BBC 1 now

siraxeman

http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b04tt8kc/fake-britain-series-5-episode-15

Yes watching this now..from 30mins in...

rossi

Wow ,Certainly tells us a fool and his money are soon parted .Will encourage more crooks .....who tune in avidly  to find out what scams are going down and how to join in .Personally any guitar over grand is froth and hogs wash .

Gassage

57Deluxe said:

That 70s style black logo looked a bit off for a '64 strat...??

The first one was a transitional logo- they can be on 64 or 65 strats.

VimFuego

who parts with £8k without even inspecting the guitar first? And why can't I have customers like that?

ICBM

Is this 'Fake Britain' Series 5 Episode 15 with the chap holding two smartphones on the iPlayer page?

I'll download it later.

(Edit - yes it is, didn't see siraxeman's post.)

Just last week I was examining a mostly fake '62 Tele a friend of mine bought from them about ten years ago. I told him not to deal with them long before that, but he said they were "able to get good stuff". lol

ESBlonde

Plenty of web stories from reliable sources about these two crooks. They even had people doing almost production line type fakes of AC30s, HiWatts and the like. It's amazing how many gullible people take shops are gospal. At least it's out there now that the Harrisons are convicted con men so let the buyer beware.

GuitarMonkey

I've seen fakes that people unwittingly bought from Music Ground. One "vintage" Telecaster had a 3-bolt neck fixing body with the holes crudely filled and redrilled for 4 screws. 

impmann

A three bolt Tele?

I didn't think Teles got three bolt necks in the 1970s... only the deluxes and thinlines... 

GuitarMonkey

Must've been a Custom or Deluxe I think? It was a while back. The body was thickly painted in a metallic red shade which bore no resemblance to any Fender colour.

ICBM

A lot of them are not just fakes, they're badly-done fakes.

That sounds a bit like my friend's "'62 Tele", which is refinished in a thick off-white so you can't tell what's under it, and is neither blonde nor Olympic White. It has the open-channel wiring rout between the pickups as an early 60s one should, but on closer inspection it *also* has the drilled wiring tunnel from the neck pocket to the control cavity which is late 60s and 70s. Since Fender would never have drilled the tunnel on a body already routed for the channel even at a transitional period - a waste of time, and harder than making the two small holes from the channel to the cavities - then clearly the channel is a later modification to make it look like an older body. Then when you look at the channel you can see that the routing isn't even neat enough to be factory-done either. Also the headstock decal is clearly a repro 'Custom Tele' one since the Fender logo is gold and you can see where the word 'Custom' has been clipped out or scraped off. And the grey-base bobbin 70s bridge pickup has been inked around the edges so it looks like a black one at a quick look!

And that's just one example, I've seen loads more like it - amps too, which with a moment's inspection by anyone really familiar with a proper one will be obvious it's a fake.

ICBM

A lot of them are not just fakes, they're badly-done fakes.

That sounds a bit like my friend's "'62 Tele", which is refinished in a thick off-white so you can't tell what's under it, and is neither blonde nor Olympic White. It has the open-channel wiring rout between the pickups as an early 60s one should, but on closer inspection it *also* has the drilled wiring tunnel from the neck pocket to the control cavity which is late 60s and 70s. Since Fender would never have drilled the tunnel on a body already routed for the channel even at a transitional period - a waste of time, and harder than making the two small holes from the channel to the cavities - then clearly the channel is a later modification to make it look like an older body. Then when you look at the channel you can see that the routing isn't even neat enough to be factory-done either. Also the headstock decal is clearly a repro 'Custom Tele' one since the Fender logo is gold and you can see where the word 'Custom' has been clipped out or scraped off. And the grey-base bobbin 70s bridge pickup has been inked around the edges so it looks like a black one at a quick look!

And that's just one example, I've seen loads more like it - amps too, which with a moment's inspection by anyone really familiar with a proper one will be obvious it's a fake.

Philly_Q

I was even later than usual for work this morning, this came on just as I was about to leave.

I wasn't sure exactly what the Music Ground guys had done - they obviously hadn't been directly involved in the theft of guitars from the Italian dealer and I didn't get the impression they'd actually done the faking or neck/body swapping.  They had certainly handled stolen goods.

Anyway... did you see (Watchdog's) Matt Allwright playing the '64 Strat at the beginning of the piece?  He's better than me, for sure.

Reverend

Singer in my old band used to work at the Denmark Street shop years ago and got sacked after they accused him of stealing from them (he swore blind that he hadn't done it). Pete and him were really nice people. They hated the family though.

ICBM

Reverend said:

Singer in my old band used to work at the Denmark Street shop years ago and got sacked after they accused him of stealing from them

lol

Presumably they preferred to have a monopoly on that.

Loobs

Wankers. Notorious tricksters.

KKJale

Philly_Q said:

.... they obviously hadn't been directly involved in the theft of guitars from the Italian dealer ...

Quite so. I refuse, personally, to believe the nonsense I've heard that they had previously been personal guests of the collector and dealer at his villa in Italy, or that they used his hospitality to case the joint. What type of person would do that?

It's also absolutely out of the question that they set up a Serbian gang to do the burglary. They are completely innocent of anything like that, I am sure. 

Philly_Q

That's interesting.  Seems I may have been overly generous in my assessment of their situation.

KKJale

In fairness, let's not forget that some of these guitars ended up with other UK dealers, too. 

I couldn't say whether those were innocent mistakes, nor whether those instruments were returned to the authorities once the provenance became clear... 

It's unlikely IMO that there are many long-established UK vintage dealers who have never put together Fender parts to make a more "convincing" package. 

The trouble with "vintage" Fenders is that anybody, even the most knowledgeable, can - and probably has been - fooled by the very best work. For many dealers, sadly, the question is no longer "is this straight?"... it's "well, I'm convinced by x amount, but will the next guy agree the same amount or more?" And if two or three reputable people say a guitar is right, then it may as well be. 

Jez6345789

Have they now closed completely or popped up somewhere else?

I presume they would shutdown to hide all the other crap that might come up against them.

AuldReekie

Watched the programme - the buyer checked the serial no of the strat to find it wasnt listed - I would have thought that would have been one off the first thing that Musicground would have checked when they were offered the strat...........or perhaps they had..............