Kawai Guitars

the guitars from the late 1970s
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The Aquarius Range
 
I've had a couple of emails (contact details here) from people asking about the Kawai Aquarius range, so I've added a couple of pages to the site with the little detail that I've been able to uncover. 
 
These guitars appeared in the mid 1980's.  I'm not sure that they were actually distributed and sold in the UK - details are patchy!
 

 

The range had three main variants;

 

The Aquarius AS range had either 2 or 3 single coil pickups

The Aquarius AQ range with 1, 2 or 3 humbucking pickups

The Aquarius AQB range - B denoting bass.

 

 

The Aquarius AS range

 

 

The individual models were designated AS-405, AS-401 and AS-301 (shown left to right in the catalogue picture)

 

The bodies were either ash or alder, with a bolt-on maple neck and rosewood or maple fingerboard.

 

The single coil pickups were branded Kawai.

 

No active electronics on these, just a simple tone and volume control with a 5-way or 3-way (on the AS-301) pickup selector switch.

 

 

The Aquarius AQ range

 

 

The individual AQ guitars were designated AQ-405, AQ-401, AQ-305 and AQ-301 (virtually repeating the range numbering of the AS range), AQ-605, AQ-555 and AQ-505 - as illustrated left to right in the picture.

 

Bodies were again either ash or alder, necks were again bolt-on maple, and fingerboards were maple or rosewood.

 

The AQ-605 (the leftmost of the 3 guitars pictured) used Schaller pickups, the others used Kawai branded humbuckers.

 

The AQ-301 and AQ-305 were both single pickup models, so obviously didn't need a selector switch - the others used a 3-position selector.  The AQ-405 and AQ-401 added a push/pull on the tone pot to split the coils.

 

The 3-pickup AQ-555 added a mini-toggle for each pickup to switch between humbucking, single-coil and "off" modes.

 

Note that model designations varied, either by territory or over time.  Thus the AQ-555 is also referred to as the AQ-500, the AQ-605 as the AQ-600, etc.

 

As well as the bass variant, Kawai also produced an AQ-1200 - a 12-string version with twin humbuckers.  One of these sold recently (summer 2009) on eBay, and the seller kindly donated some photos of his guitar before it sold.  Unfortunately, I wasn't the buyer!

 

Photos of Chris' 12 string Kawai Aquarius can be found in the owner's gallery.