banner

Announcement

Collapse
No announcement yet.

The Counterfeiters are Getting Better!

Collapse
X
 
  • Filter
  • Time
  • Show
Clear All
new posts

  • #46
    Re: The Counterfeiters are Getting Better!

    You'll probably find that the parts aren't fake at all. A lot of dead or dying guitars and pickups find their way out there so, after easy research, you'll probably find that the Seymour Duncan parts are genuine but, they've been rewound with standard stuff that would pass to anyone who has never bought an SD before.

    Most of the reason I go through the Custom Shop. You can't fake what I want from them.
    Anything is possible, just not always advisable...

    Comment


    • #47
      Re: The Counterfeiters are Getting Better!

      Originally posted by Mincer View Post
      Companies will always play catch-up. I believe individuals who pay that little for a set probably have a pretty good idea that what they are buying is dubious, if it ever actually shows up to their door. The harder thing to police is the 'retailers' who sell on Ebay or Reverb. They generally pop up again under another name.
      Very true. My pickups are kosher, just so everybody knows.
      Anything is possible, just not always advisable...

      Comment


      • #48
        Re: The Counterfeiters are Getting Better!

        Wouldn't just stamping them with a unique ID number and then letting users search the number online be a pretty good deterrent? Even if the guys making knock offs grab one of the numbers and stick it on their pickups, it would be pretty easy to google and find another knock off pickup with the same number proving that it's a fake.
        Join me in the fight against muscular atrophy!

        Originally posted by Douglas Adams
        This planet has - or rather had - a problem, which was this: most of the people living on it were unhappy for pretty much of the time. Many solutions were suggested for this problem, but most of these were largely concerned with the movements of small green pieces of paper, which is odd because on the whole it wasn't the small green pieces of paper that were unhappy.

        Comment


        • #49
          Re: The Counterfeiters are Getting Better!

          Originally posted by GuitarStv View Post
          Wouldn't just stamping them with a unique ID number and then letting users search the number online be a pretty good deterrent? Even if the guys making knock offs grab one of the numbers and stick it on their pickups, it would be pretty easy to google and find another knock off pickup with the same number proving that it's a fake.
          I don't know if people do that kind of work to get a guitar pickup. You could also just check a list of authorized dealers and just buy from them. This is done before the sale, not after, like checking an ID number.
          Administrator of the SDUGF

          Comment


          • #50
            Re: The Counterfeiters are Getting Better!

            Originally posted by mojosman View Post
            It never dawned on me that the pickup market is large enough to draw the interest of these thieving counterfitters, but obviously they are putting considerable effort into making believable fakes.
            In this case it's quality of fraud over quantity; pickups retailing for 4000% above what they can cost per unit in China.

            Comment


            • #51
              Re: The Counterfeiters are Getting Better!

              Originally posted by DeathMetalRob View Post
              ...you'll probably find that the Seymour Duncan parts are genuine but, they've been rewound...
              Not true at all. You can clearly see that they are manufacturing their own stamped baseplates, packaging, etc.

              Comment


              • #52
                Re: The Counterfeiters are Getting Better!

                Originally posted by Hath74 View Post
                I’m slightly confused. What has been said here is that rounded mounting tabs = fake. It seems to me that all of the mounting tabs are rounded? Is it that the fakes are more rounded?
                Only "trembucker" models have rounded mounting tabs from the factory. Your standard-spaced "SH" models have always had square tabs. In some of the examples I posted with "Seymour Duncan" stamped baseplates, you can clearly see they are standard-spaced with rounded tabs, which SD does not produce. There are plenty of other "tells" that let you know those are fake, as well.

                Comment


                • #53
                  Re: The Counterfeiters are Getting Better!

                  For all the talk of the poor domestic companies, in some cases they bring this upon themselves by having parts produced in China prior to their being assembled in the U.S. Therefor some factory in China is already making these parts, and it's only an unenforceable contract that keeps the Chinese manufacturer from reselling the same parts to anyone else. Meanwhile the domestic company was never forthright about the extent to which their product originates overseas. Part of their motivation for not calling out the counterfeits might owe to fear that raising the issue might expose the degree to which the genuine article isn't as genuine as they'd led customers to think. New laws have been passed requiring that products described as "Made in USA" have a very percentage of their materials sourced from the US, so in some cases their established manufacturing practices of the last two decades might suddenly put them on the wrong side of the law.

                  I don't know if Seymour Duncan has any parts sourced from overseas, aside from raw materials such as screws and hookup wire, but I find it interesting that the counterfeit pickup is of an JB/'59 combo, pickups which are commonly found in OEM imports. If you're a counterfeiter, you counterfeit the Rolex or the Apple. The Apple / Rolex of Seymour Duncan is the Antiquities, and of the domestic market in general, the boutique builders such as Throbak. Maybe they just had a lot of JB/59 sets to use as a reference point, but acquiring good reference points have never seemed to be a problem for them in the past.

                  Comment


                  • #54
                    Re: The Counterfeiters are Getting Better!

                    Originally posted by PicoRiveraTele View Post
                    In this case it's quality of fraud over quantity; pickups retailing for 4000% above what they can cost per unit in China.
                    It would be. You can buy a pair of humbuckers from China on eBay for £15 ($20) and they'll sound decent to the untutored ear - though, you'll never get two that sound the same and the build quality may well be suspect.
                    Anything is possible, just not always advisable...

                    Comment


                    • #55
                      Re: The Counterfeiters are Getting Better!

                      Originally posted by masta' c View Post
                      Not true at all. You can clearly see that they are manufacturing their own stamped baseplates, packaging, etc.
                      In all honesty, unless I had it in my hand (guitar), I'm not honestly sure I could tell the difference by sight.

                      I don't tend to buy stock models anyway so.., I'm not into the counterfeiting.

                      It's this that has allowed China to become the richest country in the world.

                      It isn't necessarily fair or right but, it is good business.
                      Anything is possible, just not always advisable...

                      Comment


                      • #56
                        Re: The Counterfeiters are Getting Better!

                        Originally posted by DeathMetalRob View Post
                        It would be. You can buy a pair of humbuckers from China on eBay for £15 ($20) and they'll sound decent to the untutored ear - though, you'll never get two that sound the same and the build quality may well be suspect.
                        Despite what they look like on the outside, electrically speaking, cheap Chinese pickups are actually pretty consistent, being machine made. Whether they similar to what they're trying to rip off is another matter, but within their own production runs, they're very close to one another.

                        Comment


                        • #57
                          Re: The Counterfeiters are Getting Better!

                          Originally posted by PicoRiveraTele View Post
                          The Apple / Rolex of Seymour Duncan is the Antiquities, and of the domestic market in general, the boutique builders such as Throbak. Maybe they just had a lot of JB/59 sets to use as a reference point, but acquiring good reference points have never seemed to be a problem for them in the past.
                          First off, there are counterfeits of parts and products at all levels. The idea that only premium items get copied is antiquated.

                          Second, SD has exponentially bigger market share than a company like Throbak and the JB and '59 are the best selling pickups IN THE WORLD. Whether you're trying to move product quickly or ensure your counterfeits don't stick out in a sea of similar products, copying SD is definitely the better choice.

                          Comment


                          • #58
                            Re: The Counterfeiters are Getting Better!

                            Originally posted by GuitarStv View Post
                            Wouldn't just stamping them with a unique ID number and then letting users search the number online be a pretty good deterrent? Even if the guys making knock offs grab one of the numbers and stick it on their pickups, it would be pretty easy to google and find another knock off pickup with the same number proving that it's a fake.
                            Gibson do that with their serial numbers, but people buy fakes all the time as the ser# matches the type.
                            If you are a faker, you do the search and find something that matches say a 59. You can then sell a lot of pickups as 59's with that number as it passes the test. And if you have 2 pickups with the same number, if they look close enough who is to say you can't claim to be selling the original with that number

                            Comment


                            • #59
                              Re: The Counterfeiters are Getting Better!

                              Decals or stamps with serial numbers won't do much.

                              That said, RFID tags/chips are like $0.10 and going down in price all the time. Another option would be to micro-print the bobbins using lasers. Sounds like it would be complicated and expensive, but it's really not.

                              Comment


                              • #60
                                Re: The Counterfeiters are Getting Better!

                                But what guitar player wants to check an rfid tag to check a pickup
                                And who wants to buy a device just to check for counterfeiting
                                Sirius
                                EHD
                                Just here surfing Guitar Pron
                                RG2EX1 w/ SD hot-rodded pickups / RG4EXFM1 w/ Carvin S22j/b + FVN middle
                                SR500 / Martin 000CE-1/Epiphone Hummingbird
                                Epiphone Florentine with OEM Probuckers
                                Ehdwuld branded Blue semi hollow custom with JB/Jazz
                                Reptile Green Gibson Custom Studio / Aqua Dean Shire semi hollow with piezo
                                Carvin Belair / Laney GC80A Acoustic Amp (a gift from Guitar Player Mag)
                                GNX3000 (yea I'm a modeler)

                                Comment

                                Working...
                                X