In brief: Tokai LS-101

There are many Japanese Les Paul copies out there that would make Gibson tremble when it comes to craftsmanship & tone. Tokai makes such guitars. These Japanese manufacturers are not tied down by historical / period correct details. They prefer to manifest details that propel their goodwill above all else.

LIKES

• craftsmanship
• tone
• playability

DISLIKE

• weight

This is definitely not my first time handling a Japanese Les Paul copy. I've been through Burny, Orville & Edwards among others. The LS-101 on appraisal here is a cut above the rest to say the least. The quality control is mesmerising. Just by handling this guitar, we could see that dedicated time & effort were invested into this instrument to make it feel upscaled. 

The neck carve on offer is a round '50s profile, enough meat to propel a good grip & facilitate bends. Some appraisals out there mentioned an overkill of finish done here to make it too processed. This audition model did not show any signs of excessive finishing, especially the final lacquer overcoat. I'm not a fan of finished necks but this one is downright playable & addictive. Frets were also well polished & seated so no issues here to fault the attention to details. 

We certainly do not expect a guitar of this pedigree to propel high gain / extreme distortion. These were manufactured to replicate (at best) a certain vibe often associated with the charm & lure of yesteryear. The default pickups here are GOTOHs, the PAF-Vintage MK2 to be precise (both positions). What do they sound like? To summarize my experience after hearing both the clean & driven settings, they are as good as Gibson's 57 models. 

Would anyone go all out to invest in a Tokai copy of a much celebrated singlecut model? It depends on what you embrace. At this price, many of us would check out what Epiphone has to offer before forking out extras to go Japanese.

Rating: 88%

Tokai LS101 ($1,850)

• bag included
• available at Davis GMC

USED: Jan 2026 - April 2026

Not much re-stringing this time round. Only a small cookie container full.

TEJ

After some digging, I found out this is a Fernandes TEJ-75 model. I am the third owner of this guitar, the second owner had scant info that he gladly shared with me. The body's previous finish was stripped down & re-finished with what looked like a gold top. There were numerous scratches on the guitar body so I gladly re-finished it in blue with a light glitter coat.

Here are the scratches, evidently, I didn't use a filler before applying the blue coat. This was intentional because I used whatever colours I have in the mean time, I obviously did not have any fillers 😅 The glitter coat was meant for another guitar but it made its debut here. The pickups in there are DiMarzio Distortion S models. Was told the previous pickups were active units but I am not a fan. I prefer angry passive pickups.

Will continue to use Olympia strings as long as they are still available. 

Labour

In every economy, labour continues to be the spine of progress. Disrespecting labour is telling them to exercise restraint in an economic downturn for the greater good without toeing the line with them. 

Happy Labour Day, everyone. Your blood, sweat & tears define your country. Onwards!

Ibanez April 2026: B

Ending April in the knowledge that Ibanez actually added more to the AZES lineup instead of doing away with this series entirely. We would have thought the AZ Standard would be the new spruced up entry-level models for the AZ family but heck no. The AZES are still active in the mean time. There is an AZES40 already in the lineup, the AZES40B - that B there denotes black pickguard.

Pics: Ibanez

Resolved

The pickups in this SML721 are a pair of DiMarzio Fusion Edge. I've had both bitter & delightful episodes with the FE & in this guitar, it's the former. The neck humbucker is especially disappointing; darn muddy & quite pointless for my kind of music / tone. It took me a while to finally replace the pots of these guitar.

Pics: ESP

That's right - pots. The default pots were working fine & required no replacement but they were suspiciously under-performing. I came to this realization after looking at the specs of my guitars with FEs in them. Those guitars did not sport the default pots as I did away with them due to corrosion / oxidation. I bought a pair of BOURNS pots from Davis GMC which are currently the OEM for ESP & they are indeed the rightful solution to this issue.

I asked Beez what could possibly be the issue with the default pots as they were working fine since Day 1. He told me budget pots might sometimes be labelled erroneously like in my case, the default pots might be a 250K version instead of the preferred 500K for humbuckers. That might be the case here & it turned out to be a simple fix. Beez fixed these into my SML521 a few days ago. After hours of playing, I must say that BOURNS is living up to its reputation for being good. As good as GOTOH & CTS, to name a couple which are benchmark brands for this purpose.