Tokai's Rare 1959 Les Paul Reborn
By Larry Meiners
Many guitar players want to emulate their favorite guitarist because they like their music and their playing. Top celebrity guitarists create tremendous demand for the instrument models they play. Their fans demonstrate their devotion by purchasing the same model, and occasionally, the same vintage guitar that their heroes play. Eric Clapton, Mike Bloomfield, Jimmy Page and others seeded the early demand for original Les Paul flame-top guitars built from 1958 to 1960. Original vintage Gibson Les Paul flame-top guitars sell for tens-of-thousands of dollars today. Only about 1700 Standard Models were produced in the important three years ending in 1960. Some of those guitars had a Bigsby tailpiece and others were painted with a Goldtop finish as opposed to the flame-top's sunburst. The prices for these rare Les Paul guitars continues to increase along with the demand for these fine instruments.
During the mid-1970s as the demand grew and the prices increased, Tokai from Japan, other manufacturers in Japan and the USA, and many fine luthiers in the United States filled the market demand for old Les Paul guitars by producing look-alike replica guitars. Some of these builders and many eventual owners of these guitars added parts from other old Gibson guitars to add to the vibe of their copy instruments.
These early attempts by Tokai and others to meet market demand for replica vintage Les Paul guitars pre-dates Gibson's own regular production reissue models by several years. No doubt, the high prices of the vintage models, the demand for the fine knock-offs and several of their own dealers ordering special issue flame-tops raised Gibson's sales antenna. By 1979 Gibson produced the KM model and the next year made the Standard 80.
Tokai produced a Les Paul replica guitar in Japan starting around 1976. These guitars were intended to be high-end instruments, not low-priced copies targeted at consumers in their home market. Tokai wanted the look and feel to be correct and these early replicas have wonderful fit and finish detailing. Wanting the headstock to look the same from ten feet away and desiring a designation that was appropriate, Tokai named this copy guitar 'Les Paul Reborn'.
The 'Les Paul Reborn' was constructed using a one-piece mahogany body and two-piece, full-depth maple top. On the headstock, 'Tokai' is inlaid where 'Gibson' would normally be located. Instead of 'Les Paul' in script with 'MODEL' underneath, Tokai's silk-screen logo is 'Les Paul' in a similar looking Gibson script type, with 'REBORN' underneath. Also, Tokai's best instruments have a model designation inscribed into the fingerboard at the last fret. The LS-100 model has a "100" on the fingerboard and was their high-end model built with a plain-top. The LS-200 model was made with a flame-top. Most of the Tokai flame-tops do not have a super-flamey top. Most likely, this is due to the fact so few of the original Gibson Les Pauls had them and Tokai made them look like the vintage originals.
Several construction and parts features of these guitars include: single-line Kluson-like plastic tulip tuners, darker 50's style knobs, browned-out pick-up selector knob, thin binding in the cutaway, zebra or double-cream humbucker pickups, small style headstock, a truss rod cover that has 'Standard' engraved in script and a brown case (pink lining) or black case (green lining) with a gold metal plate displaying a star and the Tokai name (the same as the '50s Gibson brown cases).
Shortly after the initial production runs, Tokai changed the name from 'Les Paul Reborn' to the 'Love Rock Model' and began to sell these replica guitars for a short time in the United States, Europe and Japan. The headstock looked like a Gibson from ten feet away and they wanted to avoid a problem using the name Les Paul. As cool as these guitars are, Gibson considered them a rip-off and enlisted the help of their lawyers to stem the tide of imitation instruments. Gibson stated that these guitars violated their trademarks. Since these legal actions were taken, most early replica guitars are generically referred to within the vintage guitar community as "lawsuit" models.
The early Love Rock models have a typical Gibson mustache headstock. Wanting to avoid problems with Gibson's trademarks for the Les Paul guitar and headstock, later production guitars have a dimple in the middle of the mustache at the top of the headstock. Tokai also changed the construction by using a two-piece mahogany body as opposed to a single-piece on the early production guitars.
These instruments hold their place in solid-body guitar making history and helped propel vintage reissue demand into a dominant force in the guitar market today. A small, but growing contingent of guitar enthusiasts and dealers seek to acquire these early 'Les Paul Reborn' instruments when they become available… which is not very often as they are considered rare.
