Pretty sweet.

Since it is a "Frankenstrat"did you remember to buy two extra bolts to stick into the sides of the neck where it joins the body?

_________________
I'm not an expert, but I play one on the internet.

if the product is good enough to have fenders name on it then it should meat fender quality standards

I know that is not how it works out but if they want profit from selling there brand name to inferior products then there brand can take a hit when its assosiated to an inferior product, they cant have it both ways either the quality of that"fender" product is good,or overall fender is less quality

"these are fender necks but not made by fender" then its not a fender neck,

if chev made a toyota design its still a chev


they want it both ways, to be able to sell there brand to inferior manufaturers but not have any of the negatives associated with those brands.

if you sold them the name fender then its a fender for better or worse, even if it drags down fenders reputation.after all ,they put the price on their own head

I am a machinist and if I put my name on it people's lives hang in the ballance, i would not put my name on work that did not meet my standards, and if i put my name on someone elses work and it fails my name takes the hit, thats the way it should be




for all we know they have exactly the same machine and fender sold them the cnc program and they are identical in every way

or those other companies could all be owned by fender as away of selling off product that did not meat quality control for fender brand instuments

or it could just be a way to sell more necks and they just sell them a portion of the total number produced

Fender's licensing agreement with various vendors is a result of their policy of not making replacement necks/bodies themselves. I think it comes as a result of the massive black market in counterfeit guitars. After all at one point you used to be able to go into a dealer and buy replacement decals.

But once the fakers realised that you could easily put them on inferior guitars (or even good guitars that were much cheaper,) and pass them off as genuine for a Fender price, they stopped.

You can't just go in and buy a Fender neck, made and branded from Fender. It would be pretty easy to slap it on a generic body, and sell it.

So fender struck a deal with Mighty Might(originally, and then others,) where they would build replacement parts to fenders spec, and fender would let them advertise that they were licensed. This is a big step away from being made by fender, and as such fender never extended the privilege so far as to let them brand it. it only went so far as Fender saying the company has promised to make highquality replacement parts.

Fender has in the past (and presently, with ping now I think,)had other companies make some parts that carried the Fender brand. But I think in these cases, none of these have been parts fender manufactures themselves anyway. I point to the fender/Schaller locking tuners, that I have on my Strat, with the big fender 'F' on them. I think this was allowed since the tuners on their instruments were Schaller's at the time, and since there woould be no confusion between them and a genuine Fender part they let the company that was manufacturing them use their brand.

So in a nutshell, it is just Fender protecting their brand, and not letting outsource manufacturers use it, in any case where confusion over the source of the part might arise.

_________________
I'm not an expert, but I play one on the internet.

as long as its within fender specs then for all intents and purposes it IS THE SAME. it would have met the specs for fender to put there own name on it






I know what your saying but it dont agree,with all the necks on the market a person could buy a counterfit neck and slap it on the same generic body for half the price of buying a fender neck,

at least fender would have got to charge them premium prices for the replacement neck to offset some of the massive counterfiet markety

with todays technology a decal isnt going to stop anyone




as far as counterfit guitars go, play it before you buy it, if you love how it plays and feels and sounds then it doesnt matter who made it, if it sounds like garbage i dont care if it says "fender cutom shop " , i realise that doesnt help if its a very expensive guitar that was an investment

I'm building one too. And after stripping, sanding and tung oiling the body, shielding the cavities, all the soldering, sanding the neck and dressing the frets... Well, I'll be darned if the headstock is going to have any name but mine. I even took a drum sander and shaped my own headstock design to make it more unique.

i agree with twelvebar.

I am very close to this issue as I am in the same predictament. I am putting together my own project Strat. For the neck, I acquired a used but never installed Mighty Mite neck. The neck was tinted slightly, with a "Fender Stratocaster" logo already on it. It is a beautiful neck, actually, but hmmm ... should I remove the logo??

I decided "no - the logo stays". Here are my reasons:

a) The guitar has no serial number, nor will it ever have one. Without a serial number and a "made in ..." sticker, it is quite clear what it is based on that alone.
b) My neck is clearly a non-Fender: It could only be Mighty Mite, as it has a large headstock with black truss ring and no string trees. Fender never had a guitar with a neck like that. Between this fact and 'a' above, my guitar screams "project-caster".
c) The neck is Fender licenesed and very well made. I know that "Fender licensed" is not the same as "real Fender", but it is far more entitled to wear a Fender logo that an outright copy.
d) The body, tuners, bridge/ tremelo, neck plate and screws ARE all pure OEM Fender Strataocaster. The pups and harness, however, are all non-Fender.
e) I did not want to mess up the nice tint that was applied to the neck.

_________________
Laughing out loud with fear and hope, I have a desperate plan ...

Hi 01GT eibach: as you've previously noticed, I'm very much in the anti-fake decal camp. That's partly out of a decent law abiding respect for other people's intellectual property.

But it's also because I was a "victim" (aaaw...) of a fake neck, sold to me years ago pretending to be a late '60s reissue. I knew no better at the time, but in fact there's plenty about that neck that should have warned me off: these days I wouldn't be fooled by it for a second. On the other hand it's a nice neck - who ever made it - and with a little work has become one of my faves.

And the shameful truth? It still carries its blatently fake logo. I've never exactly "decided" that it stays. Just never yet sanded it off...

Given stuff I've written on this Forum - what a hypocrite, huh?

- C

Not at all, buddy; you are the man. I am still in awe over your photo of you in the album cover to Animals. That was too cool.

_________________
Laughing out loud with fear and hope, I have a desperate plan ...