You're right, it is very easy to walk into a guitar store and pick out a Fender Strat, or, a Gibson Les Paul. Some guitar stores usually have something slightly left-of-centre hanging on the wall, but just like modern, mainstream musical tastes, it's easier just to take what's accessible and not very difficult to acquire. Anyway...
... yes, I, too, like a lot of Japanese guitars, especially the ones that don't even have a brand name. Zimgar - early Ibanez I think(?) - were a Japanese company based in New York in the 80s. Jon Spencer, of the Blues Explosion, has two of them; my friend, Davey, from Glasgow, has one, too, and they have the fattest low-end sound to a guitar I've ever heard. Genuinely odd-sounding, they look like rusty sewing boards, but play like Genghis Khan.
Once I was lucky enough to meet T-Model Ford (a real bluesman in every sense of the word) and asked him what kind of guitar he had. He said: "I doh no, son. All it says here on the back is Jay-Pan."
Speaking of Tokai, they certainly get a lot of respect in the guitar-playing community. They're genuinely great guitars and I urge anyone who wants to lean away from poke-your-eye-out-shaped guitars and who wants to try something a little more interesting to check them out. You won't be disappointed.
Anyone else own a guitar that's not a Fender, Ibanez or Gibson?
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