lawsuit guitars?

[matmosphere]

I think the real reason these get such attention these days it that prices for vintage Gibson's and Fenders are crazy these days and working musicians that would like a vintage instrument can't afford them.

[ahiddentableau]

Yeah, by domestic I meant the Japanese market. 

Which isn't surprising.  A lot of the stuff you see over there is pretty different from the stuff you find over here.  Although there's been so much importing over the last 10 years or so that that's starting to change.

What I'd really like to know is the history of how these guitars became such a word-of-mouth phenomenon in the last decade.  Because ten years ago it really wasn't much of a thing.  Now there are whole businesses that cater to foreign (non-Japanese) buyers.  Someone should bone up and write an article about that.  It'd be at least as interesting as the history of the lawsuits.

[matmosphere]

Yeah, by domestic I meant the Japanese market. 

Which isn't surprising.  A lot of the stuff you see over there is pretty different from the stuff you find over here.  Although there's been so much importing over the last 10 years or so that that's starting to change.

What I'd really like to know is the history of how these guitars became such a word-of-mouth phenomenon in the last decade.  Because ten years ago it really wasn't much of a thing.  Now there are whole businesses that cater to foreign (non-Japanese) buyers.  Someone should bone up and write an article about that.  It'd be at least as interesting as the history of the lawsuits.

That's a good point. I'd read up on that.

I remember looking for Orville and Burny Les Pauls 10-15 years ago but never picked one up. So some of this knowledge has been floating around for quite some time.

The thing that amazes me is that some Tiesco and other no name guitars go for serious money these days. Don't get me wrong. I think they are cool looking guitars, I'm just not sure they are a good value considering what else you can buy in the $500ish range.

[alanp]

What I'd really like to know is the history of how these guitars became such a word-of-mouth phenomenon in the last decade.  Because ten years ago it really wasn't much of a thing.  Now there are whole businesses that cater to foreign (non-Japanese) buyers.  Someone should bone up and write an article about that.  It'd be at least as interesting as the history of the lawsuits.

Places like The Gear Page would be my guess. One or two people speak up at the start praising these (at the time) relatively cheap guitars, a few people get some on the basis that (at the time) they don't cost that much, compared to an original '59 LP, they praise their new old gats, and it snowballs.

[ahiddentableau]

I remember looking for Orville and Burny Les Pauls 10-15 years ago but never picked one up. So some of this knowledge has been floating around for quite some time.

The thing that amazes me is that some Tiesco and other no name guitars go for serious money these days. Don't get me wrong. I think they are cool looking guitars, I'm just not sure they are a good value considering what else you can buy in the $500ish range.

Totally agree with you.  That's just madness, especially given how much cheap guitars have improved over the last 10-20 years.  As is often remarked upon here, you can get a pretty nice guitar for under 500 bucks these days as the Chinese have really stepped up their game.  Those Tiesco and Silvertone guitars are basically junk.   Kinda cool junk, but definitely badly made.

Are you suggesting that the rise in value of those old, cheap instruments is a knock-on (or even direct) effect of the rise of the lawsuit/MIJ thing?  I'd never thought about that, but I'd absolutely buy into it.

I had a healthy interest in Japanese guitars when I living there, and those Orville models were near the top of my list.  But I never bought one.  I almost bought an Orville 335, but I (stupidly) cheaped out.  If memory serves, they wanted something like 70,000 yen for it, which was quite a lot for a Japanese-made guitar ten years ago.  Anyway, I guess we all have regrets.  I came across some nice Burny LP copies, too.  My impression of those guitars were that the quality varied a fair bit, but some were great and they were really cheap at the time.  Like $300 cheap.

I wonder about is whether all the foreign attention to these guitars has rehabilitated their image in the minds of Japanese players.  Do Japanese guitars now recognize that their domestic market produced some really nice (and now vintage) instruments?  Or do they laugh at all the foreigners who have convinced themselves that their domestic guitars are somehow great?

[ahiddentableau]

Places like The Gear Page would be my guess. One or two people speak up at the start praising these (at the time) relatively cheap guitars, a few people get some on the basis that (at the time) they don't cost that much, compared to an original '59 LP, they praise their new old gats, and it snowballs.

That'd be my prime suspect as well, since that seems to be the way most every other guitar-related product becomes a thing these days.  But there are probably other factors as well.  For example, there have been a lot of websites related to Japanese instrument collections for a long time.  (For example, this one about Yairi acoustics has been around forever: http://alvarezyairi.web.fc2.com/ -- I love the cheesy Frampton name!)  I remember going through them back when the web still basically sucked.  That probably played a role, too.  I love those websites.

[Muadzin]

I had two 80's Japanese Strats, with large headstocks, bullet trussrod and 3 screw neckplates. At least I think they were 80's Strats as I bought them at the end of the 80's, 1988 or 1989? Either way, they were good guitars, although even though both were almost identical when I bought them one was superior to the other. I also have a 90's MIJ Strat, with the thinnest most comfortable neck of any Strat I've ever owned. So in that sense three out of three, all winners. I can't say the same thing of my made in US guitars. Those were more hit or miss.

[pickdropper]

What I'd really like to know is the history of how these guitars became such a word-of-mouth phenomenon in the last decade.  Because ten years ago it really wasn't much of a thing.  Now there are whole businesses that cater to foreign (non-Japanese) buyers.  Someone should bone up and write an article about that.  It'd be at least as interesting as the history of the lawsuits.

Places like The Gear Page would be my guess. One or two people speak up at the start praising these (at the time) relatively cheap guitars, a few people get some on the basis that (at the time) they don't cost that much, compared to an original '59 LP, they praise their new old gats, and it snowballs.

That certainly has helped, but I knew a guy that was into Tokai Strats 25 years ago, before Internet hype really took hold.  Back then, there were many more deals to be had, but there were folks that identified the quality was there.  This particular guy has a very nice vintage guitar and amp collection, so it wasn't about not being able to afford vintage Fenders and Gibsons.  I'm not saying he's the norm, but he is a data point.

[ahiddentableau]

That certainly has helped, but I knew a guy that was into Tokai Strats 25 years ago, before Internet hype really took hold.  Back then, there were many more deals to be had, but there were folks that identified the quality was there.  This particular guy has a very nice vintage guitar and amp collection, so it wasn't about not being able to afford vintage Fenders and Gibsons.  I'm not saying he's the norm, but he is a data point.

I agree with this.  This was a niche thing with a certain (small but loyal) following before the forum sites really got going.  Obviously the forums matter a great deal, and they may well have been the tipping point, but these collectors and enthusiasts had significant influence and predated the forums.

Anybody around who was active way back in the old days?  I mean like the usenet and BBS period.  Or even the "I can't believe I'm waiting eight full minutes for this single .jpeg to load" web days (gratuitous Simpsons reference anyone? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KSKBRWoGvL0).  I'd love to know if any of this was talked about back then, and if it was, the jist of what was said.

[atreidesheir]

It goes back further than the Gear Page.  I remember it being addressed often in letters to the editor in guitar magazines in the 80's-early 90's

[reddesert]

I think maybe people talked about these instruments but applying the "lawsuit" name to the genre is a web- or forum-era invention.

I learned to play in the late 80s and friends of mine had some of these, usually Japanese, guitars. At the time I think it was just what you got because a real Fender or Gibson was quite expensive. (Mexican Fenders didn't exist yet.) My roommate got a Squier Stratocaster that I bet was an MIJ. It seemed to be a pretty good guitar. He may still have it. His bandmate, OTOH, had a Dean Markley strat that was total crap. I had a parts guitar that a friend had put a good neck and tuners on.  Another friend had an Electra, I think, copy of an ES-335 - sort of odd because he was into Van Halen. A couple years ago he told me he was surprised to discover it was now a cult object, so he got it fixed up.

Teiscos were known to have a sort of kitsch surf cult following. I had vaguely heard about them, so when I saw one in a thrift shop in SoCal in the late 90s, I bought it. It wasn't super cheap, but less than today's prices. Today's prices for Teiscos and similar early MIJ guitars may be kitsch-retro, or the fact that you can't buy any other guitar made in the 1960s for a modest price. The prices really ought to reflect that some of them have much better specs than others - better hardware, adjustable truss rods, more durable bodies.

I didn't pay any attention to music/gear forums during this time other than getting the occasional tab off Usenet or the web, and downloading some pedal schematics, so I can't really say how attitudes evolved on the intertubes.

[ahiddentableau]

. . .

Today's prices for Teiscos and similar early MIJ guitars may be kitsch-retro, or the fact that you can't buy any other guitar made in the 1960s for a modest price.

. . .

I had the same thought.  To what extent is the rise in popularity of these instruments related to our group's abiding fascination with vintage gear?  That hasn't gone anywhere: look at the popularity of "relic" and "road worn" instruments.  When I was learning to play in the late 90s/early 00s, the only way to get a vintage guitar was to shell out enormous money.  This is because vintage at the time meant pre-1970, and that basically meant golden age Fender/Gibson.  So they were spectacularly expensive.  Now a guitar made in the 80s can credibly be called old (I don't know about "vintage"--maybe that too), and they made a hell of a lot more guitars in the 80s then they did in the 60s.  When you buy an MIJ guitar made in the 80s you're getting an old instrument--and many of them are well made--and that has a certain appeal.

[Leevibe]

I think just using the "lawsuit" moniker adds a sense of legit-ness to the appeal. Everyone thinks it's cool to be a bit of an outlaw. And the term is so easy to invoke!

I used to work in a music store and one thing I learned is that everyone wants to think their guitar is something special. I always heard stories about how even though their guitar was just a Squier etc., it was an extra special one. "I played 15 of them and this one just had the special resonance." Everyone gets to live out the fantasy of Jimi Hendrix sorting through pallets of Crybabys.

Now we have the legend of the "lawsuit era" where any non-US-built guitar from that era is extra special and can be declared "lawsuit" because it resembles an LP or Strat. In the end, a guitar is worth whatever someone will pay for it, and being that guitarists are notoriously susceptible hype, values can be artificially high.

I think there are probably a lot of guitars out there that are valuable only as collectibles because of the power of the "lawsuit" label. Now we're in an era where counterfeiting Gibsons is a thing, and I've heard that the quality of the instruments can range from abysmal to amazing. It will be interesting to see how collectible these become in the future. My bet is that anyone who owns a fake Gibson will be convinced that their guitar is not only as good, but better than the real thing. Who knows? They could be right!

[bcalla]

Since the late 90s I have owned 5 or 6 Ibanez guitars that date from 1974 – 1983 (I still own 2).  After I bought my second in 2001, I discovered a web site called Ibanez Collectors World .  It has been in existence since the late-90s and has information on all models, including specs, scanned brochures, years made, serial numbers, etc.  There are discussion forums, buy/sell/trade, show your collections – all the stuff you'd expect.  I know there were other Ibanez collector sites, and there were 1 or 2 for vintage Aria instruments (I also owned a mid-70s Aria bass until a year or 2 ago.  I think sites like this were a factor in creating the lawsuit mystique.

Several of the ICW site members were AVID collectors.  I used to track sales of some models on eBay and there were a couple of collectors who seemed to win all the auctions – at least for the nicer guitars.  I corresponded with one of these collectors about possibly purchasing one of his guitars, and he revealed that he had over 200 in his collection!!!  That might sound foolish, but they were affordable and increasing in value.  I made money on all of the ones I sold.

I was most interested in their original designs – primarily the Musician series and the AM-2xx series, but I did own a copy of an ES-175.  I never actually played an original Gibson so I can't compare them, but it was quite a nice sounding and playing guitar.

---- Edited to fix the link ----

[Leevibe]

My favorite Ibanez guitars are the Talmans with lipstick pickups from the '90s. Those were so cool. Somewhere between Fender and Denelectro if I recall. I know they are selling Talmans now but they are different than the ones I remember. We sold them in the shop I worked at.