Then you've got a guitar like this one, an intentionally-aged one:
Strat

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Nothing else on this guitar is vintage, it is only reliced to give it that very vintage used look.

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There's kind of an odd quirk on eBay - if you see an expensive vintage guitar up for auction, IF there are lots of questions and answers posted chances seem to be that the seller is honest, although they may be incorrect. Conversely, the total absence of questions and answers indicates something REALLY wrong - because the seller is darned sure getting questions, and must have a reason for not posting them in the description.

I'm just a garage tech, but I could probably build a passable mid-50's Telecaster in two weeks that would be tough to detect as a fake. It would get nailed by one of many experts, but most players couldn't tell. I'm not bragging about MY talents - just stating how easy it is, and why the "experts" look closely at everything that comes up.

I think if someone wanted to do this, the best approach would be to get correct old parts, neck and body with correct pinrouter holes and totally authentic-looking contours, routings, frets, and so on, put a solid color finish on it, and then wait 10-20 years, playing it out heavily in the smokiest bars imaginable. I know people whose sweat just tears the finish off a guitar. After that time, it might be pretty hard to distinguish from a real old example. Maybe some people started doing this 10-20 years ago? Who knows.

Value is an intrinsic thing, anyway. It's worthy exactly what someone thinks it's worth. There's really no "mojo" in a solid-body guitar to merit it's value well up into the 5 and even 6-digit range, but there's no shortage of speculators that hope to double or triple their money in the next 5 years with a "respectable" purchase.

Gruhn now knows about it and to date, only one has come back out of the lot that he sold, and it was so good, that the buyer asked to keep the guitar and just get a partial refund of the money! The luthier who was a good friend of mine passed away right about the time when Slash started to play one of his LP copies which was purchased for Slash by one of his manager types, not as a fake, but as a known copy. So ironic that when Gibson made Slash his guitars to use, they used his guitar which was a copy of the original Gibson!!

His work even though it was not ethical, was the absolute best. I knew his personal circumstances regarding his near poverty and not really having much of a life and even though I told him that what he was doing was not right, there was just quite a degree of "secret agentness" to it to actually get something by George Gruhn. Just amazing.

The nicest guitar I saw him make was a carved top AND back Les Paul that Charlie Daniels purchased.

At that time no one was even remotely attempting Les Paul copies. Fenders are easy to fake.

[This message was edited by Bill Hatcher on 04 September 2006 at 03:07 PM.]

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Gruhn now knows about it and to date, only one has come back out of the lot that he sold, and it was so good, that the buyer asked to keep the guitar and just get a partial refund of the money!

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Acoustics were much easier for him to authenticate according to his own words... MANY "originals " are just VERY good replicas.. I am certain of it... There were less than 2,000 1958-1960 Sunburst Les Pauls made, accoring to Gibson produvtion numbers, but there are suppossedly over 4,000 "documented" Bursts,,,

The pictures on his site do not show any headstocks, but I have seen several Nash relics and there was no logo on the headstock. But the bridge plates DO have Fender logos on them. I can’t believe that this is legal, but evidently it is. Wouldn’t it be illegal to build a guitar, put a Fender logo on it and sell it? UNLESS the Nash guitars Are Fenders that he is relicing. It’s unclear from the wording on his web site, but here is some of what he says:

Each guitar is a unique work of art, handcrafted by me. The use of 100% nitrocellulose lacquer, high quality vintage hardware, superior woods and a wide variety of pickups and options will provide the player with the magic instrument that has thus far not been available “off the rack”. Like putting on an old pair of boots, they are just right.

It sounds like he builds them from the ground up, body and all. Remember the “lawsuit” guitars of the early ‘70s? Japanese copies of Gibsons and other guitars by Ibanez and other companies. Why is the Nash guitar not illegal? Isn’t this an infringement on the Fender trademark?

Many years from now when these Relics are sold on the “used guitar market” buyers will have a hard time telling the originals from the copies. I’m not referring to the Fender Relics (which have serial numbers), I’m referring to these copy guitars built by small companies. Hopefully the Nash guitars are labeled Nash or have a serial numbers of their own. To see more Nash relics search Nash Guitar on eBay and check out the completed auctions.

Nash Guitars site:

http://www.nashguitars.com

http://www.nashguitars.com/about/index.html

http://www.nashguitars.com/timewarp/index.html

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My Site | My SteelTab

[This message was edited by Doug Beaumier on 04 September 2006 at 07:13 PM.]

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Wouldn’t it be illegal to build a guitar, put a Fender logo on it and sell it?

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My gut instinct is to think that using Fender logoed parts on a new copy instrument is copyright infringement. I don't buy the idea that Fender has legal grounds to say someone can't duplicate the instrument in all design features - body, neck, headstock, and other features - the patents on their designs ran out decades ago. Conversely, they argue that their headstock shape is a trademark. That sounds like a gray area to me. But, certainly, forging or buying forged logoed parts or putting a new Fender logo on a copy instrument is trademark infringement, again IMO.

But with that said, it seems - to me - like there is some wiggle room if somebody is using old Fender parts to put together, effectively, a "parts Strat", as long as that all was fully disclosed. But if someone was manufacturing new plates, for example, that sounds like blatant trademark infringement to me.

I think it may be true that 20-30 years ago, it was probably not so hard to slip a real good forgery by. The values were much, much lower and there wasn't the seeming motivation to fake something like an old Strat. One of the principles of detection theory is that one typically needs to be looking for a problem to find something that's subtly amiss. It's also fairly time consuming and requires a lot of knowledge to really "authenticate" that a solid-body guitar, especially a Fender, is not faked from old parts. But that is just part and parcel of doing business in that realm now - really, the amount of money involved is just so ridiculous, that a serious dealer needs to approach any old Strat/Tele like this with an extremely skeptical eye.

Another issue is that, as I said earlier, I think it might be hard to detect a well-used but forged custom-colored old Fender, that was forged "correctly" 20 years ago, from a real one. I think sunbursts or other clear-finished guitars are more difficult to fake. I agree that acoustics are much harder to fake.