Talk:Tōkai Gakki

Change of title

As in my recent edit, the official title of this manufacturer is, in English, Tohai Musical Instrument Manufacturing Inc. Also, its product lineup, as mentioned, does not only include guitars. Hence, I wonder if the title of the article should be changed, and what should the new title be. --Samuel Curtis 08:22, 20 August 2006 (UTC)

Support - From what it seems on their Japanese language site you are absolutely correct on the catalogue not only being guitars. I will have to trust you on the translation of the full company title (I can't find a ref to it in english). It would be nice to include some information about the other instruments (and stomp boxes if the Tokai branded ones are made by the same company?), I have never seen anything but guitars and basses. --SnakeSeries 09:51, 21 August 2006 (UTC)

I emailed to the company to ask for the name. FYI: I'm not a music person; I just wandered by and edited the page. --Samuel Curtis 11:17, 21 August 2006 (UTC)

The email was never answered. However, I got the answer: by reading one of the related links, tokairegistry.com, it seemed that their preferred English form of the company on catalogues is Tokai Gakki Co. Ltd.. So, I propose, the name of this article to be changed to Tokai Gakki.

Erm, lawsuit, anyone?

Why the hell is there no mention of this here? This is what Tokai are most famous for! 89.168.107.97 (talk) 16:10, 19 July 2009 (UTC)

It should be mentioned, but it's largely mythical. It all apparently refers to a lawsuit against the American importer of Ibanez guitars by the Gibson corporation. This idea of "lawsuit" guitars is mostly exaggeration from what I've read. I'm a novice editor, and still getting used to wikipedia, but I've been following Tokai closely on the Tokai forum. Someone there might help link me to relevant, references, primary sources, etc., to put the full story together. Certainly there's a lot more to Tokai Gakki than what is covered here at the moment SingeMonkey (talk) 14:31, 2 November 2009 (UTC)

Unless someone can link to a source that explains wtf a "lawsuit guitar" is, even mentioning the term in a WP article is highly questionable. Maybe a brave editor can write "Lawsuit guitar" hoax or something such…?

And in any case, there's no proof offered here that Tokai was ever sued… or was in any way threatened with a suit or C&D… or even so much as hinted that some such warning might have been received. Therefore, I call BS, & support removing the mention.
Weeb Dingle (talk) 16:33, 11 June 2017 (UTC)

the "single source" problem

While this article really deserves to stay, it has some difficulties. Most significant is that it appears to depend entirely from Tokai catalogues and the Tokai website. I haven't yet located any definitive English-language articles about Tokai, even though they aren't unknown to U.S. gearheads. Any assistance welcome!
Weeb Dingle (talk) 02:06, 16 October 2019 (UTC)

That is a very general problem with MIJ guitar companies - there is never any "official" documentation besides catalogs and (if the company still exists) the almost stereotypical "company history" section on almost any Japanese company's website. Japanese companies are generally pretty secretive about almost everything concerning how they do business, contracts, etc. and there are almost no examples of verifiable history committed to paper/media by or in cooperation with key people in the post-war guitar industry. The very few exceptions (e.g. Morioka and Teradaira) only reflect on events with people and companies that do not exist anymore.

Books about Japanese guitars have been proven to be erratic (or outdated) for the same reason - very little trustworthy facts from the very few actual and reliable sources are stitched together with "original research" of varying quality and sometimes filled up with coherent looking but not very thoroughly cross-checked folklore. That may shed a light on the shortcomings of WP's "no original research" policy: It gives publications based on "original research" a blanket credibility with very blurry quality requirements and devalues other "original research" just because it hasn't been published.

What's left besides the books (not only) in this particular case (Japanese musical instrument industry) are people doing actual research in form of questioning existing knowledge, filling gaps with provable new knowledge, digging up new documents, like some members of the Tokai forum are doing it for years about Tokai. But of course, that's just more "original research" so this very low quality article is what WP will be stuck with. 2A01:599:744:59D9:B923:7A98:BF77:3112 (talk) 09:10, 31 December 2023 (UTC)

I had a look through the books I've got - 2,000 Guitars by Tony Bacon has a short section about the company and a picture of an early Mosrite clone, and 1001 Guitars ... by Terry Burrows has a page on the Talbo showing a 1982 example and talking about the Devo connection. They don't add anything new to the article but I've added refs to the facts they support. Bacon's The Bass Book and Geddy Lee's Book of Bass don't mention Tokai, even in their Fender sections. Adam Sampson (talk) 16:45, 17 July 2022 (UTC)