Tokai USG35 Electric Guitar

Body - Alder
Neck - Canadian Maple, set neck
Fingerboard - Rosewood, crown inlays, 22 frets
Hardware - Chrome
Pickups - 2 * PAF-Vintage MK4
Controls - 2*volume, 2*tone, 3-way selector

Tokai are the masters of Gibson copies, and the USG35 is, of course, the SG Standard. With an agressive looking double cutaway body, twin humbucking pickups and a lightweight body, it's a modern classic, and as popular today as back in the 50's when it first appeared.
The USG35 has a long headstock, unbound, gloss black to the front with Tokai's signature logo and crest in shiney green Abolone. The rear is Cherry or Black, depending on your colour choice, with the guitars serial number stamped in small gold writing and 2 rows of 3-a-side Vintage Kluson style machine heads.
The Maple neck is slim and fast playing, a D profile, the bright white nut width is 43mm, and it has a thick glossy paint finish.
The fingerboard is Rosewood, fully bound up both edges in bright white plastic with large white Abolone crown inlays. Fretwork is all very good, nice and smooth, no grinding here, and the Rosewood itself is also of a high quality, hard, dark and well polished up - nice and slippery - good for bends and playing quick.
Setup is pretty good from the factory as well, with an action of 3mm at the bass side, 2mm on the treble at the 12th fret.
The neck joins the Alder body at the top 22nd fret on both sides, so no upper fret access problems to report. The neck is set, glued in, and the back of the joint here has the strap button.
2 finishes are available, gloss black with a plain piano finish, and Cherry, showing off the beautiful grain of the wood underneath.
The back of the body is very plain, flat with bevelled edges, the top is similar. It's quite a thin body, SG's are always a lot lighter than Les Pauls for instance, good for smaller players.
The front has a small, black 3 ply scratchplate, with the 4 controls, a volume and tone for each pickup, the 3 way pickup selector and output socket located underneath.
The twin pickups, tune-o-matic bridge and stop tailpiece are all Chrome finished, the pickups themselves are classic SG style, the bridge pickup is bright and cutting, the neck pickup is warmer and more moody but excells on the dirty channel for rhythm work, whereas the bridge pickup sounds amazing here.
An excellent all round rock guitar, the Tokai USG35 is a very faithful SG reproduction, which for around £200 is a bit of a steal.

£199