One can still find a Gibson guitar for relatively inexpensive dough on occasion, and sell it for more. With products like the Tokai, some models, like the "lawsuit" LP( Love Rock?), and Strat have collector value, but they're still more difficult to sell for decent dough. While that's great for an end user, I think the actual quality and value of modern asian guitars will continue to be less recognized than their american counterparts.
Morning guys, It is true to a degree that the Gibsons{good ones} will hold and increase in value but so do some of the Japanese guitars. The Greco super real 1200 and 1800 models are selling for more than a typical Gibson and as much as custom shop versions and are still going up in value, these guitars {as well as many others} are excellent quality and were made in the late 1970's and early 80's, 6 or 7 years ago you could pick them up for a few hundred dollars, now they are worth thousands and a getting very hard to find. I agree, there are some brilliant guitars made in the US like Dean, BC Rich, Suhr and many others all of which are very expensive guitars. I have 3 Tokai's, 2 "love rocks" and a "springy sound" {2 LP's and a strat}, the first 2 pictures above are Tokai's and the third is a 1983 Greco, the Gold top i paid 695 USD for 2 years ago, i was recently offered 3 grand for it and the cherry burst is worth more, the Greco was a steal at 395USD and is easily worth a lot more . It is quite interesting when you start looking into it, just how good a guitar you can have either made or buy both in the states and overseas, my experience has been extremely good with the Japanese guitars because of the pride and skill they display and proudly boast of in the making of their guitars. I bought all my LP's and Japanese guitars online so i was never able to play them first, they are all keepers.
My 2 Tokai's are both Custom order guitars and built by a luthier by the name of Kunishi Furahashi,he has been building high end Tokai's for some time now and is a fanatic about guitars, LP's in particular, actually the LP's are the only guitars he builds. He makes high end guitars for a couple of Japan's finest guitar makers. Azure, the Norlin era is probably a period in time that Gibson would rather forget, the guitars were mainly made for profit and not many good ones were made in this period, construction was poor , wood quality was low and it nearly broke the company, Fender had similar problems while owned by CBS.
Simon, i think the perception of the Japanese guitars being cheap copies has long gone, i am looking at the current Tokai catalogue and the new top of the line Tokai LP is 540,000 yen Around 5,500USD, by no means a cheap guitar, ESP has guitars in excess of 30,000USD and even higher so there are a lot of high end guitars coming out of Japan and funnily enough, there has been for over 30 years now, the reason they were not known about was because being direct replica's they were only sold in Japan, that has all changed now. Look up Aussie guitars as well mate, Maton make some of the finest acoustic guitars going around as well. I know there are a lot of great western guitar makers but my whole point here is to know what you are buying and shop around because generally if you are going to pay 5 grand for a US or Aussie made guitar you will be able to fine something easily as good for a lot less in Japan.
If you guys are interested i have thousands of links to Japanese guitar sites and i also collect Japanese catalogues sent directly to me from Japan, the latest ESP catalogue has 140 pages its a bloody huge catalogue...
Just thought i would mention both the Reverend from ZZ Top and Stevie Ray Vaughn play and endorsed at different times in their careers, Tokai Guitars, Jimmy page endorsed Greco guitars as well, all long before they were "discovered" in the West....
Mick
