101–110 of 137 posts
The reason Fender won in Germany was because the Chinese defendant did not show up. Thomann on the other hand will show up, is significantly larger than Fender and is no stranger to lawsuits.
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I think Fender are idiots for doing this but I also wonder why companies copy the body style so slavishly. You would think makers of musical instruments would be a little more creative themselves.
It's a pretty restrictive design space. The Stratocaster shape is based on the centuries-old shape of acoustic guitars. The lower dip of the "hip" of the guitar shape serves a practical purpose, in allowing it to rest on your leg when playing seated. The upper dip mirrors the lower hip aesthetically and removes weight. The cutaways in the upper bout allows you to access the higher frets. At that point there's not a w…
Spanish Guitar -> Dreadnoughts with Cutaway -> Flat Solid-body Telecaster -> Flat Precision/Telecaster Bass -> Contoured Stratocaster
The asymmetric body shape was a very clever design out of necessity, as the long-scale Precision bass needed a longer horn at the top in order to avoid neck dive.
Interestingly, the only trademarked part of the Stratocaster, the neck shape, was copied from a Bigsby model, which is based on a Violin Scroll Shape.
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> So why not license the shape then? Because - until it makes its way through the courts - it’s not established that Fender has the rights to claim ownership of on the shape in the first place. In the US, there’s three routes for that - design patent, trade dress and artistic copyright. AFAIK they don’t have a design patent. Trade dress is hard to prove association - would most people on the street say “yep, that’s 1…
There’s a story, possibly apocryphal, that the first electric guitar demo was a bunch of strings nailed to some basic lumber and it received a negative reception. The designer went home, tore apart his acoustic guitar and mounted the electronics inside. The sound was not changed by this. The critical reception however was much improved. And the rest is history. The shape might not be purely functional—and that seems…
https://guitar.com/features/opinion-analysis/how-les-pauls-l...
Thomann has their own brand "Harley Benton" with a lot of Strat models. Also Telecasters. Will they be sued as well?
Fender doesn’t even make the best strat and so overpriced, but I guess it’s subjective.
The body has literally 0 effect on the sound of an electric guitar. Only the pickups matter. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n02tImce3AE
Hundreds of famous artists are deeply attached to the sonic attributes of their favorite guitars. Are they wrong?
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I am with you. I believe this is a matter of degree vs kind. Can you see how there are truly many instruments which deliberately mimic details of the Fender designs, and not the broad solid-body guitar design principles? I brought this up in the earlier post: I think the difference is most clear when looking at companies that have both their own designs, and Fender-style designs. Cosmetic and arbitrary features are m…
When I first read this, I thought Fender was after anything S-shaped, like the superstrats that makes Ibanez. Then I went to some of the makers, like LSL, and they are making not just strato-shaped guitars but almost exact copies including the same style brigde-vibrato (when everyone is building with Evertune or Floyd), the same single coil pickups, the same knobs, the same cable socket in the front, same pickguard,…
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In terms of ergonomics, resonance and so on, there's not many terribly optimal solidbody electronic guitar shapes that deviate from the Les Paul/Strat/Tele trinity. Explorers, Flying Vs and the like are basically genre-oddities for aesthetics. Guitars are not about aesthetics, otherwise Fender wouldn't have marques like Squier or ranges like Highway One to differentiate their low-quality tiers.
If guitars were about ergonomics, technology, and sound they would be copying strandbergs! These vintage designs are all about nostalgia and looks. Anyway Bo Diddley demonstrated the most optimal body shape for holding electronics. :)
This argument wins, fair and square
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Leo Fender could have protected the body design just like he did with the headstock, but he didn't. Pursuing this now, especially against a small maker, feels hostile and could backfire on them. I hope it does.
Leo also copied his own designs later on after he sold Fender and started other guitar companies. For example the G&L ASAT looks pretty much exactly like a Fender Telecaster.