It looks like you're new here. If you want to get involved, click one of these buttons!
Subscribe to our Patreon, and get image uploads with no ads on the site!
Base theme by DesignModo & ported to Powered by Vanilla by Chris Ireland, modified by the "theFB" team.
Comments
Fender, Yamaha, PRS, Ibanez, Dean etc all do this.
No large corporation can fill that child-like need for these "because I'm worth it" types, no matter how good the guitar is.
Formerly TheGuitarWeasel ... Oil City Pickups ... Oil City Blog 7 String.org profile and message
Clive brown takes months as well or you go down the fake looking rubbish
One reason why I'm going to scale back vintage spec stuff and finishing
(formerly customkits)
Just look at what Feline do with the Lion, best single cut you can find.
“There’s a spectrum that occurs. And the spectrum can be wide, but it can also be definitive or grey depending on how you look at it, and the definitive part is the known counterfeit/knockoffs. They truly, they see a brand that’s iconic, they see it has momentum, and they want to take – just frankly – illegitimate leverage on that momentum through counterfeit product, and you have to hit that hard, you have to stop it fast, or it gets out of control, and quite frankly, it damages your brand. But not just your brand and your business, it puts guitars out there that confuse guitarists, thinking they bought a real Gibson, so that’s this spectrum here, you really have to be tough on that.”
If that's where he left it, I'd be on board with that. I don't like to see people who aren't aware thinking they're getting a good second hand Gibson and receiving a badly made knock off. The problem is he then talks about boutique builders.
I don't think anyone orders from a boutique builder thinking they're getting a Gibson.
Conflating those two things is just disingenuous nonsense. I get going after the fakes. That's good. But someone handmaking a replica of a '59 Junior with a different headstock and different name just isn't the same thing.
The "forced licensing and lawsuits" business model is exactly what SCO tried to do to Linux, culminating in possibly the most disastrous lawsuit in computing history against IBM and Novell. The main problem they had (other than not having a leg to stand on) was the fact that they alienated the entire Linux community - with the follow-on result that all of those alienated parties began to unite against them. They ended up trying to conduct suits against Novell, IBM, SuSE, DaimlerChrysler, Autozone and Red Hat simultaneously, and went bankrupt as a result of it - but they listed the amounts that they were suing all of them for as assets, before losing against Novell on all claims.
The other suits were dismissed without prejudice, but SCO can only resurrect their claims (even though most in every suit were ruled against) if they pay all of the parties' legal fees, which they can't afford. Ironically, the right to appeal and resurrect the suits is now the only asset that SCO has, because all of its other assets were sold off to satisfy Chapter 11.
In other words...it's hardly a winning strategy. Gibson basically tick all the boxes for exactly the same outcome at this point.
(formerly miserneil)
(formerly miserneil)
If a number of established independent builders sign up to being Gibson shills, bound by whatever horrendous Ts & Cs Gibson chose to lock them down with and acknowledge they are indeed using a Gibson design, it would lend weight to the argument that the industry does indeed see the LP shape as Gibson's own and therefore any vaguely similar designs can be considered fakes. Then comes the legal action.
Shame that the interviewer didn't press them on what they consider counterfeit as that's the crux for me. If they just went after the China rip-offs then the public would probably be on board. However, they seem to be being deliberately vague when they allude to what constitutes a counterfeit product and, considering their actions against Dean, it's quite obvious where this is headed.
It's also quite funny that they're really just producing 'fakes' themselves. *Cough* Sorry... re-issues. If they were so fucking smart they wouldn't have dropped the design themselves in 1960.
Maybe just concentrate on making good guitars and looking after your workforce. What a horrible company they are.
Frankly its the thin end of a very thick wedge for the guitar industry.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CgbcQIT7BMc