Leafing through a Japanese guitar magazine the other day, I was rather surprised to see an advert for a new line of Zemaitis guitars. How can Zemaitis guitars exist without Tony Zemaitis, who sadly passed away in 2002? His operation was hardly comparable to that of Gibson or Fender. He wasn't the head of a factory churning out guitars; he used to build all the instruments by hand.

It seems someone (or some company more likely) has bought the rights to the Zemaitis name. My initial impression is that it sounds rather like sacrilege to me, although is it any worse than the Danelectro re-issue guitars courtesy of the Evets Corporation that have nothing whatsoever to do with the original Danelectro guitars, or the new American Vox guitars?

For more about Tony Zemaitis and the original Zemaitis guitars, see this article.