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Oh that’s cute!

I like it.

So onetime FM sleepkid invited me to come see his Electric Deer Guitarworks in Japan. Last week I was in Tokyo for work, and caught the train heading north for about an hour to go visit his place. He took me to lunch with his hilarious daughter and then I visited the Electric Deer works itself, in a special workshop at his home. Let's just say my mind was blown - the amount of boutique, historic and beautiful-sounding gear was just too much to take in. Sleeper tube amps from Teisco in the 60s, Royal Super Bunny artillery-grade lead and bass amps, Voice, Mory, Guyatone ... even the last-ever Voice amp customised by Saito himself to my host's request - after a series of interviews preserving his story, amid the muddy history of Japanese guitar making from the big companies down to the individuals winding pickups in their kitchens. Oh and sleepkid plays as well as he restores things, so it was a bit of an eye opener when he fired up the Voice (Singing Electric) through an old Teisco cab and let rip on a handy Mory.
Being the guy he is, he had even saved me a bit of a lost cause guitar: a pretty 70s offset from the era when Kawai were buying up parts stock from Teisco and others, slapping them together into instruments and throwing them out the door. This Concert is going to stretch my limited skills but it'll be worth it I hope.
So far I've used the aluminium foil trick to polish the chrome parts - for those of you who haven't seen it, crumple a small wad of aluminium foil and wet it with a little water. It will scrub corrosion away with the greatest of ease and leave the chrome polished, and can't scratch it either. Apparently the scrubbing exposes fresh aluminium which the water oxidises, forming the finest Al2O3 polishing grit. Next: the bridge, which is hanging the strings up around 6mm above the fretboard despite a hefty shim. I have a tune-o-matic / ABR bridge from the Jag I bought last year, I think a solution is forming.

Good luck with the Concert, it's lovely! Also I really enjoyed reading about your visit with FM Sleepkid. Thank you.

In junior high my guitar class made a field trip trip to a local luthiery school. There was a luthier student from Japan. He showed off a guitar he was making where the body was duck shaped. The headstock was duck head shaped. He was hoping to give it Rick Nielsen. I hope he did.

randomonion wrote: Tue Feb 08, 2022 5:36 am Moving along, this arrived, shown after a clean up. Not so bizarre in that it pretty much just tries to copy a Mosrite but ... Sappho Gakki Co Ltd??? That is who made it in Japan. And it's the MAX REGER model???? Only Max Re3ger I can find was a German composer who died during WW1. Almost everything on this guitar is weird apart from the tuners.
Pickguard material for a nut, Framus style headstock/neck join (I've never seen THAT from Japan before), weird neck plate, odd pickup internals, heavy decorated plate with regular 60's era vibrato bolted top of it, Bridge appears to use cut up bolt threads.

Where is 'sleepkid' when you need him!

The neck on my old Japanese Tele Deluxe looks like this. I don't know the wood type.

Krev wrote:

The neck on my old Japanese Tele Deluxe looks like this. I don't know the wood type.

I am probably wrong, but the wood is maybe bamboo. It looks very much like the bamboo hardwood flooring we have in part of our second floor.

It does look like bamboo, doesn't it? I had a late 60s Teisco once which had a nut made from 3-ply material like that, but it also had a zero fret. I think the industry there had a major shakeout in the early 70s, lots of acquisitions and liquidations, so parts wandered from maker to maker.

Tom Wanderer wrote: Mon Mar 06, 2023 10:41 am Good luck with the Concert, it's lovely! Also I really enjoyed reading about your visit with FM Sleepkid. Thank you.

Indeed! FM sleepkid is a camp. Great dude, lovely family. I miss chatting with him online.

Beautiful guitar!

OK it followed me home. Not my fault! It was cheap and local, so ... Early 70s Suzuki made Tomson Splendor Series Mustang copy with a long scale neck. Picked it up yesterday and had friends over for dinner, so only time for a quick clean and a pickup test (they sound great, pretty raw and P90ish).
Neck will need some work - the back is a bit rough, the nut and tuners non original, and too much relief. Overall pretty sound so far. Bridge is one of those hilarious space-adjustment ones where the saddles spin on a threaded rod, it's pretty cool.