Copies

[neilp]

I must not have been concentrating, so could someone help me out? When I started playing bass there was a company called Fender in the US of A who made, among other things, two types of bass, one called "Precision" and one called "Jazz Bass". If you couldn't afford a Fender, you could purchase what were known as "copies" from various Eastern organisations such as Satellite, Tokai, Maya etc. When exactly was it that the world decided that Precisions and Jazz Basses were no longer Fender products and the copies no longer rip-offs (however well-made and good to play)?

[therealting]

Copies have happened long before Fender was a twinkle in Leo's eye. Strad copies have been around for centuries.

[Cato]

I would guess it happened at the point (early 80s?) when the world realised that if you wanted a Jazz or Precision that was built to the same standard as a classic Fender then you were best off not getting a Fender.

Of course Fender have had their act more or less together for a long time now but the damage was already done, people had realised that the original was not necessarily the best.

Edited February 27, 2016 by Cato

[neilp]

Strad copies have been around for ever, but are never referred to as Strads, however well made and good to play. They are copies. My point is if you buy a jazz built by anyone other than Fender, it's not a Jazz Bass, it's a copy. When I bought my first bass, I bought a Satellite Jazz Bass copy, not a Satellite Jazz Bass.

[Grangur]

[quote name='neilp' timestamp='1456611875' post='2990842']
Strad copies have been around for ever, but are never referred to as Strads, however well made and good to play. They are copies. My point is if you buy a jazz built by anyone other than Fender, it's not a Jazz Bass, it's a copy. When I bought my first bass, I bought a Satellite Jazz Bass copy, not a Satellite Jazz Bass.
[/quote]

Isn't this kind of name transfer the same as when you "Hoover" the floor with your vacuum cleaner, or ask a friend to pass the "sellotape", or cover a cut with a "band-aid".

Most folk see this as free advertising.

I guess it iss possible that you could refer to your Dyson vacuum cleaner as a Dyson vacuum cleaner copy, if you want to be accurate about it?

Edited February 27, 2016 by Grangur

[Mykesbass]

[quote name='neilp' timestamp='1456610248' post='2990820']
When exactly was it that the world decided that Precisions and Jazz Basses were no longer Fender products and the copies no longer rip-offs (however well-made and good to play)?
[/quote]

When the man whose name is on the headstock left (and the quality left with him)?

[therealting]

Stradivarius to refer to instruments made by Antonio Stradivari is probably the closer analog to Fender referring to instruments made / designed by Leo Fender. Jazz and Precision were the model names for two his instruments designs. People probably originally said "Jazz copies" or "Jazz style", but got lazy and they became "generic descriptors" or "proprietary eponyms" in the same manner as Rollerblade, Kleenex etc. I know when I visited Sadowsky and bought my guitar, their staff were very careful to use "S-style" instead of Strat.

[thegummy]

[quote name='Grangur' timestamp='1456612374' post='2990851']
Isn't this kind of name transfer the same as when you "Hoover" the floor with your vacuum cleaner, or ask a friend to pass the "sellotape", or cover a cut with a "band-aid".

Most folk see this as free advertising.

I guess it iss possible that you could refer to your Dyson vacuum cleaner as a Dyson vacuum cleaner copy, if you want to be accurate about it?
[/quote]

Definitely but it is interesting that it didn't happen with guitars, only basses.

[therealting]

[quote name='thegummy' timestamp='1456613387' post='2990863']


Definitely but it is interesting that it didn't happen with guitars, only basses.
[/quote]

Oh it did... I often say I have seven Strats, and only two are actually Fenders.

[Bassassin]

Copies are still copies. Me - I like copies (good vintage MIJ ones, anyway) and have never owned a real Fender. Closest I've come is a few MIJ Squiers. Which are licensed copies anyway.

There seems to be a variety of inexplicably expensive knockoffs around at the moment - some even craven enough to be sold brand-new wearing shonky Fender logos - and I struggle to see how these are innately any different to the MIJ copies of the 70s & 80s. Apart from the complete absence of any historical interest value, making them seem even less authentic.

Just goes to show I suppose how dismally unimaginitive and undemanding most bassists and manufacturers must be.

Jon.

[TrevorR]

Not just basses. It's also worth noting that pretty much every (or every other) traditional body shape steel strung acoustic guitar you've ever seen is a copy of a Martin model developed sometime between the mid 1800s and the 1930s...

[therealting]

[quote name='TrevorR' timestamp='1456619165' post='2990911']
Not just basses. It's also worth noting that pretty much every (or every other) traditional body shape steel strung acoustic guitar you've ever seen is a copy of a Martin model developed sometime between the mid 1800s and the 1930s...
[/quote]

... and they call them dreadnoughts, orchestra models, etc...

[Twincam]

I fully get what the op's point is.

But it's a fully natural process
Such is the way of the world if a design of anything is good then it will get eventually assimilated! This happens in nature too.

[Doctor J]

Is a CBS, Fender Japan or FMIC really a [i]Fender[/i]? It depends what importance you put on the brand name versus the importance you put on what made the brand name. For me, Fender stopped when the company was sold to CBS. The innovation slowed and, eventually, ground to a halt and now it's like a band with no original members playing their versions of the hits. It's a tribute band trading under the real name, rehashing the same old thing in varying degrees of accuracy and little to no genuine connection to how the original real deals were made. The spirit, the ethos which made that name so great carried on through Musicman and G&L. To me, their early instruments are more authentically Fender in spirit than something carrying the old logo made in Korea under a FMIC licence. There's more to being authentic than buying the copyright to some timeless designs

So, to answer the question, once the hitmakers moved on, [i]everything[/i] after became a copy. Some copies were at least as good as the originals and, for a time, the Asian copies were substantially better than those carrying the name and made in the U S of A. That's when it became open season and the instruments adhering to the design became Precisions and Jazzes, rather that what the logo on the headstock said

[r16ktx]

So isn't this like a recursive ship of Theseus? Is the band with no original members still the same band that made a hit, but previously was the band with the original members but with,say, fender copy instruments rather than original fenders still the same band. And what happens when strings get changed!!! Aargh! :-)

[White Cloud]

[quote name='Bassassin' timestamp='1456618201' post='2990902']
There seems to be a variety of inexplicably expensive knockoffs around at the moment - some even craven enough to be sold brand-new wearing shonky Fender logos - and I struggle to see how these are innately any different to the MIJ copies of the 70s & 80s. Apart from the complete absence of any historical interest value, making them seem even less authentic.

Just goes to show I suppose how dismally unimaginitive and undemanding most bassists and manufacturers must be.

Jon.
[/quote]
I totally agree, great post!

[SubsonicSimpleton]

Where do you draw the line about what is a copy?

Leo's first guitar and bass designs were heavily driven by the practicalities of pushing down production cost, and the vast majority of instruments produced in the last 50 years have followed Leo's basic construction recipe of bolting two bits of wood together, with minor variations in cosmetics and hardware.

[keefbaker]

Yeah, where do you draw the line. I have a maruszczyk on order that you could... for arguments sake call a "P Copy" but it has a pickup config and colour set that Fender haven't done and cost more than some basses that have the official "Fender" logo on them.

You see this is where copy starts to move into "homage" territory. The P and the J are classic shapes and are almost entrenched in people's psyche above and beyond the original models. And... you know... we're still calling them P's or J's, it's just shorthand but removing the word "copy" because there's the implication they're not as good when... sometimes... they're superior to the originals.

[Bassassin]

No. An expensive Fender copy doesn't stop being a copy because it's a different colour.

To be a bit pedantic, the basic identifiable shapes of, say a Fender Precision bass - the body profile, scratchplate shape, headstock profile, etc - are "trade dress", and originally were exclusive trademarks of Fender, simply because Fender manufactured this design before anyone else did.

In order to retain ownership of these trademarks, under US law, Fender [i]should[/i] have pursued & prevented every violation, instead of ignoring all the 70s copies and hoping they'd go away. Again, because of US trademark law, through being lax Fender lost exclusivity of their own designs, meaning now anyone from the Chinese factories turning out 100,000 P copies a day, to the likes of Maruszczyk, Limelight, Bravewood etc can all churn out knockoffs with impunity.

Regarding the "superiority" of high-priced fakes, It might help to remember that Fender introduced the Squier range in the early 80s precisely because they wanted to compete with the replica-level MIJ instruments coming from Greco, Tokai, Fernandes etc, which were broadly regarded as far higher quality than the US-made official instruments. Fender Japan was a deal done between Fender US and Kanda Shokai, owner of the Greco brand - and those first JV-serial Squiers that everyone gets all hot & bothered about anecdotally started their production as Grecos.

J.

[Happy Jack]

Has anyone canvassed John Hall's opinion on all this?

[keefbaker]

I guess one thing we can agree on is it has certainly reduced the amount of creativity guitar manufacturers need to show. The amount of times I've seen an NBD post of a bass I've never heard of and then opened it up to see.. Oh, it's a Jazz.

You can say knockoff and I'll say Homage.

Although it would be nice if there were more choice than there seems to be.

[Norris]

Both Fender and Gibson tried to stop copies being made, especially in the far East, but eventually realised the futility of doing so. China is finally starting to tighten its copyright laws, but too late for a lot of manufacturers.

Rickenbacker are still attacking windmills in true Don Quixote style

[Bassassin]

[quote name='Happy Jack' timestamp='1456838655' post='2992714']
Has anyone canvassed John Hall's opinion on all this?


[/quote]

Actually very relevant, BC's no Ricks policy exists [i]entirely[/i] because Hall & his not-so-merry men do their damnedest to protect RIC's trade dress. Even in territories where they have no enforceable legal ability to do so.

Not that I'm one to quibble over semantics (he lied) but one man's "homage" is another man's "counterfeit", particularly where profiteering from legally held trademarks is concerned.

J.

[Bassassin]

[quote name='Norris' timestamp='1456840076' post='2992742']
Both Fender and Gibson tried to stop copies being made, especially in the far East, but eventually realised the futility of doing so. China is finally starting to tighten its copyright laws, but too late for a lot of manufacturers.

Rickenbacker are still attacking windmills in true Don Quixote style
[/quote]

Fender did no such thing, they left it far too late, hence Fender Japan, as explained. Gibson on the other hand challenged the use of the "open-book" headstock design (that so-called "lawsuit" against Elger Hoshino/Ibanez, that never actually happened) and do retain that as a trademark. They could've done the same with the LP body shape at the time, it's not clear why they didn't.

Bit more complicated with Rickenbacker, the modern company Rickenbacker International Corp (RIC) didn't actually exist during the 70s copy era and the original company never challenged Far-East copiers. Rickenbacker trade dress has only comparitively recently been registered (15 or 16 years ago) and at that time there weren't significant amounts of new Fakers being made. They are a bit more fashionable these days and RIC's behaviour is actually legally necessary if they're going to fight off the Chickenbacker hordes! Shame JH is publically such a git about it all.

J.

[TrevorR]

[quote name='Bassassin' timestamp='1456840164' post='2992745']


Actually very relevant, BC's no Ricks policy exists [i]entirely[/i] because Hall & his not-so-merry men do their damnedest to protect RIC's trade dress. Even in territories where they have no enforceable legal ability to do so.
[/quote]

Wow, so did BC get threatened or have an injunction slapped on for passing on and/or trading/abetting the trade of counterfeit goods?