c. 1964 Kawai EP-150 Vintage 3-pickup Archtop Jazz Rockabilly Guitar Made in Japan - Great Guitar!

c. 1964 Kawai EP-150 Vintage 3-pickup Archtop Jazz Rockabilly Guitar Made in Japan - Great Guitar!

File this under guitars we would like to keep forever! Sometimes you pick up a guitar, and it just starts to write songs all by itself. This is one of those guitars. It sounds so good, you just can't stop picking it up. A 1964 Kawai EP-150 - these guitar bodies were built by the Japanese manufacturer Nardan who supplied them to both Kawai and Teisco (albeit with slight variations to each - Teisco also used to use a supplier called Maruha) and had the electronics supplied to them by the individual companies. This one is an absolute winner, featuring a lovely florentine cutaway, an acoustic sound that stands all by itself, and beautiful tone from the pickups. Really will hate to see this one go. 

Beautiful looking guitar. Spruce top, with flame maple veneer over mahogany for the back and sides. There are lacquer cracks in several places on the front, but the guitar is structurally sound. The center seam separated slightly at some point but this has been closed up and stabilised, and is not an issue. Wonderful wood pickguard. Very eye catching guitar, and the body has a great big sound. 

25.5" set neck with a 20" radius. Action is medium low. Plays well, with no fret outs. The frets are worn, and will need to be replaced in the future (if you would like us to do a refret, please ask us about a discount refret for this guitar), but as it is, it plays well. Neck profile is solid, but not overly thick, and definitely not a baseball bad. Very comfortable to play. Has a non-original bone nut with a slightly narrower string spacing. 

Electronics have been completely redone in this guitar. The insulation on the original wires had crumbled away, shorting out the circuit in several places. This guitar now has a new braided shield wiring harness, as well as new caps for the tone pots (.47mf for a warm and dark jazzy roll off at the neck, and .22mf for a very mild roll off in the middle and bridge). The original pots were kept and cleaned so that the original knobs could continue to be used. The rotary switch has just a faint hint of static when switching between positions. Pickups measure 4.26k at the bridge, 4.20k in the middle, and 3.85k at the neck. The neck pickup sounds particularly great. We've made a shim for the bridge pickup to bring it up closer to the strings. If you would like us to make a shim for the middle, we can do this as well, but as it is, the pickups are well balanced with variations between each of the positions. Please listen to the sound test.

Hardware is in good shape. There is some pitting to the chrome tailpiece, but other than that, all the knobs look very good. 

This is possibly not the original bridge, though it is correct for some similar models of Nardan pick guitars, so it might be. We do have a bridge that matches the ones pictured for this model in catalogs, so if you would like us to swap out the bridge, that can be done. However, this is the bridge that came with the guitar, and works fine with it. 

Original tuners work well, and are in great shape for their age. Very rare to see these plastic pearloid tuners in good condition, and with their original plastic backs! All of these tuners have been taken apart, cleaned and lubricated, and put back together. 

Overall this is a great, great guitar. You can pick it up and just start playing it. It has a fantastic acoustic voice, and so you can get away without even plugging it in - but once you plug it in, the magic starts to happen, especially with the wonderful neck pickup. While there is room for improvement on this guitar, and you will need to set it up to your own individual taste, it is ready to go and it could be the guitar of a lifetime. Buy it quick, because the longer we have it in our shop, the more likely we are to change our minds. 

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Thank you for looking, please see our other listings for more interesting and unique Japanese guitars!