Takamine are one of the most beloved acoustic guitar brands on the planet. From their beginnings beneath a mountain in Japan to worldwide exposure via big name players like Bruce Springsteen choosing them above all other brands, Takamine are a brand that have defined Far Eastern guitar craft and become an institution.
Yes, but what’s all this about a mountain? Indeed, Mt Takamine itself, in central Japan. Takamine started here (in the town of Sakashita to be more precise) as a family-run industry back in 1959. The company grew throughout the sixties and became known as a pioneering, innovative brand, responsible for revolutionising electro-acoustic guitars with under-saddle pickups in the late-70s. Takamine were also the first to use actual vacuum tubes in their Cool Tube acoustic guitar onboard preamps.
Takamine, like most big guitar makers, offer guitars in a variety of ranges and price brackets. From low cost, high value G Series instruments, right up to special edition models made in their Japanese premises, Takamine have guitars for every player. These Japanese models, known as the Pro Series, are revered as some of the greatest acoustic guitars available anywhere and it is thesethat we want to look at today!
Westone Spectrum St 4 String Bass Guitar (1986, Made In Japan)
Takamine TK guitars are top class instruments, designed and built in Japan to the most uncompromising of standards. Select tonewoods, hand-shaped neck profiles, all-solid construction and lots of subtle detailing are elements that make up a Takamine Pro Seriesguitar.
These delicious instrumentsare made in a range of body sizes: Dreadnought, Jumbo, NEX and more. The range is vast, with instruments for rhythm players, fingerpickers and all other types of acoustic player.
We have just taken delivery of a select groip of these guitars and we are making them available at scandalously good prices! These are all professional spec, top-end Takamine TK models: Japanese-made and unseasonably good! Let’s take a quick skip through one or two of these...
Fender Made In Japan Limited International Color Precision Bass, Maui Blue
First up, we’ll draw your attention across to this subtle and lovely dreadnought. Made with select solid Spruce and Rosewood, this is a guitar for the traditional connoisseur. Spruce and Rosewood together make one of the most revered acoustic guitar tone profiles: bright, responsive and detailed with strength and a firm low end. An Ebony fingerboard is a masterful addition, bringing beauty and feel to the playing surface. A touch of elegant detailing in the form of an abalone rosette and Maple binding draws everything together with subtle taste. This truly is refined guitar building.
Under the hood lies Takamine’s aforementioned and game-changing Cool Tubes preamp system for a plugged-in sound that is virtually unmatched throughout the industry. This guitar is the very definition of 'quality acoustic guitar'.
This beautiful Takamine borrows a little style influence from Kalamazoo and filters it through into a familiar-yet-unique style that captivates. The TK EF450 TT- BSB is a larger bodied guitar akin to a Jumbo and displays much of the charm that Takamine is noted for. It’s a stunning instrumentwith decorative inlay work and a superbly applied sunburst finish.
A Closer Look: Takamine Japanese Pro Series
Significantly, this guitar has a torrefied top. A what? Yes, otherwise known as ‘thermally treated’, torrefaction is a process whereby the timber is subjected to extreme heat in an oxygen-free environment. What this does is change the molecular composition of the wood itself (we’re not kidding) permanently. The benefit for the player is a loud, strident and well-defined tone that is seasoned and detailed like never before. Torrefied guitars sound very similar to guitars that are over a century old! It’s pretty incredible and of course makes a huge difference to how this guitar not only sounds but reacts, too.
Looking a little further, this EF450 reveals itself to have Flamed Maple for the back and sides! Goodness. It’s fair to say that ‘special’ is something of an understatement here.
These are just two of the select models we have available at the moment. We invite you to take a much closer look, whether it be on our site or in person at one of our stores. We guarantee you will not be disappointed!
Try Swiss Boutique Custom Shop Guitar Mij 7 String Japanese Joss Allen
These Takamine Pro Seriesguitars are available in limited numbers of each model, and when they are gone, they are well and truly gone! Do not miss out on these deals!I would say yes and no. Most of the early Japanese guitars I have tried have a rather “toy guitar” feel to them. My Playsound from the late 1960’s is fun to play but it’s a pretty horrible copy of a Telecaster. A lot of Japanese acoustic guitar manufactures jumped on the bandwagon and started to make electric guitars in the mid Sixties since that seemed to be what the kids wanted, here you can read more about Japanese guitar brands. Some of them managed to make pretty decent copies of American Fender’s and Gibson’s and others came up with pretty elaborate and creative designs of their own but in general they weren’t that good guitars. Most of the guitars made in the 1960’s didn’t have that great wood and the hardware was normally pretty weak but sometimes the pickups could be all right. Ry Cooder still prefers the Japanese gold foil pickups for his slide guitars and they have been quite popular in American surf music too, this could simply be because that was what people could afford back in the days. It’s important to remember that a lot of the Japanese guitars in the Sixties were mainly made as cheap entry level instruments for the West, not as elaborate copies of the real deal for professionals as they later became in the Seventies and eighties. Some early Fender and Gibson copies are horrible just because they didn’t have any real American instruments to copy, they had to rely on photos and come up with their own solutions to solve the problems that Leo Fender and the boys had already figured out back in the fifties.
The Japanese collection at the moment: Fender Telecaster TL52-75 1987, Greco Spacey Sounds TE-500N 1977, Greco Spacey Sounds TL-500 1979, Greco Les Paul Custom EG-600C 1980, Tokai Love Rock LS-55 1991, VOX Les Paul 1970′s, Hohner Telecaster 1970’s, Hohner Stratocaster 1970′s, Tokai Silver Star SS-36 1979, Jazz Bass 1978, Fender Squier 1993, Maya F335G 1970’s, K.Yairi TG-40 1977, Morris WL-40 1973, Morris WL-35 1970’s
The big change came around 1972-74, this is also when most Japanese guitar manufacturers started to put serial numbers on their instruments. Lack of serial numbers could be a good indicator of the quality, or rather the lack of quality, of an instrument but not always. There are amazing Matsumoku made Greco’s that were made in the early Seventies that lack serial numbers. I would say that most Japanese guitar makers, or at least the successful ones, started to get it right around 1972-74. Especially the Fender copies but also the Les Pauls started to really feel and sound like the real deal around this time. Most copies in the sixties were either Stratocasters / Telecasters or SG’s / 335’s, and unfortunately most of them were pretty cheaply made. In the early Seventies Stratocasters kept being popular but most makers started to try to make Les Paul’s now as well, most with bolt on neck, and some with pretty good result. Some makers kept on making low cost instruments for export and others started to make amazing quality instruments that wasn’t particularly cheap at the time. The model number is often a giveaway of the original price so my Greco Spacey Sounds TE-500N would have cost ¥50 000 back in 1977 when it was made, that’s around $500. This is not true for all brands but a lot of them started in the mid-70’s to price the instruments after the model number, or rather the other way around, and this is probably the easiest way of determining the quality of a Japanese instrument. I’m not sure what an American made Gibson Les Paul Custom cost back in the mid-70’s but if one of Greco’s top of the line like the EG-1500 cost ¥150 000 that would have been a huge investment back then, around $1500. The second hand value today, at least for the famous brands like Greco, Tokai, Ibanez and Fernandes, is roughly what they cost new. A Greco EG-500 Les Paul copy tend go for 500-700€ on eBay, the same for Tokai and Fernandes, slightly less for unknown brands. A Les Paul tend to be worth a bit more than a Stratocaster, I guess because they made more Stratocasters so they are more common or maybe it’s just because Les Paul’s are more popular today. Rare models, don’t trust people who say that the guitar they are selling is rare on eBay, I mean really rare and high end models tend to cost like a real Fender or Gibson from that time.
Fender Japanese Electric Guitars
So what is so good with Japanese guitars? I would say the wood and the craftsmanship. Americans got really sloppy and so did the European manufactures when the productions became too big in the Seventies. Cheap Japanese made guitars, at least after the mid-Seventies,
Significantly, this guitar has a torrefied top. A what? Yes, otherwise known as ‘thermally treated’, torrefaction is a process whereby the timber is subjected to extreme heat in an oxygen-free environment. What this does is change the molecular composition of the wood itself (we’re not kidding) permanently. The benefit for the player is a loud, strident and well-defined tone that is seasoned and detailed like never before. Torrefied guitars sound very similar to guitars that are over a century old! It’s pretty incredible and of course makes a huge difference to how this guitar not only sounds but reacts, too.
Looking a little further, this EF450 reveals itself to have Flamed Maple for the back and sides! Goodness. It’s fair to say that ‘special’ is something of an understatement here.
These are just two of the select models we have available at the moment. We invite you to take a much closer look, whether it be on our site or in person at one of our stores. We guarantee you will not be disappointed!
Try Swiss Boutique Custom Shop Guitar Mij 7 String Japanese Joss Allen
These Takamine Pro Seriesguitars are available in limited numbers of each model, and when they are gone, they are well and truly gone! Do not miss out on these deals!I would say yes and no. Most of the early Japanese guitars I have tried have a rather “toy guitar” feel to them. My Playsound from the late 1960’s is fun to play but it’s a pretty horrible copy of a Telecaster. A lot of Japanese acoustic guitar manufactures jumped on the bandwagon and started to make electric guitars in the mid Sixties since that seemed to be what the kids wanted, here you can read more about Japanese guitar brands. Some of them managed to make pretty decent copies of American Fender’s and Gibson’s and others came up with pretty elaborate and creative designs of their own but in general they weren’t that good guitars. Most of the guitars made in the 1960’s didn’t have that great wood and the hardware was normally pretty weak but sometimes the pickups could be all right. Ry Cooder still prefers the Japanese gold foil pickups for his slide guitars and they have been quite popular in American surf music too, this could simply be because that was what people could afford back in the days. It’s important to remember that a lot of the Japanese guitars in the Sixties were mainly made as cheap entry level instruments for the West, not as elaborate copies of the real deal for professionals as they later became in the Seventies and eighties. Some early Fender and Gibson copies are horrible just because they didn’t have any real American instruments to copy, they had to rely on photos and come up with their own solutions to solve the problems that Leo Fender and the boys had already figured out back in the fifties.
The Japanese collection at the moment: Fender Telecaster TL52-75 1987, Greco Spacey Sounds TE-500N 1977, Greco Spacey Sounds TL-500 1979, Greco Les Paul Custom EG-600C 1980, Tokai Love Rock LS-55 1991, VOX Les Paul 1970′s, Hohner Telecaster 1970’s, Hohner Stratocaster 1970′s, Tokai Silver Star SS-36 1979, Jazz Bass 1978, Fender Squier 1993, Maya F335G 1970’s, K.Yairi TG-40 1977, Morris WL-40 1973, Morris WL-35 1970’s
The big change came around 1972-74, this is also when most Japanese guitar manufacturers started to put serial numbers on their instruments. Lack of serial numbers could be a good indicator of the quality, or rather the lack of quality, of an instrument but not always. There are amazing Matsumoku made Greco’s that were made in the early Seventies that lack serial numbers. I would say that most Japanese guitar makers, or at least the successful ones, started to get it right around 1972-74. Especially the Fender copies but also the Les Pauls started to really feel and sound like the real deal around this time. Most copies in the sixties were either Stratocasters / Telecasters or SG’s / 335’s, and unfortunately most of them were pretty cheaply made. In the early Seventies Stratocasters kept being popular but most makers started to try to make Les Paul’s now as well, most with bolt on neck, and some with pretty good result. Some makers kept on making low cost instruments for export and others started to make amazing quality instruments that wasn’t particularly cheap at the time. The model number is often a giveaway of the original price so my Greco Spacey Sounds TE-500N would have cost ¥50 000 back in 1977 when it was made, that’s around $500. This is not true for all brands but a lot of them started in the mid-70’s to price the instruments after the model number, or rather the other way around, and this is probably the easiest way of determining the quality of a Japanese instrument. I’m not sure what an American made Gibson Les Paul Custom cost back in the mid-70’s but if one of Greco’s top of the line like the EG-1500 cost ¥150 000 that would have been a huge investment back then, around $1500. The second hand value today, at least for the famous brands like Greco, Tokai, Ibanez and Fernandes, is roughly what they cost new. A Greco EG-500 Les Paul copy tend go for 500-700€ on eBay, the same for Tokai and Fernandes, slightly less for unknown brands. A Les Paul tend to be worth a bit more than a Stratocaster, I guess because they made more Stratocasters so they are more common or maybe it’s just because Les Paul’s are more popular today. Rare models, don’t trust people who say that the guitar they are selling is rare on eBay, I mean really rare and high end models tend to cost like a real Fender or Gibson from that time.
Fender Japanese Electric Guitars
So what is so good with Japanese guitars? I would say the wood and the craftsmanship. Americans got really sloppy and so did the European manufactures when the productions became too big in the Seventies. Cheap Japanese made guitars, at least after the mid-Seventies,
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