Tokai Silver Star Strat 1983 Vintage White

From Reverb.com article by: George Dyer 

Founded in 1947, Tokai Gakki Company, Ltd. – Tokai Guitars – began as an obscure Japanese musical instrument manufacturer. But they started to gain notoriety in the 1970s and ‘80s with their production of high-quality Fender and Gibson replicas that captured the old school vibes of the original instruments at a fraction of the cost.

By the early 1980s, Tokai’s Stratocaster replicas – known as Springy Sound, Goldstar Sound, and Silverstar Sound – were surpassing Fender’s American-made Strats in popularity. Stevie Ray Vaughan posed with a Tokai Springy Sound on the cover of his 1983 album Texas Flood, and Billy Gibbons of ZZ Top was spotted with his Tokai Strat replica on the road.

Tokai Strats were never perfect reproductions of vintage Fenders, and it’s debatable whether that was ever even the goal. All of these guitars included 5-way pickup selection, and only a handful of Tokais were made of genuine alder or swamp ash like early Fender Stratocasters.

Instead, most Tokai Strat replicas were constructed of sen ash, which is an Asian tonewood that is unrelated to American ash in all but appearance. A highly grained wood, sen ash is more like alder in tone, producing a strong bass and an accentuated midrange as opposed to ash’s twangier sound.

The bodies of Tokai Strat replicas were generally made of two or three beautifully grained pieces of sen ash.