Chinese fake Les Pauls

gearaddict

At the risk of coming across as Gibson bashing (which really isn't my intention) I think the reason that people are more attracted to fake Gibsons over fakes of other brands (which I think they are - am I wrong?) is that so much of that brand is about the image, rather than the quality or the sound or the feel. So, I would never think about buying a Chinese fake PRS because...well, what would be the point...it wouldn't have the quality of a PRS and there's not really an image component to having a PRS...maybe a Tremonti or something but not generally. Whereas with Gibson, I would definitely consider it because they are a bit rough and ready anyway and a huge part of the buying decision is about feeling 'cool', standing there with my Gibson...and Chinese cool is just as good as USA cool!

Panama_Jack666

gearaddict said:

At the risk of coming across as Gibson bashing (which really isn't my intention) I think the reason that people are more attracted to fake Gibsons over fakes of other brands (which I think they are - am I wrong?) is that so much of that brand is about the image, rather than the quality or the sound or the feel. So, I would never think about buying a Chinese fake PRS because...well, what would be the point...it wouldn't have the quality of a PRS and there's not really an image component to having a PRS...maybe a Tremonti or something but not generally. Whereas with Gibson, I would definitely consider it because they are a bit rough and ready anyway and a huge part of the buying decision is about feeling 'cool', standing there with my Gibson...and Chinese cool is just as good as USA cool!

I think that's a really interesting point.

It could be because most peoples guitar idols are associated with Gibson's though and people could be gearing towards that. There is certainly more Gibson players over any other brand when it comes down to 'legends' (which kinda relates to your point about looking cool).

Also! Most other brands also offer cheaper alternatives like Fender and PRS. Unfortunately, Gibson's version of cheap is nowhere near Fenders version of cheap...

There is a certain exclusivity about owning a 'Gibson' I s'pose! And people that really do want to be a part of that won't settle for 'Chibson'. Meanwhile, Gibson quality control is declining while their prices are increasing which might change things down the line...

I can confirm that most of the Chibson fakes do come from Epiphone factories in China and there are some really good fakes out there... There still nowhere near as good as the real thing though!

OilCityPickups

Panama_Jack666 said:

  Meanwhile, Gibson quality control is declining while their prices are increasing which might change things down the line...

I Don't necessarily think that's true. Some of the latest Gibsons that have passed through my hands are much better. Take a look at the LPJ threads for prices ... which are definitely more affordable.

Panama_Jack666

TheGuitarWeasel said:

Panama_Jack666 said:

  Meanwhile, Gibson quality control is declining while their prices are increasing which might change things down the line...

I Don't necessarily think that's true. Some of the latest Gibsons that have passed through my hands are much better. Take a look at the LPJ threads for prices ... which are definitely more affordable.

Yeah, Gibson do have some 'affordable' guitars (made even more affordable on the used market) like the LPJ or even cheaper, the melody makers. You can get them used for much less than a new Epiphone. However, a LPJ will never be a Les Paul Standard. At least a squire strat looks like a US strat to the untrained eye.

Although I made the quality control comment, it's a little hard for me to back that up with any evidence because I've been extremely happy with my Gibson's and the ones my friends have. I own a Les Paul standard from 2004 and a Custom Shop ES-339. I've never had my hands on a newer standard. All the newer Gibson's I've played are Custom Shops and have all been spot on.

ICBM

Panama_Jack666 said:

Yeah, Gibson do have some 'affordable' guitars (made even more affordable on the used market) like the LPJ or even cheaper, the melody makers. You can get them used for much less than a new Epiphone. However, a LPJ will never be a Les Paul Standard. At least a squire strat looks like a US strat to the untrained eye.

Have a look at breakstuff's one in the

My modded Les Paul LPJ

thread. Not that far away really, just with a few simple changes - and it does at least say Gibson on it.

Panama_Jack666

ICBM said:

Have a look at breakstuff's one in the

My modded Les Paul LPJ

thread. Not that far away really, just with a few simple changes - and it does at least say Gibson on it.

Looks great. He's done some really good mods to that!

DannyP

A lot of intetesting points already made, but I would add 2 things.

If Epiphone changed to a proper shaped headstock, I think the Chibson industry would take a nose dive.

The other point is that you can hardly moan about the behaviour of the Chinese govt as a reason to buy from the US of A! Their govt has plenty of blood on its hands too.

OilCityPickups

DannyP said:

The other point is that you can hardly moan about the behaviour of the Chinese govt as a reason to buy from the US of A! Their govt has plenty of blood on its hands too.

You can if you condemn all the neo-nazi, god bothering, sisterporkin mouth breathers in the US too!
Bless their slab-arsed, trailer-trash carcasses

Pyroman

  Lol- I get a big kick out of all the (self)righteous indignation concerning low cost knock offs.  In fact I'm tempted to go buy one just to thumb my nose at the people who are always getting on about it.  But that's just because, at heart, I'm simply an ornery, contrary kind of guy.

  Even though I agree that they should at least put their own logo on them, all the angry videos, the "expose" type stuff and the ranting, railing, and soapbox pontificating  just rubs me the wrong way...

  Devil's advocate here:

  Any time you have a highly desirable product- NOT a boutique or luxury item, but one used to make a living ( or avocation)- and price it through the roof, you'll have imitators.  You see this all the time, and in every part of the marketplace.  This is what happens when Yuppies, hipsters and collectors get into the picture.  Musicians want LP's for the sound and feel.  They want a great guitar they can write and perform with night after night and year after year.  At some point in time, it became "cool" to own and/or play one.  Now everyone wants one, and the price shoots up.  Becoming collectible makes them simply unaffordable to many- even on the used market.

  If the original manufacturer doesn't want to make and offer that product in more affordable versions, others will!  As long as people buy by brand name recognition, and/or consider certain brands to be status symbols there will be others slapping that brand on their items.

  Conversely, as long as an item is popular with the collectible and/or "investment" types, the prices will stay sky high.  No nonretailer  looking for a collectible or a guitar to flip for a profit is going to touch a lower cost model guitar.  The money is in the high end stuff.

  If you don't care WHAT it says on the headstock, as long as it's a single cut, dual humbucker guitar, with high quality and a reasonable approximation of "that" sound, there are  plenty of lower cost alternatives from legitimate big name brands.  There are also plenty of boutique quality versions from smaller builders, too.  However, if you just HAVE to have the "right" label, your options are fewer:  bend over and pay the high price of a new or used one, Convince Gibson to give you some for free, or buy an unauthorized knock off with a fake Gibson brand.  If you don't have 2 or 3,000 bucks sitting around and you aren't a BIG name endorsee...

OilCityPickups

Pyroman said:

  Lol- I get a big kick out of all the (self)righteous indignation concerning low cost knock offs.  In fact I'm tempted to go buy one just to thumb my nose at the people who are always getting on about it.  But that's just because, at heart, I'm simply an ornery, contrary kind of guy.

  Even though I agree that they should at least put their own logo on them, all the angry videos, the "expose" type stuff and the ranting, railing, and soapbox pontificating  just rubs me the wrong way...

  Devil's advocate here:

  Any time you have a highly desirable product- NOT a boutique or luxury item, but one used to make a living ( or avocation)- and price it through the roof, you'll have imitators.  You see this all the time, and in every part of the marketplace.  This is what happens when Yuppies, hipsters and collectors get into the picture.  Musicians want LP's for the sound and feel.  They want a great guitar they can write and perform with night after night and year after year.  At some point in time, it became "cool" to own and/or play one.  Now everyone wants one, and the price shoots up.  Becoming collectible makes them simply unaffordable to many- even on the used market.

  If the original manufacturer doesn't want to make and offer that product in more affordable versions, others will!  As long as people buy by brand name recognition, and/or consider certain brands to be status symbols there will be others slapping that brand on their items.

  Conversely, as long as an item is popular with the collectible and/or "investment" types, the prices will stay sky high.  No nonretailer  looking for a collectible or a guitar to flip for a profit is going to touch a lower cost model guitar.  The money is in the high end stuff.

  If you don't care WHAT it says on the headstock, as long as it's a single cut, dual humbucker guitar, with high quality and a reasonable approximation of "that" sound, there are  plenty of lower cost alternatives from legitimate big name brands.  There are also plenty of boutique quality versions from smaller builders, too.  However, if you just HAVE to have the "right" label, your options are fewer:  bend over and pay the high price of a new or used one, Convince Gibson to give you some for free, or buy an unauthorized knock off with a fake Gibson brand.  If you don't have 2 or 3,000 bucks sitting around and you aren't a BIG name endorsee...

I too am an anarchist at heart, a punk of the first generation and a 'thumber-of-nose' at 'suit' and authority in general.
However I am also a manufacturer and know the level of commitment it takes to bring products to the market place. Our own Copyright Designs and Patents act 1988 was intended to protect the physical and intellectual copyright of manufactured designs and artwork. Producing a copy and putting a false manufacturer's name on it to deceive is an offense. There is no moral defense to that ... even in implying there is because the original manufacturers 'over price'. They may price it as they wish It's their product. If people want to buy it, fine, if not they will have to settle for another, non branded item of similar function.
This argument is saying 'bad market forces' and 'bad manufacturers' rather than 'bad counterfeiters' ... now I'm as anarchic as the next guy who used to have a purple Mohican, but I'm not naive enough to think that a (mostly) law abiding manufacturer, and some people spending their own hard earned (or ill gotten) money on collectors instruments are as morally reprehensible as a bunch of criminal counterfeiters. Even if the government that harbors those criminals seems to legitimise their activities by turning a blind eye. 

martinw

+1

ICBM

+1 to TheGuitarWeasel.

Just because you can't afford the real thing doesn't excuse buying a fake. There are plenty of fully legal copies (Epiphone) and legal-ish copies (eg Tokai, assuming there are no current lawsuits outstanding), and functionally similar but different-looking guitars at all price points from entry level - below even the fakes - to not much less than Gibsons.

I don't personally really even agree with the legal-ish copies, I think they're morally questionable even if they don't technically contravene any trademarks. I just don't quite get the obsession with having to have something which looks exactly like the original - I'd far rather have something which does the same job and is a bit different, even if it's clearly 'inspired by'.

chrisj1602

The sad thing is when people get ripped off, thinking they are bidding on, or buying the real thing.

viz

@icbm I agree. This is my ibanez-jem-look-alike doubleneck. It's clearly inspired by Jems and is aimed at the Vai fans market: tree-of-life inlays, handle, ibanez headstocks etc. HOWEVER, Ibanez don't do a red Jem doubleneck, in fact they don't do a Jem doubleneck at all; it doesn't say Ibanez or Jem anywhere on it - in fact it's brandless - and therefore I just don't think it's an immoral object. No Ibanez revenue has been harmed, no potential future customer will been conned. Inspired-by is the best term for it. http://i865.photobucket.com/albums/ab217/Vizzage/Gear/IMG_2406.jpg

ICBM

chrisj1602 said:

The sad thing is when people get ripped off, thinking they are bidding on, or buying the real thing.

Exactly, which is why I think it's important to get as much information as possible out there about how to spot the fakes from the small constructional details, some of which are very easy to spot without any real expert knowledge or direct experience of the real thing. For example it's becoming pretty common knowledge that real Gibsons (unless they're old ones which have been refretted) have binding 'nibs' over the fret ends, and fakes don't - or not yet. When they do it will simply be necessary to find another 'tell'.

JayGee

ICBM said:

+1 to TheGuitarWeasel.

Just because you can't afford the real thing doesn't excuse buying a fake. There are plenty of fully legal copies (Epiphone) and legal-ish copies (eg Tokai, assuming there are no current lawsuits outstanding), and functionally similar but different-looking guitars at all price points from entry level - below even the fakes - to not much less than Gibsons.

I don't personally really even agree with the legal-ish copies, I think they're morally questionable even if they don't technically contravene any trademarks. I just don't quite get the obsession with having to have something which looks exactly like the original - I'd far rather have something which does the same job and is a bit different, even if it's clearly 'inspired by'.

  I kind of get the stuff on intellectual property, innovation, trademarks, and branding. No scratch that, I make my living from writing software and without IP protection I'm out of a job so I absolutely get that...

Where I start getting ambivalent about designs, copying, derivative designs, and even to a point branding[1] is where you reach the point where the name IS the product and there's been no visible innovation in living memory. Bluntly, after 30, 40, 50, or 60 years I'm by no means entirely convinced that Gibson, Fender, et-al have any more "natural" right to make money out of those designs, and even, where they've come into common parlance as generic descriptions, model names than Vintage, Tokai, Burny et-al have.

Patents, copyright, etc have always had a limited life-span, the idea being to allow innovators, creators and their investors and backers to benefit from a limited monopoly for long and get a decent return on their investments before the things they create enter the public domain. I'm not sure that the sort of extensions we've seen lately in the life of IP rights are necessarily, universally, a good and healthy thing...

[1] In the sense that all vacuum cleaners are Hoovers and all acetylsalicylic acid based pain relief products are Aspirins... Lets face it, if it's got a contoured double cutaway body, a bolted on neck with 6-a-side tuners,  a 25.5" scale length and 3 single coil pickups it's probably a Stratocaster to most people regardless of where it  was made or who by. We know that, they know that and pretending otherwise isn't really going to change anything...

gearaddict

Can you get them with 'Chibson' on the headstock? That'd be awesome.

Panama_Jack666

Copies in general are a bit gash. Kudos to PRS for looking at Fender, looking at Gibson, completely disregarding Gretsch and coming up with an innovative design in the middle. In saying that, I'm a traditionalist - Giz a GIBSON Les Paul any day.

OilCityPickups

JayGee said:

ICBM said:

+1 to TheGuitarWeasel.

Just because you can't afford the real thing doesn't excuse buying a fake. There are plenty of fully legal copies (Epiphone) and legal-ish copies (eg Tokai, assuming there are no current lawsuits outstanding), and functionally similar but different-looking guitars at all price points from entry level - below even the fakes - to not much less than Gibsons.

I don't personally really even agree with the legal-ish copies, I think they're morally questionable even if they don't technically contravene any trademarks. I just don't quite get the obsession with having to have something which looks exactly like the original - I'd far rather have something which does the same job and is a bit different, even if it's clearly 'inspired by'.

  I kind of get the stuff on intellectual property, innovation, trademarks, and branding. No scratch that, I make my living from writing software and without IP protection I'm out of a job so I absolutely get that...

Where I start getting ambivalent about designs, copying, derivative designs, and even to a point branding[1] is where you reach the point where the name IS the product and there's been no visible innovation in living memory. Bluntly, after 30, 40, 50, or 60 years I'm by no means entirely convinced that Gibson, Fender, et-al have any more "natural" right to make money out of those designs, and even, where they've come into common parlance as generic descriptions, model names than Vintage, Tokai, Burny et-al have.

Patents, copyright, etc have always had a limited life-span, the idea being to allow innovators, creators and their investors and backers to benefit from a limited monopoly for long and get a decent return on their investments before the things they create enter the public domain. I'm not sure that the sort of extensions we've seen lately in the life of IP rights are necessarily, universally, a good and healthy thing...

[1] In the sense that all vacuum cleaners are Hoovers and all acetylsalicylic acid based pain relief products are Aspirins... Lets face it, if it's got a contoured double cutaway body, a bolted on neck with 6-a-side tuners,  a 25.5" scale length and 3 single coil pickups it's probably a Stratocaster to most people regardless of where it  was made or who by. We know that, they know that and pretending otherwise isn't really going to change anything...

It still is an offense to but Gibson on the headstock of something that isn't or Fender for that matter. I don;t personally have a problem with the Vintages or Agiles of this world ... who change a few subtle things and give the public a cheaper lookalike. I have A Vintage V100 and an Epiphone flying V ... and they are both. in their own ways fine guitars (espicially now I have upgraded pickups and a Stetsbar on the V ... pics and story to follow soon) but they don't have fake badges ... and I'm happy for everyone to recognise them as copies ... that's different to fakes!
Allowing limited copying is healthy ... allowing blatant fakery isn't.

One of the problems is that in supporting an industry, and indirectly a regime, that sets no store by copyright, originality or the criminality of counterfeit... is that we are we are legitimising having our software designers, artists, scientists and engineers done up like kippers. We do the hard work and some multi millionaire Chinese gang boss laughs all the way to the bank.
Mind you ... he'd better not try and defraud the Chinese government ... as around 1500 Chinese citizens are executed yearly by lethal injection for 'corruption'.

martinw

TheGuitarWeasel said:

One of the problems is that in supporting an industry, and indirectly a regime, that sets no store by copyright, originality or the criminality of counterfeit... is that we are we are legitimising having our software designers, artists, scientists and engineers done up like kippers. We do the hard work and some multi millionaire Chinese gang boss laughs all the way to the bank.
Mind you ... he'd better not try and defraud the Chinese government ... as around 1500 Chinese citizens are executed yearly by lethal injection for 'corruption'.

Somebody mentioned the misdemeanours of the US government earlier. Well, I know here I'd rather live out of the two.

The other downside of these cheap fakes is that they're, mostly, shit. As Chinese Guitar Sceptic said, all 4 of his were below par in one way or another.

You know, the guy who condemns it all, then has his acoustic specified with a Martin logo, so "he can judge the quality of the finish". )