Caveat Emptor ... offered @ $1700 on craigslist earlier this week a Custom Shop Jimi Hendrix guitar in red (appears to have been sold as it wasn't listed tonight)... trouble is that it's a knockoff from China available for less than $400 on dhlg***.com

Brad if you want the URL drop me a line.

Those of us in the know can spot these things but younger or less experienced players can't, how many get caught we can only guess.

I work on guitars as a "pocket money" hobby and by far the worst guitar I ever worked on was a Chinese Tokai Flying V. A guy had contacted me about doing a Micheal Schenker replica, he bought this (mail order) and had it sent direct to me. I always took Tokai to be one of the better "other" manufacturers but I was horrified when it arrived. This thing had a MDF body, wrong dimensions, the pickguard edges weren't parallel with the body, the pickups were so far out of position the poles weren't under the strings. It was so bad I even emailed Tokai UK about it . . . . no reply! I discovered later there are three "levels" of Tokai depending where they were manufactured: Japan - good; Korea - reasonable; China - oh dear!

"I work on guitars as a "pocket money" hobby and by far the worst guitar I ever worked on was a Chinese Tokai Flying V. A guy had contacted me about doing a Micheal Schenker replica, he bought this (mail order) and had it sent direct to me. I always took Tokai to be one of the better "other" manufacturers but I was horrified when it arrived. This thing had a MDF body, wrong dimensions, the pickguard edges weren't parallel with the body, the pickups were so far out of position the poles weren't under the strings. It was so bad I even emailed Tokai UK about it . . . . no reply! I discovered later there are three "levels" of Tokai depending where they were manufactured: Japan - good; Korea - reasonable; China - oh dear!"

Tokai does have their low-range models built for them under contract in China, but their MIC models aren't made of MDF and have much better quality control than you describe. They're pretty much the same quality as MIC Epiphones or MIC Ibanez models.

That POS was probably a counterfeit too. There are counterfeit Tokais and Epiphones as well as counterfeit Gibsons and Fenders.

That wouldn't surprise me in the least. No quality manufacturer would have put their name on this! See pic below, what I was saying about the pickups being out of position. I'm not 100% sure where the guy bought it, somewhere on Fleabay if I remember correctly, it was a couple of years ago.

Trying to turn a nuce profit:

$400 from China:

http://www.ebay.com/itm/Fender-Squier-J ... 46008d67a7

Even giving it the benefit of the doubt that it started life as an Affinity with a price of £145 and not a Bullet @ £91, the paint job is worth £454 . . . . I don't think so