Fake guitars, opinions?

[deeaa*]

Hello,

There was this thread about a fake Gibson Zakk (possibly) and that got me thinking about fakes in general.

I've seen a LOT of fake Gibsons on Ebay etc. of late, and they are getting better and better. Actually sometimes it seems like they purposely do some alterations to the fakes, like the angle of the rear plexi etc.

Anyway...I was thinking, if you know it's a fake, does it matter if the price is right? I mean, I've played some pretty horrible Gibsons, and I suspect some of these fakes might actually be better guitars even, at least in some occasions. Like just a month back I played this original Gibson that had not only orange peel paint in places, also slightly misplaced saddle, cracked lacquer in places and some weird rub scuffs here and there too...and the setup was horrid as well.

I have a good friend who's a luthier, and he can and has built 1:1 copies of Gibson Les Pauls for instance - only without any logos etc. But marvellous guitars, 100% hand made of best materials, and still he can build one for a clearly lower price than a real Gibson. I'd get one in a heartbeat.

I know this other luthier who makes a lot of Fender necks, and with him it's like, if you want, you can ask for a neck with a Fender logo and any serial you want too, and you won't be able to tell if it's made by fender or him without a really serious and well-informed study. Or he could give it a bugs bunny logo if you like. And them necks are top notch too.

When I had my Fender neck made I wanted my own logo "D/A stratoblaster" and I just gave him a scalable file on an USB stick of it and there it is in full color. I could have asked for a 'real' fender logo just as well.

I dunno. It's of course wrong if you _claim_ they are real, but...I dunno. I could buy one of them LP copies some day. Tape over the fake logo and just play it :-)

[Kazz]

I guess I am on the other side of that equation....we were at a fairly reputable pawn shop a couple of years back and they had a Gibson J45 acoustic...I thought it was just a case of another pawn shop that did not know what they bought because it was priced at $500 I went home and did some research and went back and put it on layaway....paid it off a couple of weeks ago....and for once did a very smart thing...I took it to a VERY REPUTABLE guitar store here in town and asked them to validate the guitar....it was a very good fake.....but after about an hour they were able to say that without a doubt it was a fake and gave me a letter saying the same....took it back and got my money back fortunately.

I have no qualms with someone taking Gibson's idea or Leo Fender's for that matter and producing a quality instrument that is hard to distinguish from the original but don't put the Gibson or Fender logo on them and try to pass them off as the real.

[evenkeel]

I agree with Kaz on this one.

I think we should consider all the hard working folks at Fender, Gibson, Guild, Martin, et'al. The people buying and making the fakes are not just hurting a faceless corporation. They are hurting good, hard working people. Competing against legit foreign built guitars is hard enough. Some of the Asian built guitars are terrific; the Epi Lp's, MIM Fenders, Chinese built Morgan Monroes, Guild GAD series, etc.. It's hard enough for the US builders w/o supporting the fakes.

[sunvalleylaw]

I go with that too. You can make something that is not a Fender or Gibson but borrows the ideas, like the Agile LP's, the Peavey's/ibanez's, etc. strat copies and that is fine. But just plain fake copies passed off as real, . . . no.

[Eric***]

I guess I'm not sure what your question is.

I don't think they should be faked (e.g. putting Gibson on the headstock of a fake), but honestly, this falls on the end user. If people get over their obsession with having a certain name on the headstock and just buy the fakes as known fakes that are great guitars, that would make this moot.

[sunvalleylaw]

Eric, that brings to mind, the old 70's/80's Martin lawsuit Takamines. I understand they are great guitars. They say Takamine on them but use that Martin-y script. I guess they got sued for it. But, they apparently are great guitars and do not say Martin. They were sold as Taks. Now those old lawsuit guitars are out there. If someone likes them and buys one because it is a nice Tak, cool!

But with regard to true fakes that put on the Fender/Gibson/Rolex etc. logo, I don't think people "should" create a market for true fakes, whether it be watches, guitars, clothes, etc., as the whole production and marketing of those items hurts real people who work at the real producer. Also, although it would be different for every plant I suppose, I would guess that production of the true fakes in some countries involves labor standards that are not up to snuff. Not that there aren't labor abuses present in production of a lot of properly branded stuff too. A person has to do some real research if they are concerned about that. Still, I don't like seeing a market created for the illegal fake goods even if they are acknowledged as fake by the user, or even the logo changed.

[mrmudcat]

just cause you can put porshe on a volkwagon does not make it a porshe

[Eric***]

Eric, that brings to mind, the old 70's/80's Martin lawsuit Takamines. I understand they are great guitars. They say Takamine on them but use that Martin-y script. I guess they got sued for it. But, they apparently are great guitars and do not say Martin. They were sold as Taks. Now those old lawsuit guitars are out there. If someone likes them and buys one because it is a nice Tak, cool!

But with regard to true fakes that put on the Fender/Gibson/Rolex etc. logo, I don't think people "should" create a market for true fakes, whether it be watches, guitars, clothes, etc., as the whole production and marketing of those items hurts real people who work at the real producer. Also, although it would be different for every plant I suppose, I would guess that production of the true fakes in some countries involves labor standards that are not up to snuff. Not that there aren't labor abuses present in production of a lot of properly branded stuff too. A person has to do some real research if they are concerned about that. Still, I don't like seeing a market created for the illegal fake goods even if they are acknowledged as fake by the user, or even the logo changed.

When I said 'fakes' I didn't mean guitars that were pretending to be Gibsons, I meant something more along the lines of the LP copy Dee's friend would make. Every bit as good as an LP, probably without some of the QC concerns you'd get with Gibson, but still not a Gibson.

It's easier to just go out and buy a Gibson Les Paul for a lot of people, because they don't have the knowledge to figure out if the luthier's copy is good quality. Instead, they can just say, "Slash uses a Gibson Les Paul, so it must be good."

This rating of guitar quality has to fall on the end user. Unfortunately, it takes much time, experience, knowledge, and a LOT of trying out new guitars.

I would argue that if you can't tell which guitar is best on your own, you can probably go with the cheapest one. Kind of self-regulating that way. Unfortunately, people want 'the best' and sometimes (usually?) have the cash to buy beyond their skill level.

[marnold***]

I really don't get the desire to put a Fender decal on a Squier, for example. If you like the guitar and it plays well, play it! If someone looks down their nose at it, that's their problem. The bigger issue comes in when that guitar is later sold. Maybe the original owner/modifier made it clear that this isn't a Fender. There's no guarantee that down the line someone won't pass it off as the real McCoy.

As far as deeaa's friend goes, plenty of people make Strats that are considered to be higher quality than Fender. That's probably somewhat less true with Gibson, just due to the fact that the end of the Gibson lawsuits is relatively recent. Nevertheless, they've now got competition at the low end (Agile, et al) and the high end (Carvin, Hamer, et al). I consider competition like this to be A Good Thing because it keeps companies honest. Just don't pass it off as something it isn't.

That's also been happening in the Jackson world, although to a much lesser degree. Mainly people really like the maple necks from DK2Ms like mine, but prefer an HSS pickup configuration or something similar. So they buy a DK2M for the neck, put the old neck on the DK2M body and sell it as original. Mind you, it still might be a cool guitar, but it shouldn't be passed off as original when it is a Partsocaster.

[wingsdad]

Eric, that brings to mind, the old 70's/80's Martin lawsuit Takamines. .....

...And also, Gibson's 70's lawsuit against Ibanez for its too-close-for-comfort Les Paul copies, the clincher being the Ibz LP's identical headstock design. Like the Tak 'Martin', these were attacked as 'counterfeit'.

In the early 70's Ibanez was making the best Japanese copies of the Fender Strat, Rickenbacker 4001 bass and a slew of Gibsons - Flying V's, T-birds, Melody Makers, 335's and more...but most egregiously (to Gibson) the LP. The true problem wasn't how closely they resembled the real deals; it was that their quality and playability rivalled if not surpassed the originals.

Ibanez even introduced the exposed coil (no cover) humbucker on LP's, and Gibson copied them!

Ultimately, it was that type of pressure on the American Big 3 (Fender, Gibson, Martin) from these 2 Japanese leaders that opened up the marketplace's awareness for 'affordable' alternatives - not just Asian imports, but from American manufacturers like Guild, just to name one -- and to the development of what we now have out there.

So, it's come full cycle. We have a some aggressive rice-fed factories cranking out LP's and Strats & the like that get marketed under brand names like Agile, Stagg, etc.

So, what makes these different from 'counterfeits'? Just this: that they are openly and without chicanery marketed by their factory-less 'manufacturers'.

Let's just call them what they truly are, OK?: distributors. Just as Ibanez is really, openly, a distributor, and always has been for it's parent corporation, Hoshino, for guitars made under contract by some select, excellent factories like Cort, Matsumoto and Fujigen (can you say '80's Fender'?), that to this day make guitars for others, American 'manufacturers', rather than surreptitiously, with a faked Fender or Gibson logo.

You could go so far as to say that Gibson, with its Epiphone line (after shutting down the Kalamazoo factory almost 30 years ago and switching to Asian contract factories) has been a distributor, in the Ibanez sense of the word, for Samick, Aria, Peerless, Fujigen and a slew of others.

All that stuff is on the opposite end of the spectrum from the unscrupulous individuals, some of whom who call themselves 'companies', who assemble PartsCasters with bodies, necks and hardware they cop from various sources, slap a counterfeit brand logo on them and sell them to PT Barnum's favorite chumps as real deals.

Some folks here have and do make their own Parts Guitars. They're not counterfeits; they're home-brew.

[spaivxx]

I have done this myself. A few years ago I got a Fender American Strat in a trade. I was playing in a blues band at the time and had never owned a Strat, but figured it would be a great guitar for the stuff we were playing.

I got it and after a lifetime of Ibanez (the older models like Reb Beach Voyager, RG540, Jem, Universe, etc...), Charvel, Jackson, ESP (NOT LTD), Godin, Carvin, etc... The Strat just felt lacking.

I made a list of what I liked and didn't like about it, spent a month or so collcting parts on eBay, and built a better strat. Most of the parts were actually Fender parts but I used a Mighty Mite birdseye neck with an ebony board and a Mighty Mite swamp ash body with a quilted maple top. I installed Kinman Vintage Noiseless pickups, custom switching electronics with Orange Drop Cap, etc...

What I eneded up with was a guitar that was very much like my other guitar players Strat Ultra, which cost him over a grand. I had about $7-800 in mine, which isn't a huge savings, but I was able to tak a few weeks collecting parts and ended up with a one of a kind guitar that was basically a custom Fender but not assembled by Fender.

A lot of guys make custom parts casters, but my sin here is that I had a friend that had a Fender logo, and I attached it to the headstock. My neckplate had the Fender "F" and said made in Corona California. My locking Sperzel style tuners were Fender brand, etc...

I purposely did not attempt to put a serial number on the guitar, it was not my intention to fool anyone except maybe when I was playing it on stage. To anyone who asked, I proudly explained that it was my version of a Fender. The fact that I built it was a point of pride for me. (technically my luthier friend assembled it, I merely designed it and bought all the parts)

I eventually sold the guitar on eBay (huge mitake, hate myself for that) and I indicated in unmistakable terms that the guitar was NOT A FENDER. I lited every part and explained in my listing that it was a parts caster.

Here are a couple pics of the guitar:

http://i9.photobucket.com/albums/a74...Picture001.jpg

http://i9.photobucket.com/albums/a74...x/IMG_4962.jpg

[evenkeel]

Eric, that brings to mind, the old 70's/80's Martin lawsuit Takamines. I understand they are great guitars. They say Takamine on them but use that Martin-y script. I guess they got sued for it.

As best as I've been able to find out, the only lawsuit from the so called "Lawsuit Era" was the Gibson/Norlin Vs Elgen distributors (Ibanez). The suit was all about headstock shape. I don't think Martin ever sued Takamine.

For those that care this is a pretty good accounting of what happened.

http://www.guitarattack.com/destroyer/lawsuit.htm

[sunvalleylaw]

True enough. It appears no lawsuit (as opposed to legal action via letters, negotiation, etc.) was ever charged. Takamine did change their headstock though. This story is what I found in a couple different places on the internet. Maybe it is what really happened:

What actually happened was this: Martin had decided that, given the
way the guitar market was going, they needed a line of lower priced
Asian-made import guitars. But then, even more so than now, they knew
that they needed to protect their overall brand image by making sure
that these imports were of the best possible quality.
So the company entered into extensive development plans with Takamine
in Japan. The tooling was brought in, the jigs provided, and the
workers at the plant were trained in how to best reproduce a Martin
guitar.
Takamine was all set to start producing Martin's Sigma line.
THEN Takamine was bought by Kaman Corporation, builders of Ovation
guitars, and Martin decided they didn't want to be getting product
from the subsidiary of a major competitor. So they changed plans and
arranged with another manufacturer to make Sigmas.
In the meantime, Kaman started importing Takamines, and they looked so
much like Martins that you couldn't tell them apart at twenty feet.
The C. F. Martin company never sued, but their attorneys did send a
"cease and desist" letter threatening legal action if the overt
cosmetic similarities on Takamines weren't changed.
Kaman complied, and the Takamines got a new logo and a new peghead
design.
Hence the birth of the "lawsuit Takamine" legend. It has some small
grounding in fact, but has grown considerably in the retelling.

[sumitomo]

just cause you can put porshe on a volkwagon does not make it a porshe

So when I put a subaru in a vanagon does that make it a voobaru?Sumi

[markb]

...And also, Gibson's 70's lawsuit against Ibanez for its too-close-for-comfort Les Paul copies, the clincher being the Ibz LP's identical headstock design. Like the Tak 'Martin', these were attacked as 'counterfeit'.

In the early 70's Ibanez was making the best Japanese copies of the Fender Strat, Rickenbacker 4001 bass and a slew of Gibsons - Flying V's, T-birds, Melody Makers, 335's and more...but most egregiously (to Gibson) the LP. The true problem wasn't how closely they resembled the real deals; it was that their quality and playability rivalled if not surpassed the originals.

Ibanez even introduced the exposed coil (no cover) humbucker on LP's, and Gibson copied them!

Ultimately, it was that type of pressure on the American Big 3 (Fender, Gibson, Martin) from these 2 Japanese leaders that opened up the marketplace's awareness for 'affordable' alternatives - not just Asian imports, but from American manufacturers like Guild, just to name one -- and to the development of what we now have out there.

So, it's come full cycle. We have a some aggressive rice-fed factories cranking out LP's and Strats & the like that get marketed under brand names like Agile, Stagg, etc.

So, what makes these different from 'counterfeits'? Just this: that they are openly and without chicanery marketed by their factory-less 'manufacturers'.

Let's just call them what they truly are, OK?: distributors. Just as Ibanez is really, openly, a distributor, and always has been for it's parent corporation, Hoshino, for guitars made under contract by some select, excellent factories like Cort, Matsumoto and Fujigen (can you say '80's Fender'?), that to this day make guitars for others, American 'manufacturers', rather than surreptitiously, with a faked Fender or Gibson logo.

You could go so far as to say that Gibson, with its Epiphone line (after shutting down the Kalamazoo factory almost 30 years ago and switching to Asian contract factories) has been a distributor, in the Ibanez sense of the word, for Samick, Aria, Peerless, Fujigen and a slew of others.

All that stuff is on the opposite end of the spectrum from the unscrupulous individuals, some of whom who call themselves 'companies', who assemble PartsCasters with bodies, necks and hardware they cop from various sources, slap a counterfeit brand logo on them and sell them to PT Barnum's favorite chumps as real deals.

Some folks here have and do make their own Parts Guitars. They're not counterfeits; they're home-brew.

Distributors, not manufacturers just about nails it. All this "we work closely with our overseas partners to ensure quality control" is often so much BS. The dialogue is usually "we want something like this for this price" and blam, the factory produces 10,000 strat shaped objects for the price agreed.

Re the "open coil look". I remember Ibanez copies with open coils from the time. I can also remember it being a fashion among some players in the 70s. Mick Ronson and Peter Frampton spring immediately to mind as saying that taking the covers off their Gibson humbuckers made them sound better (Ronson went further and stripped all the paint off his Lester and stuck it on his face instead ). Manufacturers rejoiced at the savings in materials and labour and offered open coil hbs at the same price. The nascent replacement pickup industry (Di Marzio, Mighty Mite) fuelled the fad as well by not even offering covers in the first place. That's my admittedly hazy and jaded memory of this.

As for fake guitars, a copy with its own branding is an honest copy, a fake Gibson or Fender is an attempt to defraud. I wish people wouldn't use Fender decals on partscasters.

[Perfect Stranger]

I'm not sure I know what the original question was?

[ZMAN]

Fake guitars!
What we are talking about is a copy of high end guitar, that the manufacturer has gone to great lengths within a small budget to recreate an almost exact "looking" copy of the orginal guitar. These look and feel almost a good as the orginials. They do not ask huge prices for them but are clearly infringing on the original maker copyrights.
I started the Zakk Wylde thread and we have found out that the guitar IS a fake. To the trained eye they would be obvious fakes, but to 90% of us out there they look real. My friend is new to the Pawn business and took it on trade, for other goods he had in stock. He gave the equivalent of around 1300 dollars. I think his cost on those items was probably in the 900 to 1000 range. These guitars sell out of China for 300 US.
This is the inherent problem with these fakes. They are being passed off fraudulently to unsuspecting buyers as "great deals" on high end guitars. So my take on them is that they should be siezed on import and charges laid on importers and against the makers.
I am not talking about licenced copies like Epi and Squier. But to some extent I feel that Gibson and Fender should share some of the blame for going offshore with their manufacture.
As far as parts casters and homemade guitars I am only against those who pass them off as original. Again let the buyer beware.

[bigoldron]

I haven't had a chance to go through this thread and put my 2 cents in (like that actually means anything), but I saw this on Ebay and am wondering. Is this a legit Strat?

http://cgi.ebay.com/Fender-Stratocas...item439b097093

[Kodiak3D]

It's a Squier. The guy says so in the description.

Apparently these were made in Korea and had the Large Fender logo with the smaller Squre logo on rounded end of the headstock. If you look at the picture of the headstock that the seller so kindly provides, you can tell that the Squier logo was removed (which the seller does point out) and replaced with something about a "custom body."

However, some of the reviews I read about those Protones were very positive. While it may not be a true Fender, it may still be a good guitar. I'll give the seller credit for being honest.

I found this page on eBay about how to be careful buying a Fender. The guy seems to know what he's talking about.