I Bought a SUHR Modern Pro! - Just One Problem...It's a FAKE

well here it is you guys my brand new sir modern plus and isn't she a beauty look at the top on this thing the exposed binding well there's just one problem this is a [Music] forgery [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] wow welcome back to the channel you guys i hope you're having a great day today yep we've got a forgery in our midst today uh this is my brand new sir modern pro we're going to talk about what makes this a good forgery that could actually fool people what makes it a bad forgery how you guys can protect yourself and i'd like to do a tear down i plugged this thing in it actually sounds pretty good i'm curious what kind of pickups they used and that kind of stuff so i think we'll do a tear down that should expose everything uh let's get into it so how exactly did i end up with a fake sur guitar well when i saw it posted on my local classifieds i knew i needed to take this off the market right away and the reason for that was because the seller was honest when i talked to him he's like this guitar was not made in the usa it was made in korea and it is not an official sir guitar at that point i was like okay i'll take it because you know the next person who gets it from him might not be so honest and when you look at the price of a sir modern i'll put up a graphic right here they start like around 3 000 us dollars and go like way up from there so you know if somebody posted this for like eighteen hundred dollars and it was normally thirty five hundred bucks four thousand bucks whatever it is i'd go take a look at that that's a good deal and so yeah when i saw it i was like nope let's just get this thing off the market and take a closer look all right so let's start by looking at what makes this a really good forgery that could actually fool people then we're gonna flip it on its head and show you guys some areas to look out for to protect yourself especially if you're buying high-end guitars on the used market number one this guitar has the official sir headstock shape with the official sir logo on the back side it's stamped made in the usa in the same spot that sir guitar puts theirs with a serial number in the same location that sir puts theirs on the headstock we've got a set of locking grover tuning machines these aren't the kind with the tightening wheels on the back they have that internal cam mechanism i've used them before really nice high-end locking tuners so so far we've got no clue that this is not a real sir when we look at the nut it looks great looks like somebody who knew what they were doing you know put this in when we look at the neck the profile on the back beautiful one piece mahogany neck feels really nice on the front face the rosewood looks really good even the abalone dot inlays every single one of them is bright and vibrant and shiny i mean this looks so far like a really nice high-end guitar then we look at the body shape it's correct we look at the spacing between the controls and the three-way switch it looks really close you know the carve the exposed binding the little you know forearm contour there tummy cut even the the shape of the the contour on the the heel looks like a sir the way it's attached looks like a sir you know even this little contour here that you find on all sur guitars the plastics everything looks in the right place even the black locking tuners it comes with a wilkinson trim with the bar and the set screw so so far everything seems you know pretty high end and of course the finish work is good this is an older guitar so there's some swirling from when you know the guy was playing it but you know overall really nice even the way um you know the two parts of the quilted maple meet it's dead center on the tram three on one side three on the other dead center you know on the pickup so it's not a sloppy job and you know when it comes to korean-made guitars i've said they're the new japan they're putting out fantastic guitars now i have no idea what year this was made but it was not made carelessly now if jon sur ever sees this video he'd probably be like daryl i could spot this piece of crap a mile away i did not make that but for the average person myself included it's a really nice guitar i mean it even plays nice you know not a hint of choking even on the highest frets you know plays great up high plays great down low so how is a person to know well let's find out now before we tear this sucker down and find out what's what let's quickly go through a few things that you guys can do to help yourself from ending up in this situation being sick to your stomach having you know found out that you just spent a lot of money on a you know fraudulent guitar number one no documentation if it doesn't have a certificate of authenticity that can be a flag most high-end brands will include it in the case now of course the person could lie about you know removing it and losing it or whatever but if it doesn't have it that's part of you know a part of a flag number two no hard shell case most high-end guitars have a case with branding on it whether it's you know i have a couple music men they say music man like right embossed into the case of course gibson branded or like the fender tweed cases you know something sometimes it just feels right you're like this is the case that goes with the guitar if you know something like this a high-end sir comes in a ratty gig bag that's a flag number three uh same kind of thing no case candy no strap no cable no documents uh telling how to care for the guitar that's kind of like all with the documents but again that kind of builds the case do some quick research head to the official website even take some screenshots right headstock front and back body front and back right just to give you some information because you know i'm not really familiar with sewer guitars so i'm a prime candidate to buy one that isn't real right so do some research uh take some screenshots so that when you have it in hand you can quickly just look right it's a good thing to do um have there been any after-market mods if you're talking to the guy and getting to know them and they're like oh yeah i changed the pickups here i did this and that uh that's again a big flag if you spend 3 500 bucks 4 000 bucks on a guitar you're very unlikely to mod it you know if it's an epiphone or squire that's more likely but on something like this that's a flag um what else do we got here are there problems when you play it when you pick up the guitar and play it does it feel like a high-end guitar now the guy you know when i was getting this sir he was like it won't hold tune and i'm like that's weird for us sir right and it's a problem and he's like i don't want a tram guitar anymore and when we tear this down i'm going to show you guys why that problem is and why he couldn't keep it in tune but anyway uh yeah that's again if the guy's you know more honest or when you pick it up and play it and you're like oh there's like seems like fret buzz or high fret or you know this thing won't hold tune or whatever huge flag um examine the small details that's what we're going to do in a second but i'll show you guys a few areas to look when you just pick it up and you're not sure okay and if it's too good to be true it is trust your gut if some of these things are off and you're like it's kind of adding up i don't quite feel comfortable don't feel pressured to buy it if it's too good to be true it probably is all right you guys i've got the guitar on the desk i'm calling this project no sir very clever i know okay so anyway anybody who's played a sir or knows about them which is not me i would immediately be able to tell from the headstock that this is not a sir guitar number one sir guitars do not have string trees i just had to you know look this stuff up and do some basic research because of the staggered tuning machine heights and the way the headstock breaks off the angle here there's enough downward force in the nut you do not need them so to see them on a guitar like this is an immediate flag you know why do you have two string trees on a sir headstock it just doesn't fit number two sirs come with sir branded locking tuning machines now these are grovers and they're very high end they're very great tuning machines i'm pretty sure they're over 100 bucks but they're not the right ones again so you're looking at this and you're thinking about okay well why did you mod this why did you mod this so a couple flags right away next up as i mentioned look at the small details so obviously i have the strings off here but look at the truss rod cover you know that does not look like the quality you would expect on a three thousand dollar guitar and uh i'm pretty sure john sur is like yeah that would not pass quality control don't worry john we'll be taking that off the headstock here so anyway uh so that's a few red flags now as to why this guitar did not hold tune as i mentioned the guy who's who i got it from was like yeah i'm not gonna have a tram guitar ever again but there's a reason for that and i think we'll be able to make it work so anyway here's third string which is always a troubling string to keep in tune as it is and hopefully you guys can see here uh it binds and so do some of the other strings uh terribly in that nut so to the point where i i have to literally like yank it out like that i don't know if you guys will be able to see or hear that but it binds so bad oh man so anyway the nut was not cut properly for this string gauge and it just feels like 10 so i don't know what it was cut for but anyway yeah you literally have to yank it up so there's no way uh the wilkinson was going to keep that in tune so we're going to have to widen these nut slots a bit if we wanted to hold tune now looking on the back side again i just had to do all this research because i don't know anything about sir guitars but made in the usa certainly not and it is in the same spot where sir puts theirs but it's usually in much smaller print and right down in the corner so again it's close but not exact and i have no idea if this is like an authentic sir you know serial number or not but i did notice this the made in the usa is usually much smaller and down in that corner and of course the sur branded locking tuners with the tightening wheels okay so there we go let's move on next up to my knowledge sur guitars have stainless steel frets and this definitely does not especially having played that blackjack just last week you can really tell the difference when you're bending or doing some vibrato i gotta say the fretwork on this guitar is very good as i mentioned it doesn't choke out anywhere plays great down low up high so i can't knock the fretwork but it doesn't seem right okay i can't put this off any longer i need to find out what pickups are in this guitar wouldn't that be hilarious if they were like sir pickups i just i wouldn't even know what to say if that happens so anyway as i mentioned these sound really good and there's a coil split which also sounded good so let's find out what's actually in here it's possible they're just unbranded but i gotta say they don't sound bad here we go let's pull this thing out okay it's actually shielded and stuff in here okay oh all right so we've got our spring i'll set that aside and here's the other one there's nothing i can see here oh oh it looks like tone emporium yeah dude look at that okay so these are tone emporium pickups circle with the neck okay so i believe these are not high-end pickups but they are well known that's cool let's check out the bridge this says the tone emporium i'm not sure let's see if i can get this off bridge and it looks like maybe a signature or model somebody who knows more about these pickups than i do maybe could uh could identify them but yeah so okay so we got a couple tone emporium pickups very cool now okay so let's get on to tuning issues now the other issue is with this wilkinson bridge and of course this is not something that you would ever see on a cert guitar but it's not quite the right size i'll see if i can maybe take a closer up picture for you guys but as you can see the one post is definitely located with this little crescent moon knife edge right here okay and then the other one is just a flat knife edge but the problem is this post hopefully you guys can see that doesn't sit in the center of that knife edge it actually sits right on the very extreme edge and where it comes up to the thicker part of the plate also contacts the post and that is the problem it just simply isn't the right width bridge for the posts and of course that is you know one of those small areas that you could look at you know just to verify now i think a situation like this would be rare where literally the tram isn't the right size for the posts but uh that with that really really binding nut uh there's no way you know this guitar was going to be staying in tune now along with the truss rod cover there's a couple other areas that you guys could check you know that might give you a hint that this might not be the real thing first of all right around how the neck joint is attached now here you know it's not too bad but there's a couple there where you can see the finish is just kind of you know oblong or it's been chipped off slightly again usually you would not see something like that pass on a very expensive guitar so check the truss rod cover check how the neck is attached now i gotta say the neck joint itself is actually super nice um you know in terms of how tight it fits in the pocket we'll take the whole neck off here in a second the second is the plastics now the plastics feel cheap that's i don't know if my camera will actually focus on this but they feel very very cheap and when you look here there's sort of gaps there where it's like sunk in another area that you can tell that this is not a sir is the cavity control cover is always countersunk so it's flush with the body um but the truss sorry the trim cover is always above the body now i'm not sure why john does that because i actually like both countersunk i think that's nice but when you look here yeah there's a few gaps there it feels a little cheap plastic you can actually you know see a little bit of the wood on either side here where the trim is attached so you know that kind of gives you a pretty you know big hint so definitely check you know how the neck is attached the plastics the truss rod cover as i mentioned and also here you know on the front it looks absolutely amazing but look at how the two pieces of body were spliced together they're totally different colors i'll take a couple shots of that too that's a huge you know sign as well as having sort of like a seam here on the top where the player you know sees it why is there a seam there right because a piece of wood has been laminated to make the full body so on the front face you never see that and it looks absolutely amazing and the burst uh yeah that fade is wonderful and the binding for most of it is wonderful but there you see that's not going to be flying on a high-end guitar right the rest of it you know looks super nice actually like it's really really beautiful there's some wear there from a strap obviously where this was definitely a guitar that was played right so it's just kind of worn there but you know it's all really nice until you hit right there so again that goes to looking at the small details don't just look at the front face look at the side look at the back okay so let's take some more parts of this guitar apart let's start by taking the neck off now i got to say when i look at these screws these are about 30 times beefier than what you actually you know would find on a fender or something so i cannot fault this neck joint really intense screw so that's great oh one of the ferrules kind of popping out here but yeah you can see on the inside they've got metal there so i think construction wise it's probably pretty good there we go okay let's see if we can get that neck joint off that is a nice tight fit let's flip it over and take a look let's just get that out of the way it's going to keep falling out okay so the neck comes right to form the front face of the cavity of the body as you guys can see there's you know nothing kind of separating that but the way it's cut is super straight as you guys can see and in terms of how it fits like really nice like i have to actually use legit force to get that in so anyway just because it's a forgery as i said with guitars made in korea they're actually really well made now of course this is you know horrible in every sense of the word because they are you know passing off something that isn't a sir as a sir and that's that's horrible but in terms of the construction stuff really nice okay so let's keep going here and take a look in the back cavities so here's a look inside the control cavity looks like we've got a b 500k full-size pot there and then of course this is your coil split right there and i'm going to say it actually feels pretty good that coil split and then your three-way switch now it does not look like it's uh shielded in there and is this sandwich construction or is that just the routing hard to know i think it looks like a full thickness there's that line there though is that just the routing or is that a some sort of sandwich i mean you can't tell from the edge so i think it is probably you know a full-sized you know mahogany or whatever okay so let's take a look under here again the plastics don't feel terrible but you know not super high end okay so no surprises in here classic strat setup where you've got the the claw three springs and your ground wire that comes from from here to your bridge and this is a wilkinson trim so the block actually looks you know pretty nice there it is there's your um the bar adjustment and as you can see it's not floating so it's resting against the body and so it's only it's dive only at this point i might change that we'll see so there you guys go so that's kind of a look at the guitar itself now we just need to find out what to do with this thing so hopefully that gives you guys a little bit of insight into what a fake guitar can be some parts really good some parts really bad all of it horribly horribly illegal now that it's off the street and it's in my hands of course as i've mentioned the sur logo is gone including the back made in the usa and and all that stuff it's all going to be gone but now that it's in my hands what should i do with it should i destroy the guitar should i do a build project around it give me some ideas of what i should do with this guitar if you guys have you know something creative anyway drop it in the comment section below i'll read through those and see what we should do with it but anyway there you guys go that's my story of how i picked up you know a very very fake sur guitar i hope you guys enjoyed that if you have any questions about the guitar or anything drop them in the comment section below all my information tab store t-shirt store gear i use all in the video description below as well and i will not be linking to this guitar in the video description below uh yeah anyway give me some ideas of what i should do with this hope you guys enjoy this video have yourself a great day

Channel: Darrell Braun Guitar

Views: 427,012

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Id: 02H8NHKSPBw

Length: 20min 46sec (1246 seconds)

Published: Wed Dec 09 2020