Uk Ant
New member
So I’ve got myself a Les Paul, well a Tokai Love Rock but it’s so close to a Gibson as makes no odds.
No I’m buying it off my sister and it’s not technically mine until I give her the money but it’s in my house now and last night it went for its first band practice.
Now I’ve tried a few LP’s down the years, Gibson’s and Epiphone’s mainly but I’d never had one on a strap before (well apart from my old Satelite thing that really doesn’t count and was a long time ago) and the first thing that struck me was the position of the neck relative to my body. This seemed much more suited to my general body geometry than my Ibanez. The net result is that it’s much more suited to singing and playing at the same time.
Sound wise it was pretty good as well. Now it’s not the top of the range Tokai’s with the Seymour’s in them, it’s just the Tokai PAF MK II’s. Now I know very little about these pups but they strike me as being lowish output pups with A5 magnets, but I could be wrong. Sound wise they’re ok, decidedly better than the MK IV’s that come in the Korean made Tokai’s. All in all the guitar has good character but is possibly lacking a bit of balls, I’m quite tempted to nick the C5 from my explorer and dump it in the bridge to see what it sounds like.
All round this is a very fine instrument. It’ll cost me £300 ($600) when I get round to paying my sister which is a great deal less than a second hand Gibson standard. Now I’m not going to say that this guitar is as good as a Gibson, it’s probably better made mind and new out of the box you can bet it will be better set up. I’d say that a proper Gibson has a certain something more, but then again they’re twice the price and that’s a lot to pay for a very small percentage.
If you fancy a LP but think Gibson’s are a bit pricey for what you get then check out Tokai’s, but do spend a bit more and get the Jap made ones, they’re much better guitars.
In other LP news our other guitarist should be getting a mid eighties Burny white LP custom today (possibly next week). Now this is also a Jap copy so it’ll be interesting to see how it compares to his Gibson and my Tokai.
Now all I need is a new set of strings and to find my feeler gauges.
No I’m buying it off my sister and it’s not technically mine until I give her the money but it’s in my house now and last night it went for its first band practice.
Now I’ve tried a few LP’s down the years, Gibson’s and Epiphone’s mainly but I’d never had one on a strap before (well apart from my old Satelite thing that really doesn’t count and was a long time ago) and the first thing that struck me was the position of the neck relative to my body. This seemed much more suited to my general body geometry than my Ibanez. The net result is that it’s much more suited to singing and playing at the same time.
Sound wise it was pretty good as well. Now it’s not the top of the range Tokai’s with the Seymour’s in them, it’s just the Tokai PAF MK II’s. Now I know very little about these pups but they strike me as being lowish output pups with A5 magnets, but I could be wrong. Sound wise they’re ok, decidedly better than the MK IV’s that come in the Korean made Tokai’s. All in all the guitar has good character but is possibly lacking a bit of balls, I’m quite tempted to nick the C5 from my explorer and dump it in the bridge to see what it sounds like.
All round this is a very fine instrument. It’ll cost me £300 ($600) when I get round to paying my sister which is a great deal less than a second hand Gibson standard. Now I’m not going to say that this guitar is as good as a Gibson, it’s probably better made mind and new out of the box you can bet it will be better set up. I’d say that a proper Gibson has a certain something more, but then again they’re twice the price and that’s a lot to pay for a very small percentage.
If you fancy a LP but think Gibson’s are a bit pricey for what you get then check out Tokai’s, but do spend a bit more and get the Jap made ones, they’re much better guitars.
In other LP news our other guitarist should be getting a mid eighties Burny white LP custom today (possibly next week). Now this is also a Jap copy so it’ll be interesting to see how it compares to his Gibson and my Tokai.
Now all I need is a new set of strings and to find my feeler gauges.
