Sorry, but you have it all wrong. People here in the states are buying these things thinking they're buying the real thing.jreising326 wrote: ↑Sun Feb 06, 2022 8:21 pmHi Darren,
While I was awaiting the arrival of the guitar I saw this one on Reverb, and you can see "Fishman" on the bridge in the photo in the link at the bottom. There is also a Youtube video review, of the same exact guitar, Fishman Bridge. Go to the 1:00 mark and he confirms it came with the same Fishman Bridge. I'll post the links at the bottom for reference.
Now I found absolutely zero information on this particular guitar on the old Peavey Websites, and I did some considerable digging. I wasn't sure if it was older or newer than the ones without the belly cut. I've also not seen any other color than the Candy Apple Red of this guitar. It seems clear to have been made in China, not Korea. I'm pretty confident it's the last Generation EXP ACM Peavey made.
Since I titled this post "ACM Identification" I figure I should document what I've found so far, and what I suspect is most likely. I'm very familiar with how companies outsource to China Manufacturers of Electronics in general and have been to China to visit factories many times since 2002.
Most likely Peavey selected a Chinese Factory partner around 2008, during the economic downturn. They probably picked someone who was already building for someone else. Their own proprietary ACM design would have been so low of a volume build for the PCB, that they wouldn't be able to save any money by moving to China. That was the primary driver for decades that put pressure on companies to move manufacturing into China, it saved them lots of money if your built things in high volume. That's the attraction to the OEM, the manufacturer gets much better prices on components because they are buying in much higher volume, and the labor rates in China were dirt cheap.
The manufacturer likely was using, or perhaps even building the Fishman hardware. So it was a simple, plug-and-play off-the-shelf way to keep ACM in the Peavey Generation, which I would guess was a strong selling feature, at least as far as Peavey Marketing would consider.
Further, since there aren't many of these Candy Apple Red Generations out there, they probably didn't hit the cost targets, or perhaps the quality level to retain brand loyalty. Or maybe these China guitars were made to sell through retail market sellers like Walmart, Best Buy, etc., and were never handed off to Peavey Distributors or Dealers/Shops. So an early experiment for Peavey into China manufacturing?
I'm speculating quite a bit, but I bet I'm not too far off. Someone on these forums probably would know for sure.
People that buy these things buy them in bulk(you get a better price if you buy over 10), then they either post them on eBay or craigslist - or in some cases sell them to pawnshops - selling them as the real thing.
But they're not selling them at great low prices like you think they are, they're selling them for 10-20% off of what the used price, hoping to get a schmuck that thinks they're getting a killer deal, and they'll just hand over the cash without thinking it through.
So it's not about "Cheap Image Conscience Posers" buying these instruments, most people that buy these here in the states think they're getting the real thing, only to find out they got ripped off for a grand - or more in some cases.
There have already been hundreds of lawsuits against dealers buying bunches of these guitars, and selling them to people as the real thing. They're flooding the market, and it's getting harder to tell what's real and what's Chinese. It's a big problem.
(But there are people that buy these for a reason, mostly leftys... Ever tried to get a left-handed reverse headstock Gibson Firebird?)