I have a 335-alike I bought from China on a whim. I spent few quid upgrading the hardware and pickups with a Seymour Duncan and a Bulldog PAF. It's quite a nice guitar but I don't have room for it anymore and I can't stick it in the classifieds here or moderators will go into meltdown. I can't put it on eBay and frankly don't want to - too much aggro. So what do I do with it? Take the decent parts off it and throw it away?
It owes me £300 all in so it's not a massive deal. If I had a kid who played guitar I'd give it to them, but my kids aren't interested.
Comments
Difficult one… it seems a shame to destroy a perfectly good guitar, but it isn't quite OK to sell it. Probably the best thing to do is to sand off the logo - then it's just a copy, not a counterfeit. Painting over it may be enough, but that leaves open the possibility that someone could clean the paint off.
"Take these three items, some WD-40, a vise grip, and a roll of duct tape. Any man worth his salt can fix almost any problem with this stuff alone." - Walt Kowalski
"Only two things are infinite - the universe, and human stupidity. And I'm not sure about the universe." - Albert Einstein
It's not that we'll go into a meltdown, but rather the fact that if we allow a sale of such things on here then we are also liable for prosecution. We like to be helpful to our members, but we kinda draw the line where we could risk fines and jail time...
The moral of this story is: don't buy counterfeit guitars in a country where it's illegal to sell them on.
Therefore, belt-sand or paint over the logo(s) and advertise it as an "Electric Guitar" or call it a 335 copy - its perfectly acceptable to sell a guitar as such on eBay (and should be on here too... put down those pitchforks boys).
Its only "counterfeit" if you are deliberately trying to pass it off as something it isn't. And if it has no logos on it at all, then its just another guitar...
If, however, the logo is removed, then it can happily be sold on here.
Simply covering the logo (or keeping it out of shot) wouldn't be enough now, though, because this thread has made us aware of the fact that it's a fake.
Not a morals lesson - I honestly couldn't care less if there are fakes out there, and I don't like Gibson anyway. However, we do have to stick to the law...we don't want to end up in a fight with the big manufacturers like Basschat did.
Don't blame us...we didn't make the rules, we just play by them
In any case, you'll find that our moderation is the exact opposite of "over-zealous". We simply don't want to pay the price (either personally or by the site being shutdown) for our members' lack of foresight or knowledge of the law.
I strongly suggest you drop the attitude.
https://soundcertified.com/speaker-ohms-calculator/
*An Official Foo-Approved guitarist since Sept 2023.
Oh wait...
https://soundcertified.com/speaker-ohms-calculator/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Morality
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moral