Bert Recycled Guitars

If you want to work commercially, yes make it different. So you don't get nasty cease and desist notes from lawyers.

Ron, you are evidently right, ethically. However, during the few workshops i do for building (ah well ,putting together) eguitars i use those cheapo kits with paddle shape headstocks. most customers really appreciate if the headstock has the correct st or t shape.. Easily done with an electric file. The result is something that has a headstock similar to the real thing, but there it stops. The rest of those guitars are so clearly not the real thing that i believe that is not a problem. When some apply decals i always tell them to take the wrong decal for the type and age of the guitar - but i agree that is shakey to say the least. anyway thanks for your comment.

As long as you build guitars for fun, the shape etc. is of no concern to anybody. if you want to sell a selfconstructed guitar privately or otherwise it becomes a bit more complex. for example the headstock shape of strats is copyrighted, but even then if its a one off nobody cares. if however you do it commercially then certain shapes, and definitely the logos and names are copyrighted. Fender takes tthis quite far upto e.g. abbreviations like pbass and so on. in practice however its a hazy area. If you look at aliexpress there are hundrds of chinese brands that are exact lookalikes of the strats, teles and lespaul.. - apart from the fender and gibson logos, thats an absolute nogo. i would say that if you make some modifications but dont use gretsch, gibson or whatever logos you are quite safe. any of these sellers globally sell lookalikes but call it st or t or lp style, so the custor knows what he gets. unless you are a very big seller they are probably not interested. does that help?

I've build a few Strats from standard Fender and Squier components (Frankies). Recently on two guitars (different necks) i hit an annoying problem. The harmonic (flageolet) at postion 5 of E6 doesnt give any useful tone. Harmonics at position 5 of the other strings are ok. I've been puzzling whether it could be the strings (d'Addario), or a dead point in the natural resonance of the neck/body combination, or what .... Would appreciate any suggestions. Have fun

Yep, had the same feeling about using 'Fender' in the title and will definitely take that out. Will do some more research on the use of the word Stratocaster. Technically you're probably right. However, many people use that word to indicate a model of sorts. Much like the world used to talke about 'Hoover' meaning a vacuum cleaner. Also i - when building a Frankenstein Strat - am inclined not to remove the decal from a fairly expensive original 'Fender neck', which is one could extrapolate from your view. Eric's Blackie still had the original logo's and was called a Fender Stratocaster still , but as you said , technically its not a 'Fender"guitar anymore. Describing how to put one together its fairly impossible to avoid using the word Stratocaster (or Telecaster, Precsion whatever). So although i fear you are basically right, i have a feeling that this is not a black and white issue. After all i am writing 'about' Stratocaster. Your view is helpful and much appreciated, have fun, Bert Well, look at every 'knock off' manufacturer's product, and you'll find that none of them call it a stratocaster. They might say 'SC' model, or 'doublcut' or something similar, but none will use strat, or stratocaster. You or I will, when talking about those guitars, as will reviewers, as will authors of books about various kinds of guitars, but the manufacturers themselves won't. Only those selling licensed parts can and do. You shouldn't have a problem using the words 'strat' or 'tele' in a descriptive sense, in a book, but I'd be quite wary of their use in the title of a book. That's more likely to attract attention. Tks, this was very helpful. Food for thought. have fun!

Yep, had the same feeling about using 'Fender' in the title and will definitely take that out. Will do some more research on the use of the word Stratocaster. Technically you're probably right. However, many people use that word to indicate a model of sorts. Much like the world used to talke about 'Hoover' meaning a vacuum cleaner. Also i - when building a Frankenstein Strat - am inclined not to remove the decal from a fairly expensive original 'Fender neck', which is one could extrapolate from your view. Eric's Blackie still had the original logo's and was called a Fender Stratocaster still , but as you said , technically its not a 'Fender"guitar anymore. Describing how to put one together its fairly impossible to avoid using the word Stratocaster (or Telecaster, Precsion whatever). So although i fear you are basically right, i have a feeling that this is not a black and white issue. After all i am writing 'about' Stratocaster. Your view is helpful and much appreciated, have fun, Bert

you are correct when building a guitar. However, this is about a book describing how to build Frankenstein Fender Strats for the beginner. If you start this, you can of course opt to find all Fender components, or make a mix and match of different origins. The point is that the title of the book is "How to build your first Frankenstein Fender Stratocaster" and i was wondering if Fender - in this case - could get pissed off about that. Well maybe they would - people building their own guitars is not in their direct interest - but could they legally do something about it? I know, hairy question, have fun Bert

Hi all there. I'm new to this forum - which btw is great! So apology for any protocl errors. As newbie i didnt want to raise a new topic so here is question as reply in context of the legalities issue. After 35 years of playing on and off and occasionally building a guitar, i've written a book "How to build your first Frankenstein Fender Stratocaster". Intended for the absolute beginner who's never done it before, and based on using standard, ready made but off the street components (so no woodworking). It starts selling reasonably well via Ebay and m2m, so i'm a the stage now where i'm worried that that name Fender in the title of my book might violate any copyright or ownership issues (even if i clearly refer the use of the name to FMIC). Any idea if i should take 'Fender'out of the title for safety reasons?