I bristle at statements like "...every guitar sent to Japan came at the expense of another market." We ship on a "first order received, first order shipped" basis. The Japanese placed their orders, secured their place in the queue, waited like everyone else, and eventually got their orders. Had someone else in any market ordered earlier, they would have gotten their order first. That being said, some very minor schedule adjustments have been made to maximize the size of the shipments for international customers, because there is a minimum economical shipment size that exists in foreign trade that doesn't exist in the domestic, single package oriented shipment model, such as UPS or FedEx.
The wording may have been inelegant, I’ll see if I can clean it up some. I guess my point is this: I have to assume that Japan’s significant increase in demand over the time period in question surely had to have had some encouragement from you, and, at a time when your backlog was quite large already, it had to come at an impact to other regions—even filling orders FIFO like you say. I mean, assuming I read it right, it still looks like a very smart move to me.
I have an Ibanez copy of the 4001—very good quality. I installed an EMG active preamp and a phase-reversal switch for one of the pickups, and it turned out excellent.
I’m curious about Kurokumo and copying Mosrite. They are all over EBay and Reverb. Great quality but, I’m not sure if Mosrite had some deal with them. Semie had passed by this point, so I don’t know. The Ventures were as big as the Beatles in Japan.
I bristle at statements like "...every guitar sent to Japan came at the expense of another market." We ship on a "first order received, first order shipped" basis. The Japanese placed their orders, secured their place in the queue, waited like everyone else, and eventually got their orders. Had someone else in any market ordered earlier, they would have gotten their order first. That being said, some very minor schedule adjustments have been made to maximize the size of the shipments for international customers, because there is a minimum economical shipment size that exists in foreign trade that doesn't exist in the domestic, single package oriented shipment model, such as UPS or FedEx.
The wording may have been inelegant, I’ll see if I can clean it up some. I guess my point is this: I have to assume that Japan’s significant increase in demand over the time period in question surely had to have had some encouragement from you, and, at a time when your backlog was quite large already, it had to come at an impact to other regions—even filling orders FIFO like you say. I mean, assuming I read it right, it still looks like a very smart move to me.
I have an Ibanez copy of the 4001—very good quality. I installed an EMG active preamp and a phase-reversal switch for one of the pickups, and it turned out excellent.
I owned one of the Greco Beatle basses that were equipped with Hofner pickups for a while. It was beautifully crafted,sounded great,
but I’ve never felt at home on short scale basses, so it got traded for a 67 Epiphone Embassy.
I came very close to buying a great sounding Japanese 4001 copy, but the owner had replaced the trc with a Rickenbacker one,
and was insisting the bass was the real deal. (Through ignorance, or avarice, I don’t know, but his price was way too high so I passed on it.)
John Hall was right about the company’s trc policy, in some ways….
I think Greco may have even made a Chris Squire bass at some point, too….(cream color with walnut headstock stringers).
I’m curious about Kurokumo and copying Mosrite. They are all over EBay and Reverb. Great quality but, I’m not sure if Mosrite had some deal with them. Semie had passed by this point, so I don’t know. The Ventures were as big as the Beatles in Japan.
The ownership or rights to the Mosrite brand has been through so many hands, god only knows the whole story!