randomonion wrote: Sun Oct 17, 2021 6:53 pm

TOKAI OUT TO MAKE A POINT! Humming Birds 100S, 75S, 200S and 240S

I love this sort of stuff. But for all the wild shapes, dig on that subtle headstock design for the first two. Nice.

randomonion wrote: "I bought this off craigslist today for $100. I am quite pleased with it so far. It plays nice, and it is lightweight so I suspect that it is chambered. The pickups seem a little tinny and I'm looking forward to changing the pots and caps and installing new pickups. Does anyone have any intel on these Univoxes?"

Only that if you are going to swap out those pickups you are likely to find a ready and possibly lucrative market for them out there in interwebland.
Known as Univox Hi Flier pickups and thanks to the Kurt Cobain effect they are desired by some. There is ONE up on Ebay currently for USD $240...... No one has actually bought it of course! Good luck.

Yeah, folks dig those pickups. Make sure the wiring is correct and they aren't damaged. I've played one of these briefly but not amplified. It felt a significant step up from a Hondo II I had around that time, which was a stinker chunk of plywood that nonetheless had a fantastic neck shape, some wild howling pickups, and made the wildest overtones that made me love playing it.

The Univox was much more solid. Both had bolt on necks (not a problem) but the Hondo could hide dimes in the pocket gap. They also had a similar feel to the body. Neither heavy nor light, but tapping on the top you got an odd hollow sound. When I popped it open the Hondo It was clearly entirely made of plywood and the top layer was pressed/curved ply leaving a hollow cavity between it and the rest of the guitar. I don't know how the Univox is made, but that plywood could sustain like a mother fucker.

Not bizarre, but Japanese I guess. Check out this beauty which arrived at my door this morning: Pre-serial-numbers (<1975) but with JB type pickups (>1972) so for now I'm guessing 1973. I'll pull out a pickup sometime to see if it has a date stamp.
Bottom end model (JB420) but the neck shape is lovely and the plywood body looks pretty nice anyway.

Well thats just about perfect

Yeah that's a beauty.

I’ll take one in white, please.

It's pretty frickin good to play - the neck might be laminate but it's beautifully shaped and profiled. Those guys didn't fuck around.

Very nice!
I currently have it's slightly older brother from before they started adding 'Electric Bass' to the headstock and when they still had the 'humbucker like' metal pickups with the two rows of pole screws. I got it as a parts bass. Somebody had stitched on a new pickguard and half converted it to the normal fender pickups. They left the metal PU in the bridge position. I'll Frankenbass it's ass someday!
(As an aside, those metal pickups with the two rows of pole screws are rather nice (I think), quite punchy and tight. The one that came off my bass read around 8.2 K which is pretty typical).

Check out this behemoth! Out of Fujigen Gakki and no later than 1965 (maybe '66 at a pinch), so they were pretty quick off the mark as I believe the Gibson Thunderbird was only released in 1963. Feels like it was built from the picture in the Gibson catalogue! rather than an actual example. 33 1'2" scale, MASSIVE neck, 61mm at the 12th fret.

Would.

MoreSpaceEcho wrote: Tue Jan 18, 2022 6:41 pmWould.

Hard Agree.