OK, this is driving me nuts. Time to get obscure:

Matao
Gonzales
Columbus
Penco
Tokai

ESP is Japanese, IIRC. Great guitars. Wrong guess though

WINNER!

Its an '84 Tokai Love Rock. Its either an LS-50 or an LS-60. More likely LS-50 with the 3 piece back and the bigger neck, but I dont think I'll know for sure until I remove the neck pickup and look for the stamping.

Here's a shot of the headstock on mine. Post Gibson lawsuit.

http://forums.pelicanparts.com/uploa...1125231510.jpg

Dangit!!!

My internet's been down all weekend but I guessed Tokai as soon as I read that they were sued by Gibson and Fender.

An old bandmate/roomate had a Tokai Strat copy and it was a dead nuts ripoff and a quality piece to boot. Too bad he couldn't really play. :cool:

What didn't I win?

Jim

Yep, Tokai.

Everybody wins!

Here's a great dedicated web forum for Tokai guitars.

http://www.tokaiforum.com/

Interesting - I always thought Tokai LP's had "Love Rock" in place of the "Les Paul" wording in the same script style.

They did after they were sued. I dont know when Tokai was sued by Gibson or when the 'Les Paul' name was replaced with 'Love Rock' but it had to be sometime between '80 and '84. The earliest serial number range Ive seen for the Tokai clones is from '77 so there are many of them that say 'Les Paul' instead of 'Love Rock'

Here's a headstock from a 1980 'Reborn' thats on the bay right now.

http://forums.pelicanparts.com/uploa...1125493827.jpg

Im not a guru on the subject of these guitars or anything, but the 'Reborn' guitars were supposed to be dead nuts accurate knock offs of the unobtainable '58-'59 Les Pauls. Even the current manufacture lower end Japanese guitars are closer to the real thing than what Gibson is selling these days.

Here is some more stuff off of ebay. This gets confusing.

Here's an 1980 LS50 Reborn

http://forums.pelicanparts.com/uploa...1125495075.jpg

And a 1981 LS60 Love Rock

http://forums.pelicanparts.com/uploa...1125495119.jpg

Apparantly the lawsuit was sometime around '80-'81

A guitar thread. I love it. I guess I'll share mine as well.

First we have a Mesa Road King, with the RK 4x12 cab. In the rack I'm running the Furman PL Plus II Power conditioner, Korg DTR100 Tuner, and a TC Electronics G Major.
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v7...hollicA/ki.jpg

Next is my pride and joy of my collection. Its a Jackson, Randy Rhoads model, #73 of 200 first run.
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v7...Full20Body.jpg

Next up is my Ernie Ball/ Music Man John Petrucci Sig model.
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v7...B-MM20Body.jpg

Next is my Limited Swamp Ash Gibson Les Paul Studio.
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v7...20LP20Body.jpg

My Gibson Faded Flying V
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v7...g20V20Body.jpg

And last, is my Ibanez RG270 DX, hot rodded with new Seymor Duncan pick ups, A Dimebucker, new Alnico II, and a 59.
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v7...anez20Body.jpg