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estebanana -> RE: Headstock Shape TRADEMARKED: more work for lawyers (Jun. 25 2011 17:08:21)
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There is an early Thomas Humphreys six string guitar in San Francisco that was made in the 1960's. The owner knew Humphreys and bought the guitar from him. Only one thing, the guy who bought it insisted that the guitar by made with a Martin style headstock.
I can't remember why the owner wanted it that way; he brought that guitar to a classical guitar society meeting a few years ago and passed it around and asked based on the headstock who made this guitar? Everyone, including me, just shrugged their shoulders. It was revealed that the owner, who was the original buyer back in the 60's, asked Humphreys to changes the headstock from the one he had been using, his own design, to a Martin headstock. He said Humpie (he called him that)got super pissed off and took the thing over to the band saw and sawed the "crown" off the headstock leaving it that simplistic Martin style dead end. ( Which if it were not so damned boring one could argue has a spare Shaker kind of elegance.)
Eventually says the owner of the chopped Humpie, Hump himself got over it, they were friends after all. But Humphreys did say to him one day that it really taught him a lesson in humility to have to cut of his signature vis a vis the headstock design which helps signify the authorship of a guitar. However the owner of the guitar said he wondered what he would have been like without him insisting that Humpie do the head chopping, mentioning that in his opinion he retained a fairly healthy ego about his guitar making.
Later I heard from Eugene Clark that he thought Thomas was a even keeled humble guy when reportedly Humphrey said to Clark: " The only reason I can work in this town (NYC) is because you moved to California." Evidently when Eugene left NY it created power vacuum in the guitar making ranks of the day. According to Mr. Hump he rushing to assume the seat. Or so it sits told, because can never trust on e of those egotist guitar makers to report on history from any other vantage point that their own. History really is simply 'his story' until lawyers get involved to try to parse out who's is history and who's is his story.
*No lawyers were harmed or given cause to invoice for billable hours due to the writing or content of this vignette.
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Personally I could give a rats arse if Fender or another large company gets copied.
"Boo hoo they stole my crappy headstock. I'm going to call my lawyer."
Fukkcign grow a pair. Or design something interesting. I have a friend who is an accomplished finger picker who is fond of saying: "Owning more than one Martin is like having a closet full of Brown wingtip shoes."
For some reason when he says that to me it makes me think of Imelda Marcos. She must have been quite the hot dish of lumpia back in the late 1950's. She was a singer before she met the future president Marcos and I often wonder if her mania for shoe collecting was born before or after they were married. I'm sure there must be a historian who has researched this topic. Somewhere in academia there is a guy or gal getting grant money to write a dissertation about the Shoe Collection of Imelda Marcos and its Effects on South East Asian Copyright Law.
I mean think about it, if you were living in a country where you could not afford as a matter of local economic conditions to purchase a real Martin guitar on your wages, or if your wife ( or you for that matter if you cross dress and play guitar) wanted a pair of Manolo Blahnik 'fukc me' pumps you would have ole' Imelda Marcos to thank for making popular many hundreds of styles of copies of those brands at affordable local prices. Really you have her to thank for looking the other way and ignoring US copyright law. Or at least she used her influence over Mr. Marcos to get him to allow these FauxMartins FakeManolos to be manufactured.
Imelda must have been a hot tamale when she was young. On another personal note, I think my fascination with the image of the younger Imelda imprinted on me and caused me to have an unusually strong desire to chase a certain Bay Area flamenco dancer who happens to be of Philippine heritage. Or perhaps I'm a shoe fetishist who specializes in flamenco shoes, which my dancer friend has a closet full of. But I'm quite sure that our stunning and beautiful dancer here ( l'm talking about her baile too, not just her feet and shoes.) only purchases real flamenco shoes from Spain.
There is after all a distinct difference between being Imelda and wanting to be like Imelda. And there is a lesson in there somewhere, but I decline to spell it out in an overt way. If Imelda owned only one pair of shoes you can bet it was an original brand pair, not a knock off. And one would like to think that Mr. Marcos, God rest his crooked soul, did not screw his people out of billions of dollars in vain. The horror, the horror to think he stuffed a Swiss bank account full of cash so that tweety sexy girl soprano Imelda would buy falsely authored foot wear.
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