About a custom guitars

[guitarnut1980]

I haven't been on here in (quite) a while, has there been any more slack given to whether you can get a guitar fairly similar to an artist you like? and would they do it if you got a permission from the artist? I mean it is kind of ridiculous because I kind of see it like this
(assuming I'm on a phone)
Me: I would like a strat body candy apple red finish, a fulcrum bridge and one EMG 85 pickup and a rosewood fingerboard
Jackson: Cant do it!
Me: Why not?
Jackson:Allan Holdsworth plays one
Me: no he doesn't he plays Carvin besides he hasn't played them in almost 30 years.
Jackson: Still cant do it
Me: Ok then can I get it with a DiMarzio then
Jackson: No, cause Vai had one similar, blardy blardy blar....
on and on
and that would suck

sorry about my rant any help with my question would be appreciated

[1neeto]

I haven't been on here in (quite) a while, has there been any more slack given to whether you can get a guitar fairly similar to an artist you like? and would they do it if you got a permission from the artist? I mean it is kind of ridiculous because I kind of see it like this
(assuming I'm on a phone)
Me: I would like a strat body candy apple red finish, a fulcrum bridge and one EMG 85 pickup and a rosewood fingerboard
Jackson: Cant do it!
Me: Why not?
Jackson:Allan Holdsworth plays one
Me: no he doesn't he plays Carvin besides he hasn't played them in almost 30 years.
Jackson: Still cant do it
Me: Ok then can I get it with a DiMarzio then
Jackson: No, cause Vai had one similar, blardy blardy blar....
on and on
and that would suck

sorry about my rant any help with my question would be appreciated

I'm sure any skilled master luthier can make you pretty much anything you want. My uncle is a master luthier and back in the mid 90's he made this:


It's a replica of this:


Steve Vai's flame guitar. He made this well over 15 years ago and never got in trouble for it.

[neilli]

Nobody is gonna give a damn about some guy making a one off replica of something, unless he's trying to pass it off as an original. And even then, just one probably wouldn't attract any attention...

FMIC policy is still that they won't make guitars that are artist replicas without permission from the artist.

However, if you send in specs for a custom order with absolutely no reference to the artist, you might be OK if it's either pretty generic or relatively low profile. Or, you can try to track down the artist to get their permission. Back in the day, they made me a TMNT Rhoads (Danny Spitz replica) and at that time, they'd still make artist guitars, but wouldn't do copyrighted graphics. So I tracked down the dude who owned the rights to the ninja turtles, he gave them written authorisation and they built it.

[straycat]

That red and black one(hacked Ibanez) looks nothing like Via's performance guitar so not a problem.

[RacerX]

blardy blardy blar....

[1neeto]

That red and black one(hacked Ibanez) looks nothing like Via's performance guitar so not a problem.

That is true. I should say inspired by instead of replica. Maybe he made it just different enough.