The sunburst alone on this lovely Tokai strat tells me it's early 1980s - from the era when Japanese Tokais were the only serious alternative to Fender USA Strats.... until the Squier 'JV' series of Stratocasters started production in Japan. I had one of those from brand new (sold it a couple of years ago) and this Tokai feels very similar to that guitar. When Stu gave me this guitar to work on we initially agreed to leave the worn-out frets alone for a coupe of reasons: the first being that he loved the flat, smooth feel of the frets and the second being that there were no real playability issues. So the brief was to fit a Tusq nut and string trees; to clean up and check all components and to set up as well as possible without any fret levelling involved. As I set about doing that a number of other issues started to emerge. The first was that the guitar was buzzing when played - tracked down to a completely worn out tuner (the worst of several worn out tuners). The case was gaping, the gears weren't meshing safely and the whole lot would continue rattling until eventually grinding itself out and breaking teeth. Next, I discovered springy fret ends (up at the top on the bass side). These were sticking up and preventing any lowering of the action. The problem was that glueing the frets was marginal because of the amount of grime under the crowns... On top of that, I found three or four frets with two lines of gouges of the kind that strings make when the guitar falls face-down onto something hard. The strings bash into the frets causing a line of little nicks that get in the way of string bends. I finished the clean up, nut and tree change along with checking the electrics and shielding the cavity... Another problem was that the saddles were a mis-matched set, including two narrow ones and one with USA / Imperial hex keys rather than metric. The screws were rusty and the whole thing was a mess.
When I shared my further findings with Stu he made the decision to go for new tuners, new brass saddles and an EVO gold re-fret so this guitar will re-appear in the next couple of weeks getting those things done. It'll be challenging because I'm going to do the re-fret without re-radiusing / re-finishing the fingerboard. The reason for this is to retain the vintage 'mojo' of the neck but the cost of doing that is not being completely in control of the surface onto which I'll be fretting. For this reason I need to build in a little more height to allow for room to 'level my way out' of any ups and downs in the fingerboard (ups and downs that re-radiusing would level out). I also have to hope that the worn poly finish holds together and allows me to mask the fingerboard to sand and polish out the new frets... We shall see.
