IBANEZ RULES!! - IBANEZ FAKES

NEW USED PARTS ORDERING PAYMENT SHIPPING WARRANTY RETURNS

TECH RESOURCES GALLERY WANTED LINKS NEWS EBAY FAKES

HOME NAMM FEEDBACK TESTIMONIALS CONTACT EMAIL

FAKES

The proliferation of fake guitars being sold today has prompted me to give them their own page. These largely Chinese made fake Ibanez are what prompted Ibanez to release substandard guitars like the JEM333 and PGM3 at price points to compete with these fakes.

Many of these auction are valid auctions and you may ask how can they afford to sell a guitar for 10 cents and I've seen a few close that low. Check the shipping rates. Largely targeted to the UK market, 288 pounds for EMS or 188 pounds for "surface" is actually 2-3 times the actual cost of shipping and include the built in profit margin for the fake guitar. After you take into consideration how cheap it is to have a guitar built in China it will all make sense.

In addition to these purely dishonest sellers that claim to be selling real Ibanez but deliver fakes, are the massive amounts of con auctions based around these guitars. Quite simply if you're bidding on any auction from China you're just begging to get screwed in one way or another. I have seen some real Ibanez Artcore Chinese auctions because those guitars are cheap and are Chinese made, and again, the shipping is where you are paying for the guitar. You're MUCH better off buying from your local dealer where you have warranty coverage to protect you from the inherent problems found in the grade of guitars these are.

Complicating the whole mess is many of these fakes have been imported by honest and dishonest sellers, and some who are honest but as dumb as rocks and think they're actually selling something real. Many to most of these have fake "Made In Korea" markings and serial numbers starting with C so you might actually think it's really made by Cort, but there is no mistake they are being made in China. Hopefully I can get enough examples shown to cover everything that's made.

The guitars themselves are clearly bogus to all but the inept as they're more a caricature of a real Ibanez than anything, but some of the intentional poor quality pictures can blur the reality. If in doubt all you need to do is study the details and the facts will reveal themselves. Here are some examples of these fakes.

Ibanez Japan has made a public service announcement which amounts to little more than notice that fakes exist and that there are a lot of them on "auction sites". Here.

JEM7VWH - Authentic, Team J Craft version which have the Edge Pro trem, the most commonly faked VWH's today. You will see a pregression of stickers added to the back of the headstock since the first TJC branding in 2005, adding complience stickers for Euro distribution. The proof is not in the stickers, but in all the details of the guitar, the hardware, screw locations, everything! The fakes are getting much closer, especially when trying to judge by bad pictures, but there is always something out of place. Don't stop until you find it.

Bank of pics.

JEM7VWH