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| Vintage by Saiichi Sugiyama Updated : Vintage Tokyo - 1974 and Now The summer of '08 is basically over. I was in a number of very nice vintage guitar shops in Tokyo on my trip earlier this summer. I always seem to find some guitars that I have a holiday romance with in Tokyo nowadays and some of them I brought home. Until recently, it was always the case that you had to pay a lot more for a vintage piece in Japan. Like it has been here in the UK, the shop prices there consisted of the US price plus a substantial dealer’s margin. The situation changed for some reason and now, you can find a real bargain in Tokyo. I suppose as more and more vintage guitars were imported to Japan, there was a build up of a substantial local stock in Japan and given the stagnating Japanese economy since the '90s and the general practice of lower trade-in prices there, if the dealer does not charge a big margin, you can find some guitars below the US market price let alone the UK prices. Made-in-Japan Replicas In the last posting, I talked about the awe that I was struck with when I walked into a Tokyo shop with rows of Les Paul sunbursts and two-tone Strats. I had thought more about this and just realised how all of this might have started. I was first introduced to vintage guitars in 1973 by columns written by Tomiaki “Tommy” Hidaka (1950-1986), the singer-songwriter-guitarist of a Japanese band, Garo. They were heavily influenced by the British and American rock of the late '60s and were a well-respected young band in the budding Tokyo rock scene of the time, until they had a major chart success with a pop song written by a M.O.R writer. They then became a nationwide celebrity for a little while before breaking up... Tap Tone - from a Baby's Mouth I was messing around with my newly acquired 2003 Brazilian fingerboard Historic 1958 Reissue (R8) Les Paul – my friend Koji Mori at Ishibashi Guitars in Tokyo had set this one aside for me when it came in, but, me being in the UK, it took us literally years to hook up and for me to pick it up from his shop in Tokyo. I hadn’t bought a brand new guitar for some ten years previous and it was a treat. I love the playability of this new guitar as the fingerboard is dead straight and it has the right sort of tonal colour. I personally think, although it is a matter of personal opinion, that the fingerboard wood has something to do with the acoustic tone of a Gibson solidbody electric guitar. My hunch is that that is the reason why (a) a ‘68 Les Paul Custom with its maple top acoustically sounds very different from a Goldtop from the same year; and (b) ‘50s Les Paul Customs with their mahogany body still have those tight treble harmonics. Sound is something totally subjective and it may be my ears are deceiving me – but that is my humble opinion on which I base my personal purchase decisions... The Vintage Pignose Amp I have recently been collecting vintage Pignose amps. They are pretty much the only vintage amps that are actually affordable to the extent that I can have a half dozen of them in a row, compare the sound and choose the best one or two to record with. I probably should not be writing this piece just in case some collectors are reading this and decide to to stock pile on them and push the market price up. The thing is, either not many people latched on to the fact that the ‘70s made-in-USA Pignose is a wonderful amplifier that was used on many classic recordings (the modern made-in-Hong Kong reissue versions don’t record like the old ones at all or I have no ear), or the sound of the vintage Pignose (which is a transistor amp after all) is rubbish and does not deserve to be revered. It's a matter of opinion, of course, but I certainly have recorded with them through a vintage AKG tube C12 microphone and surprised the engineer and others with the sound I got out of this little amp... Add RSS Feeds To My Web Pages |