

I think I got this guitar around 1994/5, and it was 2nd hand.
The guy in the shop said it was from the 80's, and who am I to argue.
My one is jet black, with a few battle scars.
The Floyd Rose locking trem is great, I'd never used one before buying this guitar, and it holds tuning well no matter how mad you go with it.
My one is jet black, with a few scratches and dinks.
s-s-h... 5 way selector... a volume knob and a tone knob.
One stange little thing I love about it are the massive strap buttons! They really are amazing, wish my other guitars had them.
Don't know what kind of wood it is, but it's the heaviest guitar I have.

I play most kinds of music, from classic surf rock to britpop but not really heavy metal. This guitar can do anything!
Mine has a faded cream neck pickup which looks quite old and sounds great, very bluesy. The middle p/up is a stock L.White which I quite like, it has a very bright sound, and mixes well with the neck p/up. I presume the humbucker is stock too, oodles of great rock tone in there.
This guitar mainly gets used with an old Peavy Bandit that I'd got a year or two before the guitar. Clean it's pretty bright, turn up the gain and you can get deep dark rock. Really you can get most sounds with this guitar. The only effect I've been using with it lately is an MXR phaser. Sounds great... no matter what I try to play with it.

When I first got the guitar the intonation was pretty bad.
I fixed that within an hour of buying it.
The action is great, very low making the guitar very playable.
Finished in jet black with cream binding on the neck.

This guitar has been through the wars with me and I've never felt the need for a backup when playing live.
A few years ago the tone knob died suddenly.
It turned out to be a bad solder joint, so was easily fixed.
No problems with it before that, or since.

I hear Tokai have started making guitars again, but when I bought this they were well and truely history.
I've never delt with them, and they're probably not supporting their old models.

I've been playing since 13 years and have gathered loads of stuff over that time.
This guitar is still my main one, despite having newer and older stablemates.
The variety of tones available from it is amazing.
If it were stolen I'd definitely try to get another one, though I'm not sure it would be easy!

This is my main guitar. I bought it new in Live Music! in Edinburgh in 1990. It's just off-white with a very subtle pearlescent effect, bound fingerboard with snowdrift inlays, essentially a Jackson "super-strat" type guitar, with a very Jackson-like headstock. It has a bridge humbucker and two single coils labelled "L.White", single volume and single tone knob and a five-way selector, all passive. Floyd Rose II copy trem system with locking nut, which I set up to be floating when I first bought it. Bolt on neck with single truss rod accessible from the head end. No idea of the wood types but it's of average to heavy weight for a guitar of this type; the fingerboard wood is very dark - probably rosewood - with jumbo frets.

I mainly play British metal, so I like big rumbling rhythm sounds rather than bee-in-a-jar solos. This guitar is great for that. The bridge humbucker has a very fat growling sound - to the point of not being very useful clean. For lead it cuts through the rest of the band without screeching in everyone's ears, although that could be down to my Laney amp. The single coils are a tiny bit weedy sounding, and can be microphonic at gig volumes. There's a nice bluesy clean or dirty sound from the neck pickup and a twangy country sound with the neck and middle pickups together. There are no extra noises, even when switching pickups. Overall there are a good variety of sounds, most of them useable. I may change the single coils at some point, but they've done okay up to now.

Well, it's a while since I bought it so I can't remember the factory set up. I set everything up myself when I first bought it. All the important things that I can't or wouldn't adjust myself (construction, frets, fitting of major hardware components, wiring, etc.) has been top quality. The paint chips easily, but the damage doesn't detract too much from the guitar's good looks - if like me you like a guitar to look like it's seen lots of fun, that is!

I've never questioned the reliability of this guitar - it's just always been there for me, with or without backup. It's gigged and jammed a lot over the years, and other than some paint chips it still feels and looks very solid. I used to use a locking strap but now just have a standard leather one with no problems.

It's a great guitar to play and with the floyd rose it simply stays in tune forever. You can dive down until the strings are hanging off the fretboard, finger a chord and when you release it rings out perfectly!

I've started thinking recently it's showing its age - it could do with some fret dressing and possibly with some minor setup adjustments. In particular I think the G string intonation is ever so slightly out now.

I've never needed to contact the manufacturer.

This was my second guitar I ever bought, and my first ever serious one. I've played it through Laney amps for as long as I've had it, and always been happy with that growling British metal sound. It's versatile, however and is happy laying back and jamming a bit of blues or even jazz. If it were stolen I'd be distraught - I was wondering about buying a new guitar but couldn't decide what to get, so I've stuck with the Tokai. I think it would be very hard to find another these days.

Recently I was told by a guy in a guitar shop that the Tokai Custom Edition was better than the Charvels of the time but for less money. Take from that what you will!

In short, if you buy one in good condition you won't be disappointed.

Uh, I bought it used, so I don't know exactly when it was made, but when I was buying it, I was told that it was about four years old and that was 5 years ago so... late 80's I suppose. Don't know what wood it is either, but it's heavier than my basswood Ibanez and sustains a little better. Made in Japan, anyway, with 22 smallish frets (just great), bolt-on neck, S-S-H pickups with a simple 5-way selector, one volume and one tone knob, all passive. The body is strat shaped, but the neck is bound and has sharktooth inlays and is more like a Gibson or Epiphone neck, but thinner (and 25.5" scale), and the headstock is an angular downward-pointing thing just like Jacksons have. Bridge is Floyd Rose with string locks. No pickguard.
Finish is very dark purple with metal flakes, but it usually looks almost black. I only noticed it was actually purple after I'd bought it. It's durable, after all the bangs this guitar has been through, one has to look very closely to notice any dents or scratches in it.
I give it 7 for features. No frills, but everything it needs (except that I think I'll install a series/parallel switch for the neck pickup.).

Well, the stock single coils were terrible, but the bridge humbucker is excellent. Oh, all the stock pickups were labeled "L. WHITE", by the way. My musical style mostly goes through all shades of overdrive and distortion, but I do pretty often play clean, too. The bridge humbucker is quite hot and has a great shredding sound, so I've been happy with it. I've replaced the single coils with an EMG Select in the middle and a Sky STCR-1 in the neck, and now I actually use the pickup selector, too.
There is some noise, but not much. Since I only used the humbucker, which sounds ok (but only ok) clean, I didn't get that much variety out of it, except for different overdrive/metal sounds.
The rating is 9 for the bridge humbucker (it could have a bit more bass) and 3 for the single coils. I won't rate the new pickups here, but they are a huge improvement.

Finish is good, as I said earlier. Not perfect, there are a few very small flaws like excess glue on neck binding and such, but nothing serious, and I think it's very good.
I tried to trade it in once, but the guy at the shop noticed that a tremolo srew was trying to break free and there was a tiny crack in the top of the body, which I hadn't even noticed. So, they wouldn't take it unless I had it repaired. After the repairs and proper setup and everything it played like a dream and I was so happy with it, that I didn't even consider trading it in anymore.

I haven't played live, but this guitar could take it (the strings, though, are a different matter... I've never broken a string except when tuning, and only the high E at that, but you never know.)
Other than the thing with the tremolo, it hasn't given me any problems at all. It never even occurred to me that a strap could slip off a strap button, so I guess they are pretty good. I had to unscrew them from the body to get the strap on, after all.

No idea whatsoever.

This was my first guitar, and I bought it about 5 years ago. I haven't seen another one, so it might be something of a problem to buy a new one if it was stolen. There have been a few dislikes in it along the way, but the only one I can recall is the tremolo. Not that it's bad, but changing the strings or the tuning is a little difficult and requires tools. It does stay in tune, however.
I almost sold it, but now I'm glad I didn't. It just feels so... well... right to me. Maybe it's just that I'm so used to it after five years, but most other guitars just feel a little awkward to me. And I really like the sound, especially with the new pickups.