| Are Tiger Woods, Michael
Jordan, Michael Jackson, Eddie Van Halen, Slash,
Corporate Shills for products they really
don't use. Does Joe Namath really use "Brut"
Aftershave!!!
What really hurts is when the families of the
deceased sell the soul of their dead brother, son or
daughter to some corporate Scumsucker.
It's not so bad when the FPE actually used the product
when he was alive. Gibson jumped all over Jimi'
Hendrix's Flying Vee. Oh, I really love it when some
one has an SRV autographed Strat. Hey Dufus that
guitar was not even issued until after Stevie was
dead. Oh Well, I guess it's not the worst thing
that goes on in this business but it deserves a rant,
even if it's a short one.
I guess I am just as guilty, I have always made
replicas of many famous guitars for people. I started
doing it in the early 80's, I began to get requests
for Clapton Replicas & Van Halen Replicas, Axe Bass
Replicas etc etc.
I didn't think much of it when I started to do it.
If a customer asked for it I was only to happy to
oblige. After all I am a custom shop. My
two best selling models are the "Clapton Fool SG"
which is done on a 1961 reissue Gibson SG which by the
way the quality has been dropping drastically. I am
offering this on several better guitars now. The other
best selling one is the official Authorized J Frog
Skull N Bones that George Lynch made famous in the
80's. This is a very hard guitar to do correctly I
have seen some really bad copies come from ESP and
from some nudnik on Ebay.
Some I pay royalties and some don't I would gladly
pay any reasonable royalty that is deserved. I tried
in vain to pay a royalty to the family of Donny Hunt
who is famous for painting one of Joe Satriani's
guitars. I offered them more money than Ibanez
actually paid Donny to paint the guitars in the first
place. Oh Well you can't win them all we
only did about 35 of those guitars.
It rankles me when a famous un named British
guitarist uses a custom made guitar for years and
years and when the time comes to sell his soul he
sells it to Gibson because he knows they have the
distribution and the mass production capabilities to
build the guitar and pay him a large royalty. The 3
British boutique builders that he used for many years
deserved to get that after all they took care of his
needs for 30 plus years.
Oh Well
I promised this would be a short one
Ed Roman January 2009 |