I think this captures the most important points.

I was just thinking about this: Would it kill guitar makers to stop copying the Strat and [P|J] bass? It is wild that the earliest guitar designs are still ubiquitous / the most popular types. For anyone not familiar: The matter is not about iterating on these original designs; there's lots of that too, including by the same companies! It's about instruments that are effectively clones, and look (at a glance) identical other than the name on the headstock. Sometimes they are fancy ones built to a higher quality than the original, but superficially look like clones.

It is also interesting that MusicMan (Another Fender company!) has gone differently; still some of the most recognizable designs, but they have been selling officially licensed versions instead to capture the lower end. (SUB, OLP, Sterling etc), and don't have the copycats of the Fender models.

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gchamonlive 2 hours ago | parent | next [-]

Maybe someone new to music and guitar would mistake them for the real thing, but these copies have different hand styles and they have neither the Stratocaster nor the fender logo. This is a non-issue.

The actual problem lies within fender itself. Not only it's aggressively protecting a old design, fender itself is guilty of being misleading when it splits its product line into multiple brands that's often confusing for the consumer: fender squire, squire by fender, the regular one, fender custom shop, American vintage etc... which is only discernible by the price.

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piltdownman 2 hours ago | parent [-]

The problem is some PE has read up on the FujiGen Gakki guitars of the 70s and thought they could strike rich with a test case in a soft German court - and they were right.

	▲	bobchadwick 25 minutes ago \| parent [-]
		I just finished restoring the Univox Coily that was sitting in my parents' basement for the past 25 years. Every time I step into the room and see it I do a double take because it looks so cool. (It sounds pretty great, too, especially through my Kay 703, aka the widowmaker.)

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piltdownman 2 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

In terms of ergonomics, resonance and so on, there's not many terribly optimal solidbody electronic guitar shapes that deviate from the Les Paul/Strat/Tele trinity. Explorers, Flying Vs and the like are basically genre-oddities for aesthetics.

Guitars are not about aesthetics, otherwise Fender wouldn't have marques like Squier or ranges like Highway One to differentiate their low-quality tiers.

	▲	snide 40 minutes ago \| parent \| next [-]
		> Guitars are not about aesthetics My wife used to work at Acoustic Guitar magazine. She said the most common sales line to sell a guitar at Guitar Center was "it looks good on you". The sound of guitars might not be aesthetics, but in regards to sales, it most certainly is. Everyone plays the same guitars because they grew up seeing their idols play those guitars.
	▲	bobchadwick 23 minutes ago \| parent \| prev \| next [-]
		Guitars are very much about aesthetics, which is why they're so often strategically placed in the background on Zoom calls.
	▲	liveoneggs 24 minutes ago \| parent \| prev [-]
		[dead]

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sandworm101 2 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Because two things look the same, even identical, does not mean one copied the other. These are useful, practical, objects. A honda and a toyota me be virtually identical (same size, weight, door, number of wheels etc) but nobody would call them copies. And if they did, they are both copies of an ancient, out-of-copyright, merc rather than each other.

	▲	the__alchemist an hour ago \| parent [-]
		I am with you. I believe this is a matter of degree vs kind. Can you see how there are truly many instruments which deliberately mimic details of the Fender designs, and not the broad solid-body guitar design principles? I brought this up in the earlier post: I think the difference is most clear when looking at companies that have both their own designs, and Fender-style designs. Cosmetic and arbitrary features are mimicked, like pick guard design, precise pickup style and position, control layout etc.

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lenerdenator 39 minutes ago | parent | prev [-]

> It is also interesting that MusicMan (Another Fender company!) has gone differently; still some of the most recognizable designs, but they have been selling officially licensed versions instead to capture the lower end. (SUB, OLP, Sterling etc), and don't have the copycats of the Fender models.

That's basically what Fender does with Squier. Arguably they invented that move back in the 80s.

I think it's more of a case of the whole market going stale. The biggest driver of guitar sales, rock music, is still relevant but not the primary driver of culture that it once was. You can only increase the playability of a guitar so much. In a lot of ways, it's a commodity now, and the owners of Fender - some investment firm - are trying to make good on their bet by either ignoring that fact or trying to make them not a commodity again.