Guitar ID - Modded Kawai ?

musicalstash

Recently picked this from an auction but not too sure of its history , all I know it is not a Gibson  .

It looks to be well made with a set neck , nice inlays , Nitro Finish , fret nibs ...

The body is semi hollow   ( couple of filled holes) with a block running through it with a single humbucker and a fishman pickup in the soundhole  .

 The only clue is the  headstock which looks similar to the Kawai KS12 guitars but never seen Kawai with a Les paul body shape .

Would be looking to sell it on but without knowing the history it will be hard especially with the Gibson logos .

Any help would be appreciated


https://imgur.com/a/IL1EFF0

Adam_MD

Calling @TTony ;

TTony

Well, there's something that you don't see every day.

It started life as a Kawai Rock'n'Roll Star.  Which was an oddity when it was launched (early 80s) and is even odder today!

But it's  clearly had a lot of modding (aka buggering about with) since it left the factory. 

musicalstash said:

Would be looking to sell it on but without knowing the history it will be hard especially with the Gibson logos .

It's next to impossible to  put a value on it.  I've bought 3 R'n'R Stars in my Kawai collecting career, and paid between £75 and £350 for them.  They were all far more original than this one, and the £350 one was immaculate original and came with some interesting provenance.

Although they're rare - or perhaps because they're so rare - there aren't many Kawai collector enthusiasts out there.  There's just not enough Kawai guitars around for them to collect.  Which means that the guitars don't attract the collector premium that guitars like the YamSG1000/2000/3000 range do.

HTH?

musicalstash

Well that was fast  , spent the last 3 weeks trying with no results   . I bought the guitar solely on one photograph and was hoping someone had modded a Chet Atkins .    Thanks for taking the timeout to respond .

Strangefan

musicalstash said:

Well that was fast  , spent the last 3 weeks trying with no results   . I bought the guitar solely on one photograph and was hoping someone had modded a Chet Atkins .    Thanks for taking the timeout to respond .

Such a shame they modded it like that original r & r's are such cool looking guitars!