Jump to content

185 counterfeit guitars valued at $1 million seized at Jersey City bulk mail center


w-w-wertard

Recommended Posts

  • Members

If they caught this many in one bust, how many are out there? I've read articles saying seasoned pro's can be fooled on one hand while some are so cheesy and shoddy they wouldn't fool anyone. I saw a few pics where a "Gibson J50", sat beside a "Martin", both counterfeit, but the pics looked pretty convincing.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • Members
I've seen some damn convincing Gibson fakes. They're good enough to make me afraid to consider buying a used Gibby. I'll admit I know little to nothing about Gibson acoustics.

 

OTOH, I haven't yet seen a fake Martin that could fool anyone who bothers to look just a bit closely.

 

BTW, the value of a hundred dollar bill is a hundred bucks. The value of a counterfeit Franklin is considerably less, regardless of how well made it is.

 

Thinking the same thing.

 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • Members

I almost bought a counterfeit Les Paul in a pawn shop some time back. The guy was gonna sell it to me for $1000 and I was sucker enough to bite. I admit I was fooled. His wife, who I now respect as an honest person, happened through the store and informed me it was counterfeit. Stopped the deal cold, of course. Before I left, she showed me a letter from the Gibson people that denounced the instrument as being fake. Another individual had purchased it and eventually realized that it was not legit. The letter basically stated that it was an illegal instrument and advised them against sale. After I looked at it, I began to notice oddities in the finish work, primarily binding. It was for the most part well put together and sounded just fine, but not up to the standards that you'd expect on a "real" Les Paul. Needless, to say, I don't visit that shop anymore.

 

If a deal sounds too good to be true....it probably is.....eh?

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • Members

There are US agents combing the docks where container ships arrive who routinely search for counterfeit trade of all types. Gucci (bags) is a huge business. Women will typically fall victim to "designer" goods at steep discounts making them the target market for fakes. The agents are experts at spotting fakes. It was an interesting show.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • Members
Does anyone know where these come from?

Sears.

 

Let's face it, that's the 64K question isn't it? If I had an accurate answer for you I'd also be having suits knocking at my door within the fortnight. My theory is they're made by the very people identified on their headstocks. What better way to advertise than letting the talking heads do it for free and make you out to be a premier player in the biz? Just a theory.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • Members

Real, fake, what difference does it make? If the fakes are reasonable facsimiles of their namesakes then all is not too far afoul. For all intents and purposes, the guy sporting the genuine article may be, in fact, the one who's been duped. I know I'm not keen enough of eye and ear to tell the difference.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • Members

It's easy to make a counterfeit Martin especially when Martin sells kits that are copies of their popular models. If you can counterfeit the Martin logo on the head you can make one that is pretty convincing.

 

Big Al

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • Members
It's easy to make a counterfeit Martin especially when Martin sells kits that are copies of their popular models. If you can counterfeit the Martin logo on the head you can make one that is pretty convincing.

 

Big Al

 

This is one method of copying. Another is to carefully disassemble a few samples and then duplicate the parts. I think I can do a reasonable job of it without much difficulty. The band arrested for selling fakes (in another thread on this topic) got the headstock logos down convincingly and that's the litmus test detail after the construction.

 

So, who here actually thinks they have the genuine article and not a fake? Can you prove authenticity? I know I can't.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Yeah, most of the fakes cut corners someplace - some of them cut corners all over the place, so it's very obvious for people who are even casually familiar with the real deal to tell the difference. Making a high-accuracy fake takes more time, expertise and money, and all of that cuts into the profits, so they're less common - although some are out there, and they don't all come from overseas. Unscrupulous players in the USA have tried modifying Squiers and other lower-cost instruments to make them look more like Fenders and other upscale guitars, then try to pass them off as such, etc. Those tend to be one-off examples of counterfeiting. The stuff coming out of China is often done in much greater quantities. Their laws are sufficiently different than ours that companies sometimes unknowingly hand over their rights, while apparently other times, it's a matter of black market manufacturing with little to no regard for the rights of the original developer / manufacturer. It's been a problem that the US and China have been at odds over for quite some time.

 

Here's a couple of links that some of you may find interesting - one from the US Government, and the other from NAMM:

 

http://www.namm.org/library/global-report/china

 

http://beijing.usembassy-china.org.cn/protecting_ipr.html

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Real, fake, what difference does it make? If the fakes are reasonable facsimiles of their namesakes then all is not too far afoul. For all intents and purposes, the guy sporting the genuine article may be, in fact, the one who's been duped. I know I'm not keen enough of eye and ear to tell the difference.

 

When someone takes a design and makes their version of it, or develops the idea in a different or new direction, that's one thing - but building something designed to confuse the buyer into thinking they have the "real thing" by putting another company's name and logo on the item as if it was built by them hurts everyone other than the people trying to profit off of that fraud. Consumers get a (in most cases) substantially inferior product, and from that they form an inaccurate opinion about the brand that they think they're playing. The inferior products and the damage they do to the public's perception of that name brand hurt the owners of that brand, the people who work there, etc. Not only do forgeries take potential sales away from them, but the inferior nature of the products hurt their image and reputation - no one blames the un-named factory in China that built the guitar, they blame Martin, Fender or Gibson when they have problems with the supposed "name brand" guitar. And it definitely hurts us as players and folks who are interested in buying used guitars, since it makes it easier for us to be deceived and defrauded.

 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • Members

on

 

When someone takes a design and makes their version of it, or develops the idea in a different or new direction, that's one thing - but building something designed to confuse the buyer into thinking they have the "real thing" by putting another company's name and logo on the item as if it was built by them hurts everyone other than the people trying to profit off of that fraud. Consumers get a (in most cases) substantially inferior product, and from that they form an inaccurate opinion about the brand that they think they're playing. The inferior products and the damage they do to the public's perception of that name brand hurt the owners of that brand, the people who work there, etc. Not only do forgeries take potential sales away from them, but the inferior nature of the products hurt their image and reputation - no one blames the un-named factory in China that built the guitar, they blame Martin, Fender or Gibson when they have problems with the supposed "name brand" guitar. And it definitely hurts us as players and folks who are interested in buying used guitars, since it makes it easier for us to be deceived and defrauded.

 

Boiler plate understanding of it, Phil. Old news, really, but thanks. The resulting counterfeit doesn't sting if the end result is a guitar that's a ringer and brings with it the intent it was originally designed for regardless of whose DNA went into its construction. One thing involves money. We get that. The other is something completely intangible, and insolvent as such, to where a reward lies, or should lie. We're really just protecting the perspectives we've come to be indoctrinated with and that, in and of itself, is the intrinsic value we so dearly try to preserve. Kinda crazy, really, but that's the point of defending against a fake that off shore enterprise doesn't share or maybe even understand. You want fake? Take a normally American produced product that has been sent offshore for fabrication by cheaper labor and then import it Stateside as the genuine article. Getting a little fuzzy for you yet or is that just a twist of semantics? Tell the guy who lost his job that the product is still a made in America product by American quality-oriented hands and you might want to carefully back away before you turn to leave. Perspective is a very controlling thing and most of us have been issued our perspectives by those who've gone before us. That makes us the ignorant masses who obliviously rely on other people to think for us. If we remove that limiter we begin to understand quality and world markets - macro versus micro - and embrace a wider set of goals.

 

On the subject of reproducing a quality guitar and then sliding it into the market under the radar as a Martin we have free enterprise constained to the black market instead of it saying out in the open "Hey, we make a better product than you do, Chris 4, and it's cheaper too." That's where the world is going anyway so what are we protecting that isn't going to be lost naturally to a global developing free market economy? Better get your snobbery all Kevlared up because the marketplace is already a minefield with this very thing.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • Members

 

Mainland China. It's a communist country. Copyrights, patents, laws of other nations, and even business ethics are irrelevant to them.

 

Correct.

 

http://www.musicincmag.com/News/2010...14_martin.html

 

Other nations do it on a smaller scale. But China does it on a huge scale and its intellectual property laws - as the article shows - sanction it.

 

It's just one more reason I try hard not to buy stuff from the PRC.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • Members

local shop here in Thailand sells those Chinese Les Paul copies, about $300. They do tell customers they are not genuine, to their credit. Look nice, didn't try one. Re: gucci bags etc. All those have to do is be reasonably put together and hang off a shoulder. Should be able to tell a fake guitar if playing thru decent amp. Also recall seeing Epiphone ES295 being sold as new at Bangkok shop. I asked about that, considering Epi had quit making those some years before. Guy at shop just shook head and played dumb (maybe he wasn't playing?)

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • Members

I've got an SG that I bought from a local pawn shop. Over the course of a month or so after I bought it, it kind of incrementally dawned on me that it was a Fibson. Oh well. It's built well, sounds good (pups could use an upgrade), looks good, well-finished. Other than it being a fake, I've really got nothing to complain about. C'est la guerre.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • Members
I've got an SG that I bought from a local pawn shop. Over the course of a month or so after I bought it, it kind of incrementally dawned on me that it was a Fibson. Oh well. It's built well, sounds good (pups could use an upgrade), looks good, well-finished.

 

Are the fraudsters spraying Nitro finishes? Seems to me that confining oneself to nitro finishes would somewhat protect oneself from the mass market fraudsters.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Archived

This topic is now archived and is closed to further replies.

×
×
  • Create New...