Who really makes which guitars??

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soundchaser59

Reluctant Commander
Someone recently told me that guitars have something in common with cars. Saturn is a budget GM, Geo is a budget Ford, Isuzu is a budget Honda, etc....

Along those same lines, Squire is just the budget Fender, Epiphone is the budget Ovation, etc....??? Is this true? If so, what would be the budget Gibson? Or the budget Ibanez?? What other brands are made by Peavey or Rick? Are basses the same way?

Tell what you know about which brands belong together and are actually under the same "brand umbrella." Electric or acoustic....

Thanks! - SC
 
soundchaser59 said:
Someone recently told me that guitars have something in common with cars. Saturn is a budget GM, Geo is a budget Ford, Isuzu is a budget Honda, etc....

Along those same lines, Squire is just the budget Fender, Epiphone is the budget Ovation, etc....??? Is this true? If so, what would be the budget Gibson? Or the budget Ibanez?? What other brands are made by Peavey or Rick? Are basses the same way?

Tell what you know about which brands belong together and are actually under the same "brand umbrella." Electric or acoustic....

Thanks! - SC
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Actually Isuzu is GM. You will notice a lot of Isuzu/Chevy dealerships if you pay attention. ;)

Epiphone is a Gibson product....not Ovation. Ovation is just shit to start with. :P

Now for Ibanez, they have their own budget guitars but they still call them Ibanez.

Peavy is a mixed bag, and Rick....well they are still in business somehow...I'll have to get back to you on that. But they used to have a brand called "Electar". I have a old lap slide guitar of theirs from the 60's.
 
You're off on so many levels.

Saturn is a GM product, just like Cadillac, Buick, Chevy, or Pontiac is. It's not a 'budget' GM, it just is what it is.

Geo was another GM product, but really made by a number of manufacturers. Some models were Toyotas, and some were Isuzus, and I believe, there were others involved also. Some were made by the other company and just rebadged as Geo's, or Chevy's in some cases, others were actual joint ventures between companies.

Squire is the budget arm of Fender, but now they also have their own designs and operate somewhat independently.

The same with Epiphone and Gibson, Epi being the less expensive line.

There are a couple of Korean manufacturers that make a shitload of the less expensive brands, for those brands. Meaning Silvertone, or whoever, contracts them to make guitar X with these specs, and put their name on it.

Samick has the lions' share of this work, with Cort, I believe being a distant second. I could be wrong about that, there may be some other manufacturers in the mix there.

Samick and Cort each also put out there own brand.

Hope that helps somewhat.
 
As far as manufacturing goes, I know that Samick makes a ton of other brands' guitars. The ones I can find are ESP, Washburn, Schecter, Westone, and Ibanez. But I don't think that they're a parent company like Gibson is to Epi or Fender is to Squier.
 
Did you mean Electra?

Outlaws said:
Actually Isuzu is GM. You will notice a lot of Isuzu/Chevy dealerships if you pay attention. ;)

Epiphone is a Gibson product....not Ovation. Ovation is just shit to start with. :P

Now for Ibanez, they have their own budget guitars but they still call them Ibanez.

Peavy is a mixed bag, and Rick....well they are still in business somehow...I'll have to get back to you on that. But they used to have a brand called "Electar". I have a old lap slide guitar of theirs from the 60's.
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because I think that was someone else, not Rick, because I thought Rick (along with everyone else) sued them for their copies. Really good guitars, though.
 
Cardioidpotent said:
because I think that was someone else, not Rick, because I thought Rick (along with everyone else) sued them for their copies. Really good guitars, though.
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It was Electar or Electro. I forget. I haven't played it in a while.
 
Electro

I have a guitar book around the house somewhere and it said Electro was a cheaper version of Rick, it had a thinner less buffed up finish and hardware wasn't as good as Rick was, but it was made by Rickenbacker company.
 
Actually, Applause is the budget arm of Ovation. It's weird, though. I sure as hell wouldn't pay a grand for a higher end Ovation, but Applause builds a perfectly good $150 guitar for sitting around the campfire, where the Taylor will not be found. Sigma is the budget arm of Martin. Fender actually really comes in 3 levels: The American and Japanese top of the line, The Made in Mexico middle of the road, with Highway 1 being just a little better, and the bottom of the line, the Chinese Squier bullet.
In my experience, Samick can build a guitar as good or as bad as anyone wants to pay them to build. Some of the Samick Epis are pretty damn good guitars. What I find interesting is that while the humbuckers in pretty much all Samick Epiphones suck and need to be replaced, their P-90's are pretty good. I'm assuming different sources are involved.
 
Outlaws said:
Actually Isuzu is GM. You will notice a lot of Isuzu/Chevy dealerships if you pay attention. ;)

Epiphone is a Gibson product....not Ovation. Ovation is just shit to start with. :P

Now for Ibanez, they have their own budget guitars but they still call them Ibanez.

Peavy is a mixed bag, and Rick....well they are still in business somehow...I'll have to get back to you on that. But they used to have a brand called "Electar". I have a old lap slide guitar of theirs from the 60's.
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the epihpone thing is true, but ovation is not shit.
 
cubanorocker316 said:
the epihpone thing is true, but ovation is not shit.
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Right, forgive me. Its plastic so its a perfect toddler guitar.
 
Don't forget Takamine and Jasmine.


And yes...Ovations really suck.
 
Yeah, the Epoch is Gibson's version of a Chinese Squier. And some Ovations aren't really bad stage guitars, but wood simply makes a better sounding guitar than plastic. The jury is still out on carbon fiber. A Rain Song isn't really a bad axe. When compared to a Huss and Dalton, an old Martin, a Froggy Bottom, a top of the line Taylor, an Ovation *is* shit. More importantly, when a higher end Ovation is compared to a Zager, a Breedlove, Guild, or other comparably priced guitar, ($800 or so), Ovation loses big time, just for playing in a room, for recording, or for stage. When you get down into the cheap models, $300 or less, the Ovation begins to look better, because it *is* cheaper to build a guitar out of plastic than wood, so you can spend more money on the neck. When a $300 Ovation is compared to a $300 Epiphone, Yamaha, Washburn, Fender, Seagull, Takamine, etc., it starts to become more a matter of preference. Many cheap acoustics are laminated, essentially built out of plywood. Not all of them. At that point, they all sound pretty weak, so the guitar with the best neck, action, and intonation wins, because at least you can play it. As I said, for sitting up on top of a mountain picking around a fire, an Applause isn't a bad choice. Everybody needs a cheap guitar for camping, motorcycling, or whatever, where the badass axe is just not expendable enough.-Richie
 
hey isn't rogue like the budget budget line of fender and the new kramers the budget budget line of gibson?
 
Somewhere.. dunno where and when, somebody said that Apollo guitars were made by Ibanez's branch. Not sure about that rumor. Anybody knows about that?
 
You guys forgot Lyon, thats Washburn's economy line of guitars.
 
Dani Pace said:
You guys forgot Lyon, thats Washburn's economy line of guitars.
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I've never heard of Lyon, but Oscar Schmidt is an economy line from Washburn.
 
Thanks for all the info, people.....

All these months I've been saving money for new monitors, and now I am taking a hit to the kidneys because every where I go everybody says my Ovation is a huge P - O - S!

I guess when I got it 15 years ago it sounded a lot better than the one I had.......which was none. It sounds better than what my friends have, but none of them are really serious so none of them have Martins. But I knew nothing about guitars when I got it (except how to play), and I've spent the last 15 years trying to understand what makes good electric tone.

Darn it.....now I have to choose between new Event monitors and new Weber speakers next month, or saving money for 3 more years to get a Martin......
 
While I'm not an Ovation fan, I have noticed that people tend to use them for gigging for a couple reasons -- one, they sound better plugged in than they do as acoustic instruments (kind of like Taks IMHO) and two, they are quite consistent from unit to unit (the benefit of plastic) so that if your guitar gets stolen or breaks, you can get another one pretty much anywhere and it will play and sound the same.
 
Cardioidpotent said:
Squire is the budget arm of Fender.
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Squiers are not built by FMIC, but are contract builds for FMIC.
Samick has the lions' share of this work, with Cort, I believe being a distant second.
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That's Cor-Tek. "Cort" is Cor-Tek's in-house brand. Cor-Tek makes lots of contract FMIC guitars, as well as for many other brands. Kasuga is also making Fenders, I understand, since Fuji-Gen Gakki stopped.

I don't know how the market share works out any more. The giant Samick has ceased Korean production for some time now and most import instruments are from China, Indonesia or elsewhere. I am unclear if these are new Samick plants or not. Cor-Tek is still producing in Korea.
 
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