![]() ![]() you can feel these features when you pick it up”. Tokai made a great effort to replicate this precise shape, explaining that “it takes very long to sandpaper a corner. ![]() In its 1978/79 catalogues Tokai lamented that “The ‘54 Strat's body shape was significantly bolder than it is today, with distinctive deep back cuts and armrest cuts these large cuts fit the guitarist's body and keep a high degree of performance and styling”. The 50s Fender catalogues advertised the Strat’s “contoured” shape fitting the players body snugly and providing comfort. Finally, however, Fender entered into an agreement with Tokai to manufacture Fender guitars at their Japanese factories in the late 1990s. I believe the two companies were exploring a partnership of some kind in the 1980s which did not materialize and might have cost Tokai some financial setbacks. A communication from Tokai to Leo Fender in 1982 expressed the budding company's respect for the iconic design of the original Strat and explained that Tokai had no intentions of interfering with CBS's business in the US. These guitars were becoming an actual threat to Fender’s own sales at the time. And the results were clearly appreciated by players, even as famous as Stevie Ray Vaugn who has been pictured in a few places with a Tokai Strat. A rough translation from a catalogue tells us that Tokai “formed a project team consisting of about 10 people including musicians and veteran craftsmen (and) as a result of thorough research and tireless efforts, we have completed a series in which the performance has been upgraded as well as completed restoration of the original.” They dismantled and reverse engineered actual vintage Strats in their efforts to achieve “ thoroughness and transcendence”. ![]() Across all its models, not only did Tokai claim to reincarnate the iconic Strat, but they were audacious enough to suggest that they “improved it”. ![]()
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