Chinese Replica Ace Frehley Les Paul Guitars

Many times in emerging markets you can find people that will find ways to make money from the boom in business. Fraud was not as widespread when Japan was a major producer of various goods, but there were some counterfeits of various things. Mostly something was just made to look like another item and did not have actual logos or decals to make the replica look like the real version. This happened with many toys like 1980s Transformers and G.I. Joe. This also happened with guitars. Several Japanese guitar companies made their guitars look almost like the American version back in the 1970s. Now this is occurring with products coming from China. The bad thing is that many of the Japanese copies were great quality. Most of the Chinese counterfeits are plain junk. Now there are many good products that come from China. I am speaking only of clear products that are counterfeits.

There have been various forms of goods that come from China that are fake. Some of them are good and some are complete junk. You can find Polo and Tommy Hilfiger shirts, designer bags and sunglasses, sneakers, and professional sports team jerseys for incredibly low prices compared to the real product that is being sold. They also have had cases of silver collectible coins like the American Silver Eagle dollar being counterfeited. One thing that makes this very easy is that many of the things being counterfeited like Reebok NFL jerseys or Nike shoes is that they are made in nations in Southeast Asia like china. Some legitimate products are even made in China by the respective companies.

This was for a bit of background information for the reader. The main point of my article is counterfeit guitars and that is what we will now focus on. Many guitar companies, most were American or Japanese, started making some instruments in China in the middle to late 1990s. The are a large amount of companies having their products replicated, but the main ones that counterfeiters like to copy are Gibson, ESP, Ibanez and Fender. There were not many fakes at first but this would change. With the various companies making guitars in china there were factories equipped to make the guitars and people who knew how to do it. Gibson has been making virtually all of their Epiphone model guitars in China since the 1990s. They are fairly well made and are virtually identical to a Gibson. Someone probably thought that since a USA Gibson sells for a minimum of almost double what a Chinese Epiphone costs. Because of this it did not take much for someone to figure all you need to do is put Gibson logos on the guitar instead of Epiphone and you can make a huge profit. Now this is not done at the Epiphone Factory as Gibson would never go for it, but at other factories with the same equipment. At first there were various websites that you could buy a Chinese replica guitar directly from China that was pretty close to the real guitar being copied. In many cases they were also comparable to the original. In time greed and opportunity caused more and more people to get into the act. Then people started getting junk like plywood guitar bodies instead of the alder bodies that the real company may use. The prices were very reasonable at the time for one of these guitars and they have not gone up. For a reasonable guitar you would pay a pretty fair price if the fraud issue did not bother you. A good example is the classic Les Paul like Ace Frehley plays. You could find a quality Chinese copy for around $350, but if you wanted a Gibson Les Paul you would spend at least $1,000 for the original version. If you found a high quality Chinese copy you could save yourself $650. This is the same for the various brands and styles that are being copied. Next unscrupulous sellers in America started to pass the fakes off as the real thing along with the typical prices that would be charged for one. The Chinese government really has not been cooperative in assisting with enforcing copyright laws and this continues and does not seem to be getting any better. Some websites have been shutdown but spring up with a different name to do business again.

Now this is pretty much how the system worked. Some companies like Gibson and ESP both took action against one company called paylessguitars.com. Both companies have also put information on their websites about companies that are known to product copies. They also inform people that many of these are making it to the market on craigslist.org or eBay. Some companies also inform consumers of various ways that they are finding that you can tell the counterfeit from the real model. There was a case in North Carolina were a man was intentionally selling fake Gibson guitars as the real thing through classified ads. He sold a Les Paul to a 15 year old kid and when the kid found out from a local guitars shop it was a fake the police were called. The man ended up charged with two felonies. There have been several ads on craigslist.org and were people tell you the guitar is a fake. I actually played one of these fakes and it sounded pretty good. I would definitely say it was comparable to an Epiphone Les Paul. Its wrong to sell counterfeits, but at least this person was honest enough to let people know it was a fake. Some people now are selling the fake guitars without the logo on it and leave the headstock blank. This is one way they can get around customs as they have started to intercept these when they come through in big shipments. I have heard you can find some copies as good as the real thing just for much less money than you would spend on the name brand. As techonology progresses the counterfeiters get better as well. Right now there are ways to tell the real thing from a fake. Sometimes a fake may not have the right color hardware or have switches and knobs in the wrong place. Gibson Les Paul fakes are often spotted by the presence of three screws in the truss rod cover. Real Gibson Les Paul guitars have two screw truss rod covers.

Obviously no one wants to pay top dollar for a guitar that is not real. Even if you know you are buying a replica you would expect that it is a good playing instrument. It is very hard to tell what you are getting with these various companies. In a way this is very ironic. Several of these companies will get parts from China have one of their models assembled there, but now they are getting burned for their own greed. If I were going to spend $600 for an Epiphone that was made in China and could get a Chinese Gibson copy that was just as good as the Epiphone for $400 then I would buy the replica. There are legal issues with it, but most people would not worry about that.