by Saiichi Sugiyama.

The summer of '08 is basically over. I was in a number of very nice vintage guitar shops in Tokyo on my trip earlier this summer. I always seem to find some guitars that I have a holiday romance with in Tokyo nowadays and some of them I brought home. Until recently, it was always the case that you had to pay a lot more for a vintage piece in Japan. Like it has been here in the UK, the shop prices there consisted of the US price plus a substantial dealer’s margin. The situation changed for some reason and now, you can find a real bargain in Tokyo. I suppose as more and more vintage guitars were imported to Japan, there was a build up of a substantial local stock in Japan and given the stagnating Japanese economy since the '90s and the general practice of lower trade-in prices there, if the dealer does not charge a big margin, you can find some guitars below the US market price let alone the UK prices.

It is a totally personal thing, but as I was brought up in an era when a “vintage re-issue” meant replacing mini-humbackers with proper-sized ones and you had to buy a Japanese copy to get an almost “correctly” shaped head, I always have to pinch myself every time I walk into a nice guitar shop nowadays that I am not dreaming when I see a wall full of these beautiful looking Gibsons and Fenders that I so craved in my vintage-guitar-deprived youth. In fact, in my teens and 20s I used to have a dream of walking into a secret shop full of '50s guitars all being sold for next to nothing.

Do you remember your first time coming face to face with a '50s two-tone sunburst Strat or with a beautiful cherry red double cutaway Les Paul Junior? I remember seeing a reverse Firebird I for the first time and just being so shocked. I remember vividly being in the presence of this old piece of mahogany with what to me then was an astronomical price tag among the new shinny nice smelling expensive '70s Strats, Teles, Les Pauls and SGs. I also remember equally vividly the first time I saw real life two tone sunburst Strats with the beautifully pale Bakelite parts with green letters. I thought they looked much smaller than I had imagined from the guitars I saw on the LP covers – Layla, Buddy Holly… etc. In the mid-'70s in Tokyo where, with the exchange rates back then, to buy the then current large-head Strats and Les Pauls was a huge deal in itself. All the imported guitars were kept in racks in locked glass display cabinets with humidifiers.

Now back to the present and here I am sitting in a Japanese vintage guitar shop lovingly stocked – well, bursting with (no pun intended) Historic/VOS ‘Bursts and Closet Classic Strats. Having allowed my passion on music to uproot myself from Japan and move to the land of Cream and Beatles at the end of my teens, I have since met and spent time with a fair amount of vintage guitars and some legendary guitars themselves. It still nevertheless gives me a shock to see a Tokyo shop full of what looks like '50s instruments in those Japanese shops. A dozen each of flame top sunbursts and two-tone Strats on display - some in a brand new condition and others in a well-used condition - and at a distance, they look to all intent and purposes, guitars from 1950s. It was so hard even to find one of them let alone finding a pair or a trio. The vibe and aura of the music that these models created... Just imagine if the 16 year old that I was had seen this sight in 1976… On a good day, I can fortunately still feel that excitement.

Saiichi