Learning something new every day...

[Foolish Frost]

Such as Fender sold it's label for chinese mass production...

Saw a fender in a pawn shop, and thought, ah, something interesting...

Huh... fm52e...

Took me a glance to notice that it had no truss rod, was generally exactly like a $50 rogue, and was in poor shape to boot. They wanted $150, but was willing to go down to $125.

Riiiight.

I'm not an elitist. I'm really not. But I looked at it an thought, maybe $60 as a fixer upper. And I just didn't want to fix it.

I'm coming to the conclusion that brand names actually DO mean as little as I thought they did.

A year ago, I would not even know what a truss rod WAS. Let alone know why having one is generally a good idea to have for long term adjustment.

[Br1ck]

Haven't you seen the $500 Martin D 45s out there? Don't think Fender or Martin saw a penny.

[kurth83]

It's kinda sad too, because Chinese hand-made (still factory) brands are pretty good, Eastman, Loar, Kentucky.

I wonder if I would buy a Fender-branded Eastman? It's kinda weird to think about it.

[multidon]

I own a Fender branded octave mandolin. The had them made between about 2005-2008 or so I think. Made in Korea, not China. But a close duplicate of the Trinity College. That’s why I suspect they were made in the same factory as The TC when it was made in Korea. The date they started making them more or less coincides with the timing of TC priduction moving to China. And a pretty nice instrument, all in all, with some improvements over the TC.

Rest assured, Fender is not just selling their name. They are contracting with Chinese, Korean, and Indonesian factories to make those items for them. They appear in their catalogs and on their website while they are available for sale. Fender realizes, as does Gibson and Martin, that by far their most valuable property is their brand name. And rest assured Fender gets a nice slice of the pie every time one of those mandolins gets sold. But instruments like mandolins and banjos are strictly sidelined for them. Ukuleles used to be just s sideline too, but those turned out to be incredibly lucrative for them.

Fender acoustic instruments, including acoustic guitars, always suffered from the same disease that Martin electric guitars suffered from. They tried to step out of their comfort zone. Martin being famous for acoustics, and Fender as an electric pioneer. Gibson is one of the few companies that straddled both sides of that fence with great success.