Fibsons.com – the fake Gibson guitar blog.

“Don’t waste thousands on the so called Genuine Article,these things are awesome…”

Hmm, I doubt that. And as these can be bought direct from the factory websites for about $350 delivered your Buy It Now price of $695 is a little excessive. To be fair though at least the seller is being upfront about it being a Chinese knock off, though the claims that Fender make some of their best guitars in China is open for debate.

The speed knobs, (which the seller has added) are on pots that are in the wrong place, the pickup selector switch is also misaligned and the pickguard is completely the wrong shape. Also notice that the pickups have some sort of Gibson decal on them, the real ones don’t.

The frets go over the binding, (see circle), the truss rod cover is the wrong shape, has the wrong sized screws and is too close to the nut. The crown inlay is wrong, as it the Gibson logo and they both should be Mother Of Pearl, not white.

Gibson’s Guitar Of The Month program had come out with some great pieces, some have been so popular that they have gone on to be reissued, Reverse Flying V anyone? Most of these interesting and sometimes quite experimental versions of Gibson’s best will never be repeated and in most cases go on to be very collectable due to their limited numbers.

I was therefore very surprised to find a Gibson SG3 for sale on a Chinese site selling fake Gibson’s. This is going to be painfully bad, I thought to myself, until I saw the pictures. Absolutely spot on in every detail, I couldn’t see anything wrong at all. How could they get away with that? Well, a closer look revealed the eBay watermark in the right hand corner. Beware sites selling Gibson guitars at $363.20 plus postage, usually the fakes are obvious, but now they use pictures that they have lifted from legitimate listings to coax you into buying, then they send you the 山寨 (Mountain Village – Definition: Forgery).