lawsuit guitars?

[lars]

Over the years I've seen many MIJ guitars come up for sale on various sites that will have the caption "lawsuit guitar" in the title or description. Of course, the price is artificially inflated because the idea conveyed is that, "these guitars were so good that the original companies sued them to stop importing them." Nice idea, but completely false.

If you see any MIJ 70's guitar that has "Greco", "Tokai", "Aria", "Hohner" or any of the other myriad of names that were put on these guitars; none of them are lawsuit guitars. The only company in Japan that was actually sued by Gibson was Ibanez, in 1977. So the only real "lawsuit guitars" would be Ibanez models that resembled anything made by Gibson during the years around 1973-1978.
A 1975 Ibanez 2351 would definitely be a "lawsuit guitar".
A 1978 Tokai Springy Sound T80 is NOT.

[somnif]

I think Hoshino (the parent company behind Ibanez) owned a few other brand (or Unbranded, as the case may be) names at the time which could also probably fit the definition. But its a real pain to find actual info that's not just "I heard a guru at Guitar Center talking about this, so its totally legit"

[pickdropper]

Some of those old Tokai's are fantastic guitars, though.  Lawsuit or not.

I think I've liked those better than any of the 70's Ibanez's that I've played.  They are a different animal, of course.

[matmosphere]

It is however true that Greco made such good vintage Fender copies in the early eighties that when Fender got new owners they actually entered an agreement and that factory started making fender of japan. The American stuff was so much worse at the time that fender only sold the guitars in Japan for a couple of years while they got the American stuff back up to snuff.

[thesmokingman]

there's certainly no more real collector value to a lawsuit guitar regardless of origin, certainly hit or miss as to the relative quality vs the brand name guitar ... which is where there would be some added player value.

boutique pedals/amps have the same problem of implied collector value ... could very well be built like crap on the inside, is it really worth what was paid for it or some high percentage of that amount? probably not if it has no real player value.

[ahiddentableau]

A great deal of these guitars were built in the same places.  Most Tokai and Grecos, for instance, were made in the same place (Tokai in Hamamatsu is probably the most famous, but Dyna Gakki and Fujigen in Matsumoto are well regarded, too) as the MIJ Fender instruments.  So the quality can be comparable--the same people were making the instruments.  But there's a lot of variation by brand and model.

I agree that the quality of these instruments is often overstated, but many of them are really nice instruments.  And the quality control on the higher quality models is correctly regarded as superior to most of what was being made in the United States at the time.  It doesn't take much effort to find some really shoddy American Fender products from the 70s.  Try to find a really bad MIJ Fender from the 70s-mid 90s period.  Seriously, it takes effort.  I don't think I've ever seen a bad one.  And some of them really are exceptionally good instruments.

Where it gets crazy is the way that some people try to pass off every single instrument that was ever made by one of these Japanese factories as a superior product.  Most of them were cheap guitars intended to be used as starter instruments.  To make a blanket statement that they're all better than USA instruments of the period is just flat wrong.  There are plenty of inferior instruments that came out of these factories because they needed to hit really low price targets.

That said, the good ones were really cheap for a long time.  This is because Japanese musicians view domestic guitars with a sense of contempt that is bottomless.  It's hard to fathom.  I mean, they really, really, really hate these guitars.  To the average Japanese player, an MIJ Fender is an embarrassment, the kind of thing you'd try to hide from your bandmates, friends and audience.  The first thing a serious player does is save up enough money for a made in the USA model.  They're incredibly sensitive to brand and status considerations.  The flip side of this was that you could walk into any music store or pawn shop and buy MIJ Fenders or lawsuit guitars for next to nothing.  When I lived there in the naughties you could buy an MIJ strat for $250.  But then they somehow caught on through internet word of mouth and now the prices are getting silly.  Your MIJ strat is a nice guitar, but it's probably not worth $1500.

Somehow the acoustics have never really caught on, which is funny.  A lot of the Yairi stuff is fantastic and you can still get them for low prices.

[culturejam]

I thought the "lawsuit" thing had to do with violations of trade dress (headstock shape, etc) and wasn't really about quality?

[Zigcat]

https://flypaper.soundfly.com/discover/truth-lawsuit-era-guitars/

[somnif]

I thought the "lawsuit" thing had to do with violations of trade dress (headstock shape, etc) and wasn't really about quality?

Yeah it was just a "that's our design, stop that" deal.

[Aentons]

Yep, It was all about the headstock profile. The knockoffs looked just like a real Gibson from a short distance.
It's not a lawsuit guitar unless its an Ibanez that has the distinct Gibson open book head shape.

About 10 years ago, I had a 1974 Ibanez 2402 doubleneck lawsuit guitar, which was the EDS-1275 copy. It was a decent quality, but a Gibson it was not.

[matmosphere]

https://flypaper.soundfly.com/discover/truth-lawsuit-era-guitars/

That article is quite riddled with inaccuracies.

The origins of Fender Japan are discussed in this interview.

https://reverb.com/news/interview-fender-visionary-dan-smith-on-how-to-turn-around-a-faltering-guitar-brand

It says no guitars were imported during the transition period.

[ahiddentableau]

The lawsuits are about the shape of the instrument, many of which followed the profile of American instruments exactly.  But when people talk about a "lawsuit guitar" they don't mean "one of the models that a company literally got sued over."  They mean a Japanese-made instrument from the 70s-90s taken to be of high quality--so high quality that marquee American brands like Fender and Gibson sued them to try to stop them from "taking over the market."  Is that a fanciful tale?  Of course.  But that's what they mean.  The actual lawsuits are of no real importance.  It's become a kind of general brand in its own right.

It's like the famous line in The Man Who Shot Liberty Valence: "This is the West, Sir.  When the legend becomes fact, print the legend."

[ahiddentableau]

One other thing: that Smith interview makes it out like Fender had no relationship with Tokai.  I'm pretty sure that's wrong.  Tokai made a lot of stuff for Fender early in the "lawsuit" era, but their production was for domestic market.  I'm pretty sure I read that in a trade publication.  Looks like he wants to downplay that in the interview, my guess is out of a sense of loyalty towards Fujigen, which was his main partner at the time.  Smart move, too, because that'd really matter to the Japanese partners if they saw the interview.

[Aentons]

The actual lawsuits are of no real importance.  It's become a kind of general brand in its own right.

It's kind of like how Leo turned vibrato into Tremolo® and tremolo into Vibro® and nobody seems to care.

Some people care about facts and others actively oppose them.

[matmosphere]

One other thing: that Smith interview makes it out like Fender had no relationship with Tokai.  I'm pretty sure that's wrong.  Tokai made a lot of stuff for Fender early in the "lawsuit" era, but their production was for domestic market.  I'm pretty sure I read that in a trade publication.  Looks like he wants to downplay that in the interview, my guess is out of a sense of loyalty towards Fujigen, which was his main partner at the time.  Smart move, too, because that'd really matter to the Japanese partners if they saw the interview.

By domestic market you mean Japan, correct? Not imported to the states.

I hadn't heard that but I absolutely believe you. It could be that the Tokai relationship was already done by the time Smith came in.