I know this is a Fender forum, but I suspect that a bunch of you also have a Gibson tucked away somewhere as well. For those of you who might not have heard, the Gibson factory was raided by the Justice Department, apparently because of the Rosewood and Ebony woods that they are using in their products. The thing about this is that anyone who owns a Gibson could potentially be in violation of the law and you could risk being fined thousands of dollars as well as having your guitar confiscated. While the Justice Department may have started with Gibson, I believe that all American guitar factories are in jepordy. Please check this link out: http://online.wsj.co...0471223268.html

This should give you some idea of what I'm talking about. If you go to the Gibson site, you'll find more information about this federal law run amuck. If you've never heard about the Lacey Act, you might want to start finding out about it. If they succeed in closing Gibson down, who's to say that Fender won't be next. Write to your Senators and Representatives about this.

Hey trekhead welcome to the forum.

I thought that you might be intrested to know that there is another thread about this subject, but looking at it from another angle.

Here it is: http://www.fender.com/community/forums/viewtopic.php?f=2&t=60693

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Deyja frændr
Deyr sjálfr ið sama
En orðstír
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So, the government wants to take our guitars away from us? Charlton Heston's quote of "From my cold dead hands" comes to mind.

If they take 'em from us, Gibson better get ready for a class action lawsuit...or start giving refunds if they ever want anyone's business in the future.

BTW, what was wrong with the wood that they got raided? Link is dead.

There is nothing wrong with the wood, and no US laws were violated. The gov, in it's typical fashion, is making it up as they go. Just like they hassled a walnut company, accusing them of selling "drugs" because of the health claims by the company. The link worked for me, what is the problem? The last post in the thread was today, it is still "alive", and there are links in that thread to the stories explaining all.

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Por favor, disculpe mi español, no se llega a la práctica con mucha frecuencia.

Please correct me if I am wrong but I think he also said;

"It's people. Soylent Green is made out of people. They're making our food out of people. Next thing they'll be breeding us like cattle for food. You've gotta tell them. You've gotta tell them!" - Soylent Green

and......"get your hands off of me you damned dirty apes". - Planet of the Apes


sorry I digress.

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I Can't Explain

Hello trekhead, welcome to the Forum.

Very politely, that is a little over the top. Even if Gibson are found to have broken the law (which hasn't been demonstrated yet) nobody is going to come after end users who bought products in good faith with fines and confiscations. That isn't how these things work.

I've been watching the other current thread on this here with some amusement without need to comment. But this now might alarm more innocent minded kids, so it is time to point out that no ordinary guitarists are going to be receiving knocks on the door. They can calm down.

'Course, Fender guitars are built overwhelmingly with non-tropical timbers, give or take the occasional legal and decent Indian rosewood fingerboard, so their players can sleep even easier in their beds. Thank you, Leo.

Cheers - C

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I appreciate your point of view, but I disagree. The Act appears to be subject to a great deal of interpretation. Therefore you have to worry as much about who is doing the interpreting as well as what is being interpreted. According to the Act:

The Lacey Act now makes it unlawful to import, export, transport, sell, receive, acquire, or purchase
in interstate or foreign commerce any plant, with some limited exceptions, taken, possessed,
transported or sold in violation of the laws of the United States, a State, an Indian tribe, or any
foreign law that protects plants or that regulates certain plant related offenses. It is the responsibility
of the importer to be aware of any foreign laws that may pertain to their merchandise prior to its
importation into the United States. Currently, the U.S. Government has no plans to create such a
database.

In another part it basically reaffirms that the item can be confiscated and it doesn't matter if you didn't know about the law. While I don't anticipate a SWAT team outside my house to confiscate my guitar, its not too hard to imagine a TSA agent confiscating someone's guitar as they fly from one state to another because they read this memo somewhere.

Unfortunately, the company has already had to stop production, raw material has been confiscated, and workers are being affected. It seems to me that whatever the Justice Department decides to do should be done as transparently and quickly as possible.

After reading the article. I'm a little confused but I understand what happened. All I can say is that the people in this forum as well as the rest of this country are overlooking the big picture. We can all stand around pointing fingers and making this a political battle but how stupid is that? To blame this on a political party is like blaming Mexico for having Mexicans live there.
I live in AZ. I am an indpendant. When I came here I tried to get my license switched over to AZ I was told that I was suspended in CT. I had never had a suspended license before....I called CT. They told me that AZ was crazy. They had no records of this. Long story short. 3 tickets later the AZ DMV said it was their fault and that they were sorry. I took these letters to the AZ courts and they said...OK wer'e sorry too. Now pay your fines and we'll call it even. Even though it was the fault of AZ that I got the tickets. Az is a Republican state I am independant, my girlfriend at the time was Republican, she had no problems with her license....Hmm!!! Damn Republicans are all against us that are not Republican. You see how stupid that sounds. That was a true story by the way. I paid $4000 in fines over all that. And before you go off saying I should not have driven in that time...well ok..then you pay my cost of living or I'll go on welfare. Driving is no longer a privilage...it's abasic need if you want to function.
The truth is that its just all out ineptitude on the part of the justice system as a whole. Like everything in America...it's broken and both parties are at fault for that. The republicans didn't break our financial system as many accuse them of. Greed and bad policy on the part of both parties did it. Same with the justice system, the IRS, the prison system, the education system, the welfare system, social security, and about 500 other systems that are all going to fail. It's just the shawdy way that our government as a whole set them up and run them. Obama...health care? The guy said he was going to do something. He tried and he rushed, he ran into all kinds of political opposition, he did not take the time to sit back and look at what was going on, he was bucking a corrupt system, he passed a pretty watered down, ineffective plan. His intentions may have been good (like most people's) but the nature of our political system as a whole made a debacle out of what could have been a great thing for both parties. He gets Kudos for trying but a big "you idiot" for letting a broken system become just a little more broken. Is it the Dem's fault...NOOOO is it the Repub's fault..NOOOOO. Its the broken system's fault. It just happens that now that our ship seems to be sinking wer'e forgetting who is really at fault and finger pointing on the way down. It's everyone's fault.

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A delicate matter. Not even the government has the facts, that´s why you mention they are making it up as they go. But going after end users, wouldn´t that be criminal? I suspect musicians would not take it lying down. We are a big family, and not exactly tame. I feel bad for what happened at Gibson. Surely there are better ways of curbing the wood exploit problem than coming down on them like that.

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FIGHT!

Welcome to the Forum trekhead. I hope the Government is apologetic about this mistake. With Al Gore, an Obama supporter, still influencing our Government, most probably, guitar players will be labeled racists for not supporting tape loops, turntables and autotuners as the musical instruments of the new green hip hop fiasco.

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you can save the world with your guitar one love song at a time it's just better, more fun, easier with a fender solid body electric guitar or electric bass guitar.

Probably the Plod will be knocking on Sir Paul & Stevie's doors shortly I reckon, " just one question Sir, where exactly was this ebony and ivory and wot ave you done wiv it eh, come on, out wiv it"

Hi again trekhead. ALL law is interpreted; that is what courts exist for. And no court is going to waste time supposing that a kid in a guitar shop is meant to be able to tell Madagascar rosewood from Indian - because a defence lawyer would tear such a completely silly case to pieces.

But anyway, no guitarist is going to find themselves in court or raided or any such nonsense. Let's be a little bit real here: we are talking about timber, not cocaine or rhino horn. The substance itself is not intrinsically illegal, only the possible circumstances of its import. If (IF) a law has been broken then it is by Gibson and it is their lawyers who will spend years arguing about it in court. Not yours or mine.

Guitarists who own Les Pauls don't need to get their panties in a twist. Folks don't need to worry.

Cheers - C

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about the Obama's health care thing-he really has not had much time to get it started-it will take a while, several administrations, to get it up to full working order, reaching out to everyone. And also, as far as I know, he does not have most of congress on his side? please correct me if I'm wrong. I think this is making it hard for him. He has also had to try and do this at the same time as combating a recession. The system, (when not in recession) works well in Britain, and is fair too.

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