Homer J. Simpson
Well-known member
...and I thought maybe someone educated in the history of Greco would find it entertaining to watch me trying to confuse myself with old Grecos and maybe you feel like educating me a little on this?
This was kicked off in another thread where I was led to ask myself "who owns the Greco brand?". That was easy to answer, and then it wasn't - I always thought that's Kanda Shokai's brand but then I saw some things in the trademark registration history that were a bit odd:
- The only trademark Kanda Shokai had applied for was "K.Greco" in 1967. I've never seen that label out in the wild so far, and Kanda has registered more than 60 trademarks before and after that, all on their own behalf, with 2 odd exceptions:
- The "Gneco" logo was submitted for registration Dec. 13th, 1971 by Fuji Gen Gakki K.K.
- The "Greco" logo was applied for registration only on April 5th, 1977 (seemingly 2 years after it started appearing on headstocks), again by Fujigen.
- The rights holder for both registrations is (now?) Kanda Shokai. Both are still "live" registrations BTW and there is an entry in the history that looks like this:
移転登録済通知書 2012/08/03
"Transfer registration notice" - could that mean the rights were transferred in 2012, or something else? Reading a bit into the JPO procedures, the word "transfer" seems to mean what it looks like?
Unfortunately the Japanese trademark register only has the latest version of each registration dataset stored and doesn't give access to the actual documents , so I cannot see previous rights holders to discount a (still possible) Kanda control. But after all Fujigen applied for the new logo and brand registration once again in 1977, not Kanda. It's not like Kanda doesn't know how to apply for trademark registration.
- Then I noticed the last page of the 1974 catalog, showing these mildly interesting things:
1. The catalog is dated for a change (in the lower right corner): April 1974
2. The front and last pages already show the new Greco logo instead of Gneco, maybe a year before the change was reflected on the instruments and 3 years before Fujigen registered that too..
3. It points out quite specifically that "Greco Guitars are products of Fuji Gen Gakki Mfg. Co.". Not "...made by Fuji......" or "...products of Kanda Shokai". Well, let's not read too much into it.
But famous Grecos were made before 1971, and that prompted me to refresh my basic knowledge of Greco's and Fujigen's early history with these oddities in mind.
What I could derive from the common folklore and verify by catalogs etc. is that Goya was a NY import/export business that wanted to expand its second brand "Greco" to complement their Italian "Goya" electrics, sought production in Japan and eventually established Fujigen as their supplier maybe 1966, the 1967 Goya catalog has Japanese Grecos. Greco started to exist 1964 in the USA:
So Greco (including the "Gneco" image mark) was neither a Fujigen nor a Kanda Shokai brand at that time. Meanwhile, the same Greco models were also sold on the domestic market (allegedly beginning 1968), probably with permission from NYC. Who sold them in Japan? It seems there is no "hard" evidence that Kanda was even in the game, all pre-1970s Greco catalogs online are from Goya, USA. That's where the ominous 1967 "K.Greco" trademark registration seems to help confirming that it may have been Kanda indeed.
Looking closer at these late 60s instruments I once again noticed the funny mix of (what appears to be) different manufacturer's traits, sometimes on the same models.
- Which brings up the questions how these features became attributed to a certain factory in first place and when. In other words, do I really always see Matsumoku when I read "STEEL REINFORCED NECK?, or could it be that some known patterns (like "Made in Japan embossed on top of the plate = Mats, lower 3rd of the plate = Fujigen") emerging in the 70s were simply assumed to be applicable to these earlier guitars?
- What would a typical Fujigen-made Greco post-1967 look like, e.g. the neck plate? AFAIK on solid bodies made before 1967 you find the typical "casket"-shaped plates. These seem to be last seen on a few examples of the 910/912 etc. Greco solid body "surf guitars" (which seem to be knock-offs of the Italian-made Goya solid bodies). From there, it's all looking "subcontractor" to me.
Here's why: Let's look at the famous "Shrike" models. A lot of them have this kind of neck plate:
1970 (Kustom distribution label inside) Greco 975 Shrike 12-string neck plate
We know for sure that Matsumoku started using that "STEEL REINFORCED..." line almost consistently in the mid-70s-1980s, but some early 70s Fender and Gibson copies attributed to Mats didn't have that line. So is this neck plate what defines a "Matsumoku Greco" of that era? I'll come back to this neck plate in a minute...
Other Shrikes (also other Greco models) have this neck plate:
Greco Shrike 10-String neck plate
This style of neck plate occurs - let me put this a bit less fact-like - with a high incidence around the former city of Toyoshina with the Teisco Gengakki factory in the center. Teisco Gengakki had a few of years of experience in making bodies for the Teisco main factory inYodogawa Okegawa, before Teisco went belly up and was bought out by Kawai. Teisco Gengakki (which was an independent offspring of Teisco) did not end up under Kawai's control and continued making parts and guitars for a number of similarly ambitioned but short-lived new brands created by former Teisco managers. They lived on for an unknown number of years before that factory was eventually demolished in the mid-80s.
I should mention at this point that Teisco Gengakki's director Tadashi Maruyama came to Teisco from Fujigen and there were probably more ties between these companies, which often means personal ties in Japanese industrial culture, and it certainly meant that in the Nagano region.
Typical Teisco Gengakki K.K. neckplate still carrying the funny typo they made (assumedly) in the beginning 1967.
Now back to that "Matsumoku" neck plate... with a twist:
Back of a (possibly late) Firstman Baron bass
Firstman was a company started by Kazuo Morioka (Teisco's former Kansai region manager) and the instruments came out of the Teisco Gengakki factory. Most of them have the typical neck plates attributed to that factory, but several examples have this 5-screw plate despite everything still looking typical for the Toyoshina plant. To complete the typical mess, there is even a fancy variation of the Greco Shrike that uses this "Baron" body style.
There's that little tidbit about the relation between Fujigen and Matsumoku in Rainer Daeschler's Japan report of the 80s, saying that when the business picked up for Fujigen, they were subcontracting what was to become Matsumoku to produce bodies for them. According to Daeschler and a few more voices, this kind of cooperation ended around 1965.
I can see how this could've been enough to spark the idea that Matsumoku must've been making early Grecos as well, and maybe they did. But I'm currently getting the image that the evidence for that is pretty thin in this specific period 1967-1970. Instead, it looks like even the guitars looking like Matsumoku could've been made by Teisco Gengakki to me, and maybe it was even "just the bodies" for them...again.
The printed evidence supports that this wild era ended with the turn of the decade, when the Greco mark was briefly distributed by Kustom taking over Hershman's NY business in 1970 - Grecos were no longer offered in the 1971 Goya catalog. So Fujigen registered that trademark for Japan in the same year because, if you allow me another blunt speculation, they already had established that brand on the domestic market, and the guitars were (for the most part) their designs anyway. To me that all looks like Fujigen was very much in control of all things Greco guitars at least in this forming era, and there may or may not be indications that this was still the case in 1977.
This was kicked off in another thread where I was led to ask myself "who owns the Greco brand?". That was easy to answer, and then it wasn't - I always thought that's Kanda Shokai's brand but then I saw some things in the trademark registration history that were a bit odd:
- The only trademark Kanda Shokai had applied for was "K.Greco" in 1967. I've never seen that label out in the wild so far, and Kanda has registered more than 60 trademarks before and after that, all on their own behalf, with 2 odd exceptions:
- The "Gneco" logo was submitted for registration Dec. 13th, 1971 by Fuji Gen Gakki K.K.
- The "Greco" logo was applied for registration only on April 5th, 1977 (seemingly 2 years after it started appearing on headstocks), again by Fujigen.
- The rights holder for both registrations is (now?) Kanda Shokai. Both are still "live" registrations BTW and there is an entry in the history that looks like this:
移転登録済通知書 2012/08/03
"Transfer registration notice" - could that mean the rights were transferred in 2012, or something else? Reading a bit into the JPO procedures, the word "transfer" seems to mean what it looks like?
Unfortunately the Japanese trademark register only has the latest version of each registration dataset stored and doesn't give access to the actual documents , so I cannot see previous rights holders to discount a (still possible) Kanda control. But after all Fujigen applied for the new logo and brand registration once again in 1977, not Kanda. It's not like Kanda doesn't know how to apply for trademark registration.
- Then I noticed the last page of the 1974 catalog, showing these mildly interesting things:
1. The catalog is dated for a change (in the lower right corner): April 1974
2. The front and last pages already show the new Greco logo instead of Gneco, maybe a year before the change was reflected on the instruments and 3 years before Fujigen registered that too..
3. It points out quite specifically that "Greco Guitars are products of Fuji Gen Gakki Mfg. Co.". Not "...made by Fuji......" or "...products of Kanda Shokai". Well, let's not read too much into it.
But famous Grecos were made before 1971, and that prompted me to refresh my basic knowledge of Greco's and Fujigen's early history with these oddities in mind.
What I could derive from the common folklore and verify by catalogs etc. is that Goya was a NY import/export business that wanted to expand its second brand "Greco" to complement their Italian "Goya" electrics, sought production in Japan and eventually established Fujigen as their supplier maybe 1966, the 1967 Goya catalog has Japanese Grecos. Greco started to exist 1964 in the USA:
So Greco (including the "Gneco" image mark) was neither a Fujigen nor a Kanda Shokai brand at that time. Meanwhile, the same Greco models were also sold on the domestic market (allegedly beginning 1968), probably with permission from NYC. Who sold them in Japan? It seems there is no "hard" evidence that Kanda was even in the game, all pre-1970s Greco catalogs online are from Goya, USA. That's where the ominous 1967 "K.Greco" trademark registration seems to help confirming that it may have been Kanda indeed.
Looking closer at these late 60s instruments I once again noticed the funny mix of (what appears to be) different manufacturer's traits, sometimes on the same models.
- Which brings up the questions how these features became attributed to a certain factory in first place and when. In other words, do I really always see Matsumoku when I read "STEEL REINFORCED NECK?, or could it be that some known patterns (like "Made in Japan embossed on top of the plate = Mats, lower 3rd of the plate = Fujigen") emerging in the 70s were simply assumed to be applicable to these earlier guitars?
- What would a typical Fujigen-made Greco post-1967 look like, e.g. the neck plate? AFAIK on solid bodies made before 1967 you find the typical "casket"-shaped plates. These seem to be last seen on a few examples of the 910/912 etc. Greco solid body "surf guitars" (which seem to be knock-offs of the Italian-made Goya solid bodies). From there, it's all looking "subcontractor" to me.
Here's why: Let's look at the famous "Shrike" models. A lot of them have this kind of neck plate:
1970 (Kustom distribution label inside) Greco 975 Shrike 12-string neck plate
We know for sure that Matsumoku started using that "STEEL REINFORCED..." line almost consistently in the mid-70s-1980s, but some early 70s Fender and Gibson copies attributed to Mats didn't have that line. So is this neck plate what defines a "Matsumoku Greco" of that era? I'll come back to this neck plate in a minute...
Other Shrikes (also other Greco models) have this neck plate:
Greco Shrike 10-String neck plate
This style of neck plate occurs - let me put this a bit less fact-like - with a high incidence around the former city of Toyoshina with the Teisco Gengakki factory in the center. Teisco Gengakki had a few of years of experience in making bodies for the Teisco main factory in
I should mention at this point that Teisco Gengakki's director Tadashi Maruyama came to Teisco from Fujigen and there were probably more ties between these companies, which often means personal ties in Japanese industrial culture, and it certainly meant that in the Nagano region.
Typical Teisco Gengakki K.K. neckplate still carrying the funny typo they made (assumedly) in the beginning 1967.
Now back to that "Matsumoku" neck plate... with a twist:
Back of a (possibly late) Firstman Baron bass
Firstman was a company started by Kazuo Morioka (Teisco's former Kansai region manager) and the instruments came out of the Teisco Gengakki factory. Most of them have the typical neck plates attributed to that factory, but several examples have this 5-screw plate despite everything still looking typical for the Toyoshina plant. To complete the typical mess, there is even a fancy variation of the Greco Shrike that uses this "Baron" body style.
There's that little tidbit about the relation between Fujigen and Matsumoku in Rainer Daeschler's Japan report of the 80s, saying that when the business picked up for Fujigen, they were subcontracting what was to become Matsumoku to produce bodies for them. According to Daeschler and a few more voices, this kind of cooperation ended around 1965.
I can see how this could've been enough to spark the idea that Matsumoku must've been making early Grecos as well, and maybe they did. But I'm currently getting the image that the evidence for that is pretty thin in this specific period 1967-1970. Instead, it looks like even the guitars looking like Matsumoku could've been made by Teisco Gengakki to me, and maybe it was even "just the bodies" for them...again.
The printed evidence supports that this wild era ended with the turn of the decade, when the Greco mark was briefly distributed by Kustom taking over Hershman's NY business in 1970 - Grecos were no longer offered in the 1971 Goya catalog. So Fujigen registered that trademark for Japan in the same year because, if you allow me another blunt speculation, they already had established that brand on the domestic market, and the guitars were (for the most part) their designs anyway. To me that all looks like Fujigen was very much in control of all things Greco guitars at least in this forming era, and there may or may not be indications that this was still the case in 1977.
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