Where and why do people buy Chibsons?

Erik S said:
My first electric had a Floyd so they have a special place in my heart. I could take or leave the franken-paint, but gold hardware is always a no-go for me.
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OMG, dude. The most beautiful guitar I have EVER seen in my life was my friend's Gibson Les Paul -- pearl white with gold tuners and gold humbucker covers -- to this day I have never seen anything more beautiful (at least not in a guitar ;)). This thing literally change my life.
 
Hasn't this been discussed before?

My main electric is a Chibson because I'm both incredibly vain and incredibly cheap. I know there are guitars out there way cheaper than Gibson that are just as good if not better, but dammit I want the name on the headstock.

I knew-a-guy-who-knew-a-guy and contacted a Chinese builder directly. There isn't one single "Chibson Factory" so quality is hit and miss depending on who builds it. The guy I worked with studied in the US and has great english and builds a great guitar. I specified what woods I wanted used (mahogany body with a maple top), what style I wanted (ES-Les Paul), what color ("root beer"), and what neck profile (60s slim), even the serial number (my birthday), and he did it. He does good work so he has a fairly long waitlist, but I got my guitar a few months after ordering.

I swapped all the hardware and all the electronics (the builder started offering empty husks after my order) and between the build and the upgrades I'm about $800 into it. Fit and finish is excellent, frets are smooth, neck is straight, truss rod works. I've owned a handful of authentic Gibsons, though nothing custom shop. I would easily put this on par with if not superior to those, for the price of what I originally paid for my 2013 LPJ, and this is literally my dream guitar.

To get the same specs in an authentic Gibson guitar would easily be $5k or more.
 
vigilante398 said:
Hasn't this been discussed before?

My main electric is a Chibson because I'm both incredibly vain and incredibly cheap. I know there are guitars out there way cheaper than Gibson that are just as good if not better, but dammit I want the name on the headstock.

I knew-a-guy-who-knew-a-guy and contacted a Chinese builder directly. There isn't one single "Chibson Factory" so quality is hit and miss depending on who builds it. The guy I worked with studied in the US and has great english and builds a great guitar. I specified what woods I wanted used (mahogany body with a maple top), what style I wanted (ES-Les Paul), what color ("root beer"), and what neck profile (60s slim), even the serial number (my birthday), and he did it. He does good work so he has a fairly long waitlist, but I got my guitar a few months after ordering.

I swapped all the hardware and all the electronics (the builder started offering empty husks after my order) and between the build and the upgrades I'm about $800 into it. Fit and finish is excellent, frets are smooth, neck is straight, truss rod works. I've owned a handful of authentic Gibsons, though nothing custom shop. I would easily put this on par with if not superior to those, for the price of what I originally paid for my 2013 LPJ, and this is literally my dream guitar.

To get the same specs in an authentic Gibson guitar would easily be $5k or more.
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Sounds like you vetted the builder to make sure it was on the up and up. Most people do not do that. Good for you.
 
Aentons said:
Sounds like you vetted the builder to make sure it was on the up and up. Most people do not do that. Good for you.
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Yup, there are always going to be good and bad builders, the guy who built mine obviously isn't the only good one, but I've seen to many bad Chibsons to know that the best way to get a good one is to have a conversation with the one actually building it.

My first Chibson (also an ES-Les Paul) was basically pine plywood with a pine block inside, sloppy finish, unpolished frets, and all plastic inlays. Didn't want a repeat of that guitar.
 
Aentons said:
Sorry to be the asshole folks but I don't think it's about Gibson or politics or China or any of that.

This guy says it all here:
chucksguitargeekery.wordpress.com

The Dark Side Of Counterfeit Guitars

If you buy counterfeit guitars, you are supporting modern day slavery. Now that I have your attention. With all of the hullabaloo surrounding Gibson’s video threatening to s…
chucksguitargeekery.wordpress.com chucksguitargeekery.wordpress.com
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I saw crickets on this reply so I thought I’d highlight it. This article makes a very compelling argument against counterfeits (not just guitars and not just from China: the being Chinese part is not really the problem here as some have conflated). And it links an excellent source. This has nothing to do with politics, just common sense. I really urge you all to give the article a read, it’s not very long. And you don’t have to change your mind on buying one of these at all, no judgement here, at least not from me. But be informed (and if you find sources that dispute the article I’d love to see them).
 
giovanni said:
I saw crickets on this reply so I thought I’d highlight it. This article makes a very compelling argument against counterfeits (not just guitars and not just from China: the being Chinese part is not really the problem here as some have conflated). And it links an excellent source. This has nothing to do with politics, just common sense. I really urge you all to give the article a read, it’s not very long. And you don’t have to change your mind on buying one of these at all, no judgement here, at least not from me. But be informed (and if you find sources that dispute the article I’d love to see them).
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"To frame it in a way that hopefully relates it to those of you in the western first world. It’s no different than the illegal drug trade that is ran by violent cartels. In fact, it’s probably the same cartels that are involved with counterfeit guitars, fake Rolex watches, human trafficking, and organ harvesting."

That feels like a bit of a stretch. The "article" is some guy's blog. He is not a journalist, he does not cite any sources, he has nothing to back up these claims.

I don't have anything that disputes what this guy is claiming, but I will submit this article and also go ahead and drop my favorite line from it: "When two parties are in a discussion and one makes a claim that the other disputes, the one who makes the claim typically has a burden of proof to justify or substantiate that claim". This dude's blog is making a boatload of terrible claims with absolutely no evidence.
 
vigilante398 said:
"To frame it in a way that hopefully relates it to those of you in the western first world. It’s no different than the illegal drug trade that is ran by violent cartels. In fact, it’s probably the same cartels that are involved with counterfeit guitars, fake Rolex watches, human trafficking, and organ harvesting."

That feels like a bit of a stretch. The "article" is some guy's blog. He is not a journalist, he does not cite any sources, he has nothing to back up these claims.

I don't have anything that disputes what this guy is claiming, but I will submit this article and also go ahead and drop my favorite line from it: "When two parties are in a discussion and one makes a claim that the other disputes, the one who makes the claim typically has a burden of proof to justify or substantiate that claim". This dude's blog is making a boatload of terrible claims with absolutely no evidence.
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Like Abraham Lincoln said "You can't trust everything you read on the internet"

I saw this one article about how all fish have nano-plastics in them. After researching the researcher I found the article was based on the work of an anti-plastic activist who collected samples of water from mud puddles surrounding a facility that was shut down for dumping hazardous plastic production waste.

He then proceeded to extrapolate the results of his findings to all of the water on the planet and came to the conclusions without testing a single fish.

This was several years ago, and I just saw it resurface in another article that had now extrapolated those results to all plants and animals on the planet.

Talk about an eye roll....
 
giovanni said:
I saw crickets on this reply so I thought I’d highlight it. This article makes a very compelling argument against counterfeits (not just guitars and not just from China: the being Chinese part is not really the problem here as some have conflated). And it links an excellent source. This has nothing to do with politics, just common sense. I really urge you all to give the article a read, it’s not very long. And you don’t have to change your mind on buying one of these at all, no judgement here, at least not from me. But be informed (and if you find sources that dispute the article I’d love to see them).
Click to expand...

It's an important subject, and that makes it important to support his claim that Chinese counterfeit goods equal organized crime. He doesn't. Absent some evidence that Chinese counterfeit guitars are connected to organized crime in the sense that he uses the term, it isn't the case that buying a Chibson supports slavery.

There's a great article about this topic by (the late) William Hennessey in which he argues that it's supporting "shanzhai," which (among other things) is not illegal, just "outside of the government's control." It's dense Law Review writing, with lots of historical background, but worth at least a skim if this topic is important. Part IV is especially interesting in the way it describes Confucian ideals of "learned mastery in preference to creativity," in the development of an artist's personal style.

His conclusion is this:

There is a widespread perception, particularly among foreigners, that China’s shanzhai counterculture among ordinary Chinese people is about industrial-scale counterfeiting and piracy. That perception is totally inaccurate. In fact, those activities are more likely a consequence of widespread corruption and impunity among local (and some national) government officials and their cronies and lack of effective law enforcement against those with connections in political power....

Small-scale counterfeits, piracy, and plagiarism are part of shanzhai, but shanzhai primarily means “knock-offs” (clearly recognizable as such), parodies, irreverent protests, and“grassroots innovations” that exploit “the ambiguities” and skirt the rules rather than break them....

In the Chinese shanzhai, the gates are wide open to anyone creatively inclined and audacious enough to enter. Inside the shanzhai’s gates it is bustling, uncontrolled, but predictably peaceable, spontaneous, humor-filled, and irreverent; the teeming throng is perhaps still a bit adolescent, but on its way to full majority.
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If it feels wrong to buy a Chibson, you probably shouldn't do it. Because, it violates your sense of ethics and that's valid enough to not do it and to say so. But propping it up on a grand logical fallacy doesn't help anyone work it out for themselves.
 
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