Model: Tokai Goldstar Sound?
Color: Metallic Red
Year: 1980s
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Used in...
- 1998-1999
- owned by Paul 'Strangeboy' Stacey
- used during the recording sessions of the album Standing on the Shoulder of Giants
Details
Starting from the spring of 1998, Noel Gallagher - assisted by Paul Stacey - recorded various demos at his home studio in Supernova Heights. Most of these tracks would later appear, in their final form, on the 2000 album Standing on the Shoulder of Giants:1
"The thing about Standing on the Shoulder of Giants is that I had a full year to sit in my 16-track bedroom studio with an engineer friend and make demos. [...] I had basically done the album twice before it even got to the band. I had written and recorded the songs on a little Walkman, and then I demoed the tracks on ADATs in my bedroom. And we ended up using a lot of stuff from the demos on the actual record because the demos were that good."
A photo shared by Meg Mathews on Instagram in summer 2025 gave us a rare look inside Noel's Supernova Heights studio, where an Epiphone Al Caiola guitar can be seen.
When recording the demo of Fuckin' in the Bushes, Paul Stacey and Noel played a red Stratocaster copy owned by Paul. Interestingly, the guitar was recorded through a SansAmp pedal directly into the desk, without using an actual amp:2
"There's not one amplifier on that. It's all through a SansAmp, the little pedal. 'Cuz it was done in my bedroom you see, and all I've got up there is a desk and a computer."
Paul Stacey played lead guitar on the track:
"The actual guitar we used was a Tokai Stratocaster. Paul collects all those kinds of guitars. I went over to his house and said, 'What the fuck is that?' He said, 'Oh man, that's the greatest sounding Strat ever.' I go, 'Bollocks, it's fu**in' red, man. Can't be any good. It's Tokai, man.' He plugged it in, and I go, 'Oh, I see.' A lot of the Seventies stuff that came out of Japan was fu**ing great."
Tokai is a highly regarded Japanese manufacturer, and its ST models are considered among the best Stratocaster copies available. It's impossible to identify the exact version played during the Giants sessions, but if you're interested in the history of the various models, there's a helpful link in the footnotes.3
In early 2025, I was contacted by someone who had worked on Oasis 2000 gig production and is also a guitar enthusiast.4 He mentioned that Noel owned a "metallic red Tokai Goldstar Sound" - which matches the description of the guitar above!
One might wonder whether Noel had 'borrowed' the guitar indefinitely from Paul Stacey, much like he did with Johnny Marr's Les Pauls (#1 and #2)...
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This is a fansite. It is not affiliated with Noel Gallagher, his management or his record label.
For informational and non-commercial use only. Please do NOT publish this content elsewhere.
If you share or use this information, please provide proper credit and link to the website.
I appreciate your respect for the years of dedicated, freely available research!
Visit the “Info & About” page for contact details and more.
- GuitarPlayer.com, 2000 ↩︎
- The following extracts come from an unknown article that was rediscovered and shared by davidjay on the Live4Ever forum back in 2015. Check out Oasis Recording Info. ↩︎
- https://reverb.com/fr/news/a-strat-by-any-other-name-the-tokai-springy-sound ↩︎
- The source prefers to stay anonymous – thanks! ↩︎
The Chief's Guitars - Noel Gallagher's guitars: a complete guide - Oasis and NGHFB 