Fender Lied

Added: 2026-06-01

[00:00:00]Fender keeps saying we're just going after those direct copy import guitars.

[00:00:05]You know, those Chinese guitars that are just copying us blatantly, but then we find out that's not true. And now we might know a little bit more to show how really not true it is.

[00:00:16]>> The Know Your Gear podcast.

[00:00:17]>> So, if you guys don't know what is going on with Fender and cease and assisting, whatever you want to call it, a ton of companies with these letters, then uh you can watch the episode. But I'll put a link in this uh timestamp to uh the clip where I talk about this. So, if you guys uh saw it yesterday, the Wall Street Journal did an article on the uh Fender versus the Guitar Industry uh cease and desist letter thing. Now, you might have noticed my name mentioned in it a couple times. So, I want to talk about why I was talking to the Wall Street Journal because it sure wasn't to talk about the stock market and the price of eggs. So apparently when the reporter went to a bunch of guitar companies, larger ones and smaller ones, they all mentioned that I might be a good source to talk to. I had stated to you guys that multiple companies had been served a cease and desist letter or better yet a demand letter. The reason why we think Tolman the website is why the Fender guys decided to send letters to those companies is that when they went on their website, any guitar showing in stock would mean it'd be physically in Germany at the time. So, it'd be easy to prove, hey, they sent guitars into Germany or EU and they're physically here because Toman has them.

[00:01:29]If you paid attention to the original case that Fender did, they ordered the guitar and they brought it in. See, by going to Tomomen's website, they can physically see if the guitar was in stock. Therefore, it's there. That's why uh we believe they did that. I got to tell you, I knew that PRS was served already. In fact, I would argue that PS was served before LSL because hell, they're in Maryland, so the letters probably came from Europe. They probably came to the East Coast and then even if they were overnighted, I would imagine PRS received their letter even faster.

[00:01:58]PRS, like any company, isn't going to really disclose that because they have a lawyer, right? In fact, the only reason they told the Wall Street Journal is because Wall Street Journal asked for a statement which they also asked Fender for and Fender gave no statement to the Wall Street Journal. My guess, just a guess, should I say allegedly?

[00:02:15]Allegedly, I'm guessing the reason Fender gave their statement to Guitar World, who they pay advertising to and probably one of the biggest advertisers for Guitar World, gave it to them and not the Wall Street Journal, is for what I just implied. Couple issues I have with the PR letter. When Guitar World released this article with uh the first thing I didn't like was it says last week it was revealed that Fender had sent cease and desist letters allegedly.

[00:02:39]Allegedly meaning not confirmed. They don't know. But just a couple paragraphs later it says Fender has confirmed it's already in settlement discussions with another firms. How could you allegedly sent multiple letters because you didn't really know if you did or didn't but you're also talking to multiple people.

[00:02:53]That was the first thing I saw in that in that I thought huh that's really strange. almost like you want to say allegedly like implying you didn't really serve a lot of companies although we know you did. Multiple companies have been served. The next thing that was upsetting about the letter was it implied that a lot of people on social media were going to speculations and that's because you guys left parts of that letter vague as to what was even a Strat. You said, "Hey, it's an artistic piece of art that Leo crafted over a beautiful woman. What the hell does that mean?" First of all, Fender, how do you know? How do I tell which of my guitars are boys or girls? So, if anyone would tell me, "Is a whammy bar a boy?" But then a Strat has a whammy bar. Is that a boy? I don't know. That would elude when you guys did the PR letter to Guitar World where you said you're really only going after the exact copies, which most people took that as, "Oh, okay. So, not the Silver Sky, but we already knew you served PRS. At least I did. You guys didn't." And that you were going after the Silver Sky. And then in that statement to Guitar World, Fender said it's going to focus on products that are closely or completely replicating the exact body design of the Stratacaster itself. And according to Fender, third party guitars may share general design elements of similar overall layout. So here are two guitars that Fender thinks allegedly are too close. This guitar, which is a Freedman guitar, even though the pick guard's been changed and the output jack has been moved aside and it has a different kind of layout on the controls. And of course the Silver Sky, again, too close. Now, this is only important because Fender said close or exact. And now we see no no minor changes or medium changes to it is not enough. So, which one is it, Fender?

[00:04:31]Destroy your product and stop or you can get close. So, the question is, who do I think's been served? It's Harley Benton.

[00:04:38]It's Sir, it's PRS. It's ESP. It's LSL.

[00:04:42]And it's Fran. You're going to notice now you're probably going to see a lot of companies shutting up because a lot of companies allegedly have a lawyer now. Maybe they're all combining. Maybe that's happening. What I want to show you now is why I think, and this is again allegedly, if that means anything, why I think this is all about PS in the first place. This is a clip of PS uh Ps at Cortech. Why Finder might not like what they see. So you got China, Korea, the UK. This massive wall to your right of guitars. That's for the USA.

[00:05:18]>> Korea.

[00:05:20]Korea.

[00:05:22]What is C E KO?

[00:05:24]>> Check me.

[00:05:26]>> Here are guitars going to Chile and Singapore.

[00:05:30]>> Got some Japan, Hong Kong.

[00:05:34]>> So about half the guitars go to the US.

[00:05:37]That's kind of our average, I'd say.

[00:05:40]Then about 25% go to the UK and to Europe, >> right?

[00:05:47]>> About 8% go to Japan and then the rest is split amongst the rest of the world, >> right?

[00:05:54]>> You're seeing lots of quality Pure SSE guitars shipping around the world. And you see uh he clearly says the US is half their market like most of the guitar manufacturers. But what he's not saying is the growth markets which are like Singapore, Taiwan, Japan, India, China, where there's not a lot of used fenders.

[00:06:18]So, who are your competitors? I mean, here in the US, look, if somebody said, "I'll I'll never buy a Fender again."

[00:06:24]Well, the good news for you is you can buy used Fenders for the next 30 years and never have to give Fender the corporation a penny. You'd just be helping local dealers, your your your retail, you know, chains. you'd be helping everybody but Fender buying used vendors if that's something you actively want to do. Um, but my point is in a market like us, there's tons of used Fender. In fact, if you recall an article about Fender trying to get their IPO and go public, they hit them with a couple pretty hard comments. One being that the iPad is as much an instrument as a Fender guitar. Even their own signature artists play vintage Fenders over the current Fender line. And then the third one is is that the guitars don't obsolete themselves. And unlike Apple where it's always about buying the newest iteration of the product, vendor has to compete with its old inventory.

[00:07:06]Well, guess where its old inventory isn't? It's not in China, India, Singapore, Korea. That their used market's not like ours. It doesn't have 70 years of used vendors can be with. So in those markets, my guess, and this is my guess, their biggest competitors are their guitars that look like theirs or compete with theirs. But even if you would say, "Well, Ivan is okay, great.

[00:07:29]Great guitars, fantastic guitars.

[00:07:30]Yamaha, as you know, I've reviewed them all. They're great. But there's something about PS that always sticks out different to me. It's an iconic American instrument. And like Fender, it sells a lifestyle. I know people hate the word lifestyle brands, but that's what it is. Essentially, music is a lifestyle. It's my lifestyle. Look, I'm wearing a Toto shirt today. I literally live and breathe this lifestyle. I only buy stuff that is about music. I buy music. I buy concert tickets. I buy guitars. I buy guitar strings. I buy ornaments on my tree that look like guitars. This is my lifestyle. To everyone that may be extreme to some people. I may be extreme. To some of you, you're totally understanding what I'm saying right now. Lifestyle brand. I would say that there are uh that if you are in Singapore and you're looking at a really cool iconic American, a good old rock and roll guitar, you're Gibson, you're Fender, you're Paul Reed Smith.

[00:08:25]And if you're Gibson, well, you're not really competing with Fender if you're right because if you're in the market for an SG or Gibson, a less Paul, it's not a Fender, but the Silver Sky is definitely a problem for Fender. So, I would imagine a lot of people probably think that this is has a lot to do with Pur. I agree with those comments as something I can tell you as making uh all these videos, thousands of deep dive tear apart guitar videos, I can tell you that the smallest amount of you are interested in $3,000 guitars.

[00:08:55]the the a majority of you watching will like to watch $200 and $100 guitars because they're fun to watch, but the majority of you are not interested in that. That's a beginner's market for most part. The uh $3,000 market, the $2,000 market, those are high-end markets. The sweet spot really is the $300 to I'll say $1,500 market now with inflation. That's the sweet market. And when I ask you this question, and I'm just asking you rhetorically almost, when you think of Fender style guitars in that price range that are good, it's not as big of a group of companies. A year ago, I mentioned that Fender's parent company bought Reverb. And this is what I speculated a year ago. First thing that came to my mind when I heard that re uh Reverb is being purchased by essentially the ownership of Fender.

[00:09:39]Fender's biggest competitor was their used product line. Uh keep in mind, Reverb is more than just in the US. like it's in in in hundreds I don't know hundreds it's in it's in almost every major country. So why go after the silver sky now? When it came out they didn't say anything. Well that's because companies don't think like you and me.

[00:09:57]They actually don't think artistically.

[00:09:59]They think like a company and a company thinks in profits. So now that they own reverb, they have all the data and they probably can see per country where that guitar is gaining ground in sales over their middleof the road high turn product. In other words, the products that's really, in other words, the products that's really fueling the company. Not the high tier guitars that are not sold in high volume and not the low tier guitars that have low profit margin, but we're talking the meat and potatoes right in the middle. And that's where the Silver Sky SE really lives now. And now that they have access to all that data, it's just weird that all of a sudden they found a reason to claim that it's a violation of their copyright. Well, it looks like Fender did back off a little bit. Although, again, some of the things that make me sad is when Fender implies in their PR letter that, you know, hey, we never said destroy stuff. You did. You know, you were very aggressive. The, in fact, the the the verbiage on the first letter was very to the point. No one misunderstood what you said. One thing I do want to clarify is that there was some confusion because the Wall Street uh Journal article came out on Thursday, but Fender's uh PR piece came out on Wednesday. It implied or felt like that they had served PRS after and it was not true. It's just like I said, the the reporter spent a week fact-checking the information. I don't remember when I talked to her, but I can tell you it was at least a minimum a week or longer from when the article posted. Um, and then so you know she reached out to me at least I think two other times for factchecking because she was fact-checking some information. Maybe I'm wrong, but I at least I wanted to give you all the information I had. If you like this podcast clip, you can watch the full episode by clicking here or you can watch another video if you want to click here. And as always, I want to thank you for your time. Until the next time, know your gear.