Rickresource Rickenbacker Forum

I've been chumped. Blindsided. A member of another Forum posted a thread seeking help for his Rickenbacker restoration. I PMd him, offering help. He requested sources for checkerboard binding and crushed pearl. I gladly shared with him.

Now, he's gone and built a counterfeit, and admits he lied about the restoration story. I'm embarrassed, angry, and I feel betrayed.

To post thread links here would be against RRF rules. But I did need to vent. The forum is called offsetguitars.com

Paul:

All you can do is deal with people in good faith and hope that you are treated as you would like tp be treated yourself...

I looked at the other thread on the forum. Sad that folks feel the need to steal others intellectual property = especially to create a guitar that (other then the CB) is still in production today...

Paul,
That was a dastardly thing this clown did. Don't be so hard on yourself. You helped him out in good faith and you had no way of knowing it wasn't a restoration.

jingle_jangle wrote:Now, he's gone and built a counterfeit, and admits he lied about the restoration story. I'm embarrassed, angry, and I feel betrayed.

I think it's natural to be angry about the whole thing. You shouldn't hold yourself responsible for what he did, though. He clearly wanted it bad enough to make up a story and he would have gotten it on his own eventually.

edit: Just reading over that thread... he seemed pretty clear from the start that it wasen't a restoration. Unless he went back and edited his posts? I also notice that he's in Sweden, does Rick have trademark and patent enforcement there?

Boo! Hiss! (on him)

No biggie, Paul. If he had done some research, he could've found the same resources. It's almost common knowledge for Rickenbacker enthusiasts. Not your fault. You can not, I dare say, .....control the world.

jwilli wrote:No biggie, Paul. If he had done some research, he could've found the same resources. It's almost common knowledge for Rickenbacker enthusiasts. Not your fault. You can not, I dare say, .....control the world.

+1 don't sweat it, a little more time with google and he could have answered those questions.

You can only trust that kind of stuff at face-value. You distribute the knowledge, regardless of the intended outcome, and hope it's with the best intentions.

Just read through the thread in question. What surprises me is the mean-spirited reaction of the other posters, sad.

I'd rather be nice to one xxxx-head than mean to everyone else... you did the correct thing - trying to help. Now if you help this guy again then there might be some room for inter cranial examination...but hey get mad and then get over it. Don't let one azz bring you down.

ram wrote:but hey get mad

Looking at the first post of the relevant thread, where he says, here's how it looks at the moment:

And then shows a photo of just an R tailpiece. Then he has a ninja face and a smiley face, and it's (somewhat)clear in retrospect that he would be building a new guitar around this tailpiece. Obviously some people didn't get "the joke", and I don't know if he told you otherwise privately, Paul. It's disappointing to be lied to, but it seems like it might have been a misunderstanding. Clearly you would never knowingly help with a replica guitar. And as others have said, you didn't open pandoras box for him... even a search for checkered binding here on the RRF brings up a post of yours with a link to the source in Germany. So bottom line, you may feel betrayed but don't feel bad otherwise, because I don't think you have facilitated this or helped it. Keep being the great, generous guy you've always been!

I'm glad he's proud of himself. Now he just needs to find the nearest woodchipper to throw that piece of junk into

Thanks for the encouragement, guys...

Jwilli: Thanks for the words to live by.

I've gone back and re-read the first page of the thread. I interpreted the tailpiece shot as a sort of teaser, and did not pick up on the possibility that he was going to build a counterfeit.

The builder and I had a couple of emails back and forth, and at no time did he say anything about building anything. He was careful to avoid the topic. He's a smart and very talented guy. The mean-spirited stuff can be expected...it's a Forum of mostly younger router jockeys, and many of them are very good at bolt-on neck stuff. Great source of info and reactionary spirit, which overflows into a generally rollicking nature.

If the whole topic of IP causes the issues that it does on this Forum, you can imagine the deaf ears it falls upon in a Fender builders' forum, where everybody is busy making (legal) copies of Fender and other offsets. So, I take the lumps, lock it up, and move on.