Yesterday I wrote about Chinese ads selling counterfeit American electric guitars to YouTube. From the the frontpage of the Washington Post website the previous week, to a smaller picture ad spun out by Google Adsense/AdWwords and tied to guitar star demonstration videos.
In yesterday’s case it was sales pitching for fake Paul Reed Smiths.
Google AdSense is the vehicle of choice for Internet bottom feeders. Using Google “products” it’s probably fair to say you could set up AdSense ads for working hand grenades, hit squad services or sales of stolen goods, advertised with just the same words and get away with it for a few days. (In fairness, I haven’t tried. But judging by the reprehensible rubbish I routinely see peddled, it’s not a bridge too far.)
Today, the AdSense ads for fakes of domestic guitars were spied at the Los Angeles Times, sans immediate giveaway pictures.
Here’s the ad from this morning:
Clicking through to the site one gets a standard assortment of rock-bottom priced fakes of domestic Gibson gear.
Again, here are two fresh examples, one labeled with a clear “Made In USA” marking on the headstock:
The technology of ad streaming makes it easy for these types of things to be everywhere. And it underlines the magnitude and the gravity of the problem faced by US guitar manufacturers.
Chasing this stuff around is whack-a-mole work and the resources simply don’t exist to combat it.
Futher, there’s no obvious control or correction mechanism in domestic net advertising to fight it.
My experience has shown US companies running this type of thing really don’t like hearing the news. They’d rather have the advertising dollars — even when the amount may be trivial — and for others to just shut up and not bother them over it.
After DD screwed up the plan for selling counterfeit guitars through the Washington Post ad feed last week — and I did screw it up a bit — Google property has now been enlisted.
The same Chinese-made “brand” guitar selling site now hitches to Google AdSense on YouTube, where they’re attached to guitar store demos.
I tipped Gibson’s legal department to the Post ads last week. But I’m done with the good Samaritan pro bono work.
Paul Reed Smith is never mentioned in the advertising. But all the models the ad links to are Paul Reed Smith steals.
The routine is identical. The guitars are photographed with obscured headstocks.
PRS guitars are top of the line, domestically. A number of years ago the company offshored some manufacturing to Korea and those models are called Paul Reed Smith SEs. They’re in the medium price range.
The Chinese-made counterfeits all sell in the same slots occupied in the Gibson funny business at the Post last week — the high 200 buck range.
Which is an entire order of magnitude cheaper than domestically made Paul Reed Smiths and about half the price of Korean-manufactured models.
And I’m done chasing this stuff around — for the time being. If the Post had to be hectored into doing the right thing. And then Google took up the slack, American guitar manufacturers are on their own.
Good luck stemming the tide when your countrymen work for the enemy.
Lickspittles Talent Agency represents pundits and journalists, the good boys and girls. They’re those sufficiently camera and photogenic, chosen to “analyze” the issues of the day.
They can be counted on to laugh and tut-tut their way through the terrible news on any given day, safe in the knowledge that their position means they’ll never suffer any of the drawbacks of life out in the ruins.
Everyone in the video is a liberal but you’d be hard-pressed to find even one capable of naked rage or a wrinkled brow.
Snark and laughter at the ignoramuses in Washington, or the Tea Party — they’re all very good at that, though.
Some of the good boys hold multiple positions. They star on TV, they write for the biggest two newspapers in the country, or the two big supermarket glossy news mags, they are fellows at think tanks and professors at university.
They’re a great demonstration of another type of rampant inequality in the US, that of the rigged system, the winner-take-all society, that place were everything accrues to those who simply appear on television or some prime print real estate.
In a country as large and complicated as ours you’re asked to believe all the alleged wisdom on everything worth comment is to be found in a group of somewhat less than fifty people, all of whom earn never less than six figures every year.
Since the video is less than two minutes long, I couldn’t get to them all.
In order of of appearance: Jonathan Alter, Nicholas Kristof, Joan Walsh, James Fallows, Fareed Zakaria, Gene Robinson, Chris Hayes, Melissa Harris-Perry, Chris Matthews.
Add your own to the list in comments if you want.
If you want to know why people often vote for the worst among us, Lickspittles Talent Agency is one answer. You see them on tv, laughing and smirking at the empire crumbling down, and you’ll vote for anyone who appears to be a polar opposite, no matter the cost.
Spite is like that.
Kevin Coyne, the Englishman who wrote “Good Boy,” knew it way back in 1973.
Perhaps unsurprisingly to readers, the Washington Post (as of now) did not respond to a DD query on the banner ad it ran which pointed to sales for counterfeit US guitars made in China, trafficked on the Gibson brand name.
It’s the same thing you could access when you clicked through the Post ad last week. No American made Les Paul sells for the price advertised. Zero. Zip. Nada.
And, again, here is a video — one of many on YouTube — discussing Chinese made counterfeits. This is a significant problem for Gibson as well as other American manufacturers. And it is safe to say that it has grown beyond policing at the company level.
Postscript: You float on the Washington Post’s website enough and you’ll still catch the old ad sans the “Made in China” change. The Post simply won’t or can’t get rid of all of it although it’s become obvious a change someone had no original intention of making was made.
Jonathan May-Bowles, the activist-comedian who tried to hit Rupert Murdoch with a shaving-cream pie, has received a six-week jail sentence, Sky News reports …
May-Bowles, 26, wass blocked from landing his pie punch by, among others, Murdoch’s wife, Wendi, who jumped up from behind her husband and slapped the attacker.
Just before launching his attack on Murdoch, he used Twitter to announce: “It is a far better thing that I do now than I have ever done before #splat.”
If “better things” include: He got beat by a girl. That was Jonnie Pantywaist.
Unsurprisingly, YouTube has a fair amount of home video devoted to Chinese manufactured Gibson guitars.
The devil’s bargain forged by American manufacturing offshored to that country has resulted in an obvious ambivalence in American guys.
The counterfeits sell to American guitarists who can’t resist what they believe are great bargains. They know the goods are shifty but they’ll do it for the price.
What’s different this week is the bald-faced advertising of Gibson guitar counterfeits all through the Washington Post’s website. I’ve been there a half dozen times and the banner ad comes up everywhere.
But first, two YouTube vids — from last year — on the counterfeits. In the first one, you see the problem Gibson faces: The guy who promotes them as a steal — which they are — only not in a good way. This is common.
The second is a dissection of the instrument which is obviously can be discerned as a fake by people familiar with the real thing.
The situation which exists now is that there are more counterfeits being made than Gibson, and one imagines other domestic guitar makers, can police.
If you waste any time at all on these videos, you come away with the impression that the counterfeiters are fairly good. For the price, they make a fair guitar and the finishes are generally judged to be fine and professional.
You can theorize that American training and outfitting of a Chinese labor force has had something to do with this. It is only logical that Chinese manufacturing would become adept, or adept enough, with elements of it seeing no need to retain licensing agreements from American multi-nationals.
Finally, as with the US government, the Washington Post is a dysfunctional agency. There simply is no one home when it’s time to legitimately complain and demand that they do the right thing.
Here’s the page of the Post’s ombudsman, Patrick B. Pexton, with — ha-ha — the ad for counterfeit guitars right over his head. On the same page there’s no way to reach Patrick B. Pexton. One supposes you’re supposed to telepathically beam your messages to the newspaper.
The WaPo continues to refuse to do the right thing. Today, the newspaper still runs the ad selling made-in-China frauds and counterfeit electric guitars.
Here’s the small screen snapshot, larger one with date clearly visible in the link.
I can fill in alot of info about TT and Chinese guitars. I was curious as you and contacted TT and studied them from afar for many months to learn exactly what they were doing. Talked with their “sales staff??? , and I assure you, as you already know, they offer more than they deliver.
I study guitars, I have learned to build classical guitars, I know what’s right, and what to look for.
TT is just an outlet for many different Chinese dealers. When you sign in to their website, you can choose from many different American fakes.
What is really amazing to me, is that they advertise on sites that should know better.
Gibson customer service was informed. This reply came back on Sunday:
Thanks for the email, and for the information. We appreciate your interest in helping us maintain the Gibson name. This information will be forwarded to our Legal Department. Thank you!
It’s apparent that big American companies simply won’t do the right thing, even if it’s small.
Personally experiences, over the weekend, with the Washington Post and DD’s discovery of it running a banner ad for Chinese-made electric guitars specifically aimed at fraudulently trafficking on American products.
And it was still running the banner yesterday. Maybe today. I don’t check the place every day.
Do your part to destroy any American manufacturing, even if it’s only small. Every little bit helps.
The nut of is that the banner ad run by the Post was from some operation selling knock-offs of famous Gibson guitars. Gibson, an iconic guitar manufacturer, does have factories making electric guitars in China. But those guitars, sold in the American market as a cheaper alternative to domestically made instruments from Gibson’s Nashville facilities, are -specifically- recognizable as Epiphones.
Their headstocks, trademark names and various different choices in hardware mark them as such.
The instruments advertised through the banner running at the Washington Post do not fall into this category. They are either cheap knock-offs, counterfeits, advertised in some fraudulent way, or a combination of these.
The Washington Post does not need to help in the job of undercutting US business for the sake a few Internet advertising dollars. In this, it is on the side of the bad guys.
DD knows the line about capitalists willing to sell one the rope you’ll hang them with. But really now …
Chinese users of YouTube were drawn to things that mentioned Wendi Deng, Rupert Murdoch’s wife, nemesis of Brit “comedian” Jonnie Marbles.
So, on a lark I decided to see how the lyrics translated using Google. The second copy is the result pasted back into the translation service, for comparative purpose with the original. Which you can hear.
This is the story of Jonnie Pantywaist, he really messed up
He prepared a shaving cream pie, he tried to throw it away
Beat a girl, it was Jonnie Pantywaist (Oof, not quite.)
Can not even play for the elderly, the girl stopped him cold
This is Jonnie Pantywaist, which is Jonnie Pantywaist
Jonnie really screw up the news, he completely messed up
He was ready to twitter tweet
But the police took him to the shitter right
Can not even play for the elderly, the girl stopped him cold
Made us feel that the British are cowards, we feel that the British are cowards
Hear the big story Jonnie Pantywaist
Shaving cream pie he really ace, it ended up back in his face
Jonnie Pantywaist have a plan, but he is a clumsy man
He beat by a girl
This is Jonnie Pantywaist, which is Jonnie Pantywaist
Some readers may recall my continued posts about American classic rock electric guitar making being offshored to China. This was part of a decade long migration aimed at taking advantage of cheap overseas labor while trying to preserve a high end customer base for much more expensive custom-shop guitars made domestically.
Fender and Gibson, the two most iconic American guitar companies, moved manufacturing to China. Indeed, the Gibson website brags, if you dig deep enough, about how it trained Chinese laborers to make cheaper Gibson models under the brand name Epiphone. One company employee indicated that there was just about no difference between its manufacturing facilities in China and its domestic manufacturing in Nashville.
Counterfeiting has been an obvious problem for the US guitar industry. The pictures here show the result of the outsourcing devil’s bargain. An inability to control abuse, flagrantly shown through advertising on prime Internet real estate provided in the US — the Washington Post.
Idly browsing the Washington Post today, DD was reading an opinion piece on Obama being no FDR when a big ad at the top of the page caught my eye. It was for cheap guitars sold off TradeTang. And they all looked like Gibsons. The pictures in the ad were cleverly cropped, however, to avoid … discerning eyes. (Most specifically, the sales pages stay away from presenting clear and complete front photos of the headstocks. There is simply no legitimate reason for that.)
And here’s an image of a “Les Paul” for sale. Note that it is clearly marked “Made in USA” and has, although laymen might not recognize it, the iconic Gibson headstock.
Licensed Chinese made Gibson Les Pauls are branded Epiphones and do not have the same headstock as those made in Nashville.
They also don’t say “Made in USA” or have a serial numbering scheme seemingly aimed at making them look like American-made Gibsons.
The link for the larger shot shows prices for Les Pauls that are complete frauds unless you know you’re purchasing knock-offs. You can’t buy these instruments new for $280 – $300 plus dollars in the States. Many of them sell for ten times those amounts although some rock bottom end models go for around one thousand.
Here’s another example of some kind of fraud using the Gibson brand, either in the photograph, what’s being presented, or what’s being sold:
Larger shot, again, here. Whatever it is, it looks like a mess to me. It’s a Les Paul headstock but with tuners I see more commonly on offshored Epiphones and the front view is not presented. Which is a bit of a giveaway.
Here’s the pricing for the same advertised instrument, again indicating a misuse of the Gibson brand of some kind:
