Sakai
Sakai
Also known as: Sakai Mokko
UnclaimedSakai (also referred to as Sakai Mokko) was a Japanese guitar manufacturer that produced electric guitars during the 1960s and into the 1970s, operating in the same Tokyo-area cottage industry as makers like Teisco and Kawai. The company built relatively inexpensive solid and semi-hollow body instruments, much of it as OEM work for Western importers who rebadged the guitars under their own hous...
Sakai (also referred to as Sakai Mokko) was a Japanese guitar manufacturer that produced electric guitars during the 1960s and into the 1970s, operating in the same Tokyo-area cottage industry as makers like Teisco and Kawai. The company built relatively inexpensive solid and semi-hollow body instruments, much of it as OEM work for Western importers who rebadged the guitars under their own house brand names. When Kawai absorbed Teisco in the late 1960s, several U.S. and European distributors switched their supply contracts to Sakai, which broadened the brand's footprint despite the name itself remaining obscure on retail headstocks.
Sakai's catalog drew heavily on the popular American shapes of the era, with Mosrite-style offset bodies, Fender Mustang-derived short-scale models, and SG-style doublecuts, alongside some original designs. A common Sakai trait was the use of gold-foil pickups with set-screw pole pieces running across the center of the bobbin rather than along the top, similar to instruments from Zen-On. In the UK, Sakai-built guitars were imported by Hohner as budget instruments, and in Germany the brand became associated with the so-called "Hertie-Casters" sold through the Hertie department store chain in the late 1960s and early 1970s.
The brand is no longer in active production and survives mainly through the vintage market, where Sakai-made instruments — whether headstock-branded Sakai, Sakai Mokko, or carrying one of the many importer brands the company supplied — turn up as affordable entry points into the world of 1960s Japanese electrics.
Sakai has 2 products cataloged on Equipboard, including Solid Body Electric Guitars.
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