There's a guy selling this Mexican Strat HSS with Floyd Rose on Craigslist for $150.
Is it real?

http://i547.photobucket.com/albums/hh45 ... 1292374258
http://i547.photobucket.com/albums/hh45 ... 1292374259

Maybe just me, cos I don't know much about big headstocks, but the logo looks wrong.

If someone else says it's right, ignore the above. If you go see the guitar demand to see the heel of the neck.

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Did Mexico ever make Strats with big headstocks (aside from the 70s reissue)?

Its a bit of a blurry picture but the logo decal is misplaced and the contour body decal font looks off. Ive also never seen the 70s fender logo with a gold fill.

Please correct me if Im wrong, but Id venture to guess that its fake based on that headstock photo.

I wouldgo play it. It might be fake but play good. For 150 might be worth it

Im with Niki the logo looks wrong.


Just my 2 cents worth



Cheers

ME

Not sure what year this is supposed to be from, but that whole tremolo setup looks a little "off" to me as well

Not sure what year this is supposed to be from, but that whole tremolo setup looks a little "off" to me as well

The tremolo, body and pickups all look fine to me for a mid 90's HSS Floyd Rose Strat. The headstock is the right size too. Just that the logo bugged me and I can't put my finger on the reason why because I don't know enough about em.

I'm in complete agreement with Tbazzone, for $150 you can't go wrong, may as well go and look at it. If the neck is a aftermarket neck with a home made decal, so what. You're looking at $150 worth of tuners, trem, pickups and pots. If the guitar plays well ontop of that so much the better.

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Just got a pic of the serial, it's MZ3004897.
2003/2004 apparently?

I agree, the decal is wrong for a 70s style neck (or any Fender neck for that matter). It looks like the "Contour" decal says "Deluxe Series". More pictures would be nice, I'd like to see the serial number. That looks like a Squier neck, as the 70s style Mex necks would have a bullet truss rod adjust, and a 2003 would have "Made in Mexico" on the front of the headstock. I don't remember any 70s Mex Strat necks that were a Deluxe Series either. The body even looks like it may be a Squier, judging by the angle of the forearm relief. Did Fender even make a Mex model with a Floyd Rose in 2003? Even if they did (which I doubt), wouldn't the truss rod adjust be at the heel end of the neck?

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---> "The amp should be SWITCHED OFF AND UNPLUGGED before you do this!" <---

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

They had a Mexican Floyd Rose strat in 2004 with a 70's headstock. I've the product catalogue for that year. My poor eyes are failing though. I can't make out either the catalogue picture or the picture link decals too well.

I stick with Tbaz's assessment, $150 for a guitar, it's worth going to look.

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Guys, We had part of this discussion on the Chinese strat thread. If these guitars are fake, they are probably not worth $150. They can be easily bought wholesale in quantities of 6 for 75$ each. That's list price, high end wholesale. A container load, like what probably ships from China to Mexico is unloaded and the fake guitars pass into the USA through the same tunnels which are supplying your dope. I doubt if those guitars are sold for $25 each [I'm not calculating customs duty into these numbers].

A Chinese sweatshop worker may earn about $500 monthly, maybe quite a bit less. Think about how many of those guitars can be thrown together in a factory designed for mass production. Hundreds a month [edit] You may not believe it, but with machines cutting out bodies and necks and fingerboards, most of the work is just assembling the pieces.

The metal is probably garbage. The gears in the tuning machines could wear out in a very short time. The screws in the "Mexican" Strat sitting in the shop near my place are all rusted, nearly decomposing. The electronics are almost certainly garbage. Where do you think the exploding batteries causing problems in some laptops were coming from?

Some of you might think it would be cool to see someone get fried onstage due to an electrical short circuit in his guitar. Do you really want to die at the hands of a counterfeit strat? Maybe he'll never get on a stage. He might simply be found, smoking, literally, on the floor of his garage.

Unless you are an expert, the only way you can be sure your guitar is real is to pay someone to bring one out the back door of the Fender factory in the USA. And that would be wrong.

Despite the fact that the guitar body and hardware are correct, the only discrepancy is the decal. Also the neck shows clear signs of being a legitimate aftermarket neck, if it is not the original Fender one. Hence my suggestion that he get a look at the heel of the neck.

Onstage electrical shorts are caused by amplifiers and venue wiring, not guitars. Guitar pickups only generate a couple of hundred odd millivolts at most. Certainly not enough to pass through your skins natural electrical resistance.
Amplifiers can in exceptional circumstanses push a voltage up the lead from the amplifier to the guitar. You'd likely hear a problem long before that happened though.

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Nick, Where did you get the idea that I was "seeking approval" to buy a fake or counterfeit strat? That's a mistaken notion on your part, for several reasons. One of the reasons is not because I care the least about owning a counterfeit or fake instrument. What I care about is owning an instrument which I can actually use. I'm not interested, now, in tinkering with my guitar, beyond the basics to keep it working.

I make martial arts weapons for fun. Guitar tinkering is not on my bucket list.

One thing I have learned here, thanks to you and others, is that the issue of counterfeit Strats is nothing new. An archive search produced numerous posts from the past regarding puzzling guitar configurations, serial numbers, decals, and so forth. EBay has an article going back several years on fake guitars from China

I found no indication that there are any authorized Fender factories in China/ HK/ Taiwan. HK and Taiwan do have legitimate Fender distributors. Thanks to those who suggested HK as a source.

Apparently, there was some legitimate Fender manufactuirng in China at one time. It's possible that this is going on secretly even now. What is almost certain is that legitimate Fender design elements have been taken up by Chinese criminal types who are now spoiling the legitimate Fender market.

The procreative member of tiger is an illegal delicacy in China. It is believed to enhance the lovemaking abilities of older men; consequently, there are some restaurants in China which, secretly, offer that cuisine at extremely high prices. Banquets must be planned months in advance so the hunters can go out and bag a tiger. Of course, the procreative member being served is really that of a donkey or perhaps that of a large dog. Really, how many people know the difference? Keep it in mind when buying a guitar, if original is really important.

Thanks for the info on electric guitars and electrocution. Although you may think it impossible for a person to be electrocuted by a guitar, a lot of people didn't believe that people could be killed by cough syrup or milk, or that dogs could die from dog food or that medications would be corrupted in ways which conbtribute to antibiotic resistance. Toxic paint, wallboard, faulty electronics, when there is money to be made, eggs must get broken.

Firstly Hansen I apologize for the presumption I made about you seeking approval for already deciding to buy a fake guitar. It was thoughtless and I regret making that assupmtion. I'm sincerely sorry.


It's the amp that electrocutes via the guitar not the guitar itself. If some guy in Fatshan could make a electric guitar pickup that generates enough power to electrocute, we'd see the end of western civilization. The communist invasion would begin. Think what they could generate out of modern miniscule supermagnets. Lazer rifles and all sorts. They certainly wouldn't have to worry about power issues ever again.

Hansen, why not just think about it. A decent strat costs in UK money £350. Takes around 2 months from cutting the first piece of wood to the paint being dry enough to ship it.
Do you really think a greedy boss would cut that profit margin down that much. You can safely say a quarter of the previous mentioned Strat's cost is employee's wages. They have to lose the costs somewhere to produce a finished guitar for £56 a time. The market would be flooded with the things, it's not, yet. That LP owned by my friend cost him the same money as a new Mexican strat.
Quality of the produce would soon improve, the business's would soon have to operate like a legitimate western company. Just because of the amount of demand. Never mind the Japanese builders pulling Fender out the doodoo in 1980. The popularity of these instruments would bury Fender, if they were at all worthwhile. All threats of legal action would fall on deaf ears. China has sneered at the West's vain posturings for decades now. (Ever wonder why it's the only non democratic nation that we haven't threatend?).

Now if you want to be sensible there are loads of good, legitimate manufacturers in China. Pretty much everyone has some base of operation out there. They are the premier superpower, it wouldn't be good business to not have a foot in the door.
Behringer, a company much maligned despite having improved a hundredfold since the 90's built a whole city out there in China. Just to make their stuff. They make guitars.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Behringer
Surely someone out there sells them.

My personal favourite Wilkinson makes their guitars out in China. Good guitars that will serve you well in any application.
I can't find a link directly to their Chinese factory. All I can tell you is that I own a wilkinson PG100. If it was the only guitar I could ever own again, I'd be ok.
I read a interview with Trev Wilkinson (a man who advised and designed for Fender) where he explained exactly about the problems he had with Chinese manufacture. And how he personally had to go out there and instruct the factory on how to produce guitars.
Here's his instruments, sadly no link for the China plant.
http://www.jhs.co.uk/vintageiconguitars.html
Whether £200 or £2000 he makes a guitar to suit your budget.

There are plenty of legitimate manufacturers out there. Not to dismiss the previously mentioned Squier. Why would these instruments not be available in the more cosmopolitan HongKong?
Take a couple of days out to Malaysia, authorized dealers out there. It's not a bad journey from HongKong. I went there in 2000. I was planning on going into mainland China (Fatshan to see Yip Man's old stomping ground) but was out there alone and got too scared, so headed off to civilization.

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