Strat

Along with TAKANAKA's trademark YAMAHA SG, his Strats (Fender Stratcastors) have been playing big role for his sound characteristic for a long time, especially on his recording work.

TAKANAKA prefers Strat's clean tone, especially 'half-tone' sound. He often features Strat's distortion sound where he wants to have brighter distortion. For instance, GUITAR DREAM is a good example. Strat is used for pop songs such as OOOH WHAT YOU DO TO ME and SG is used for heavy-rolling-songs like GOLEM and PURPLE RIDER.

The most famous strat is the old three colored sunburst (3CS) strat TAKANAKA was using when he was a member of SADISTIC MIKA BAND. It was a pretty much stock strat but no logos on the neck makes difficult to determine what the year exactly it is, however, the body tells the strat was made in the early '60s. He said it was already as-is when he bought it from his friend. That relic strat was his main guitar until he switched to YAMAHA SG in the early '80s. He played it on BLUE LAGOON in Guitar Fantasia VHS.

In the '90s, TAKANAKA came up with other strats - the Jeff Beck (JB) Models. Especially the purple one with Roland's divided pickup was often times used on stages in the late '90s.

TAKANAKA started using his old 3CS strat but it was finally re-conditioned in 2004. New neck had red TAKANAKA logo with a palm tree. Circuit was modified from 1 volume 2 tone to 1 volume 1 tone.

In 2004, TAKANAKA played, surprisingly, only Strats - old 3CS, purple, white and green JBs. They are seen in 一天 DVD.

In 2005, TAKANAKA introduced new TAKANAKA model on the stage of COJ '05. It was repainted - painted by famous artist - JB model and seemed there was nothing tweaked on the hardware. The first version is seen in 快晴 DVD and second one is seen in 夕天 DVD.

He introduced new Fender TAKANAKA model in 2006. It was built by Fender master guitar builder Dennis Galuszka. Its appearance was almost identical to his old 3CS strat. It is used for SADISTIC MIKA BAND reunion. Copies of this model were also generally available.

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