Lawsuit Myths and Legends.

 

There is much hype about "Lawsuit" guitars and a lot of it is down to basic misunderstanding.

Back in the 60's the Japanese were producing some pretty inferior quality guitars and certainly not on a par with the American Giants such as Gibson. However in the 70's they started getting their act together and their direct copy guitars, whilst originaly cheap look alikes with bolt on necks, began to give the Americans a run for their money. By the mid to late 70's the better Japanese guitars were manufactured (in the Matsumoku factrory) to a higher quality of construction than the American giants who were rapidly loosing their reputation for quality control. For every nice 70's Gibson Les Paul there's half a dozen nasty ones.

So what were Gibson going to do about the ever increasing threat? Well, two things really. One was to start producing guitars in Japan !!! under the brand name Orville (produced in the same factory as Greco). The other was to try and put an end to their manufacture as a copyright. However the baisic Les Paul shape was not copyrighted so the best they could come up with was to use the "open book" headstock as a trademark.

So... Gibsons parent company (Norlin)* set out to take Elger (Hoshino) Ibanez American division to court. However the "lawsuit never actually came to anything and no one got sued, Ibanez relented. There are a few interesting and ironic things to note here. Firstly, by the time Gibson got round to issuing the lawsuit Ibanez had already changed their headstock anyway. Also Many of the Ibanez guitars in question had nasty bolt on necks (not very Gibson like)!

* Another point of note is that Gibsons parent company at the time, Norlin, were, amongst other things, a cement manufacturer!

So where does this leave Greco? After all their headstock is the most Gibson like of any of the Japanese guitars. Well I can only assume that because they were never exported into America (or elsewhere for that matter). They got ignored and for their part, ignored the Americans. Later Grecos do have a slightly changed inlay but on the whole are in flagrant violation of the trademark Gibson design. They were however never sued and as such technically not "Lawsuit" guitars despite being better copies than genuine "lawsuit" guitars.

One thing is for certain though. These Vintage guitars are superb copies and by far the most accurate out there.