Who is the real Mosrite now?

[bakeoboy]

nice job Mel!
Dana is gonna try to have them change it.

[MWaldorf]

Cool! I hope it works out. It seems like it could be a win-win. It makes sense that Fillmore would want to differentiate between the standard factory guitars and the ones she's building, but this way both get to have the magic of the "Mosrite of California" moniker, and hers would have the added credentials of "Moseley".

[Veenture]

Excellent way of dumping "of Originals"

[jfine]

Translating from one language to another can be a funny thing. "Mosrite of Originals" makes no sense at all, not in English anyway! A friend of mine has a Mosrite "of Classics", made by Fillmore in Japan. Very nice guitar, but it would be nice if the model designation was a little less goofy. There's got to be a word in Japanese for "of", don't you think? They could even eliminate the "of" and call them Mosrite Classics. It would certainly be nice if Dana was able to put her name on them.
On the Fillmore Japan website, they had a blog featuring handwritten letters from Dana, in English of course, with translations in Japanese. I got Google to translate the Japanese back into English, and it was often quite different from the original English of the handwritten letters. "Bakersfield", for instance, came out "Bekazu"! I wonder if "zu" means "field" in Japanese? Trade names get even weirder--"Mosrite" becomes "Mozeraitu", and "Vibramute" turns into something like "Vaibaramyutu". I guess the Star Trek universal translator is still a few years off...
Well, I think it's interesting, anyway!

[juan_10]

One thing I heard is that in Japan , just the English words alone look cool .
For a designer of Brand Names often the coolest 'looking' mixture of English Words get used , regardless of the actual meaning ..
In European script they just look good.
A victory of form over substance ...

[Strat-o-rama]

Bravo, Mel. That's it!
This would make the Dana Mo's more than cool!

[dorkrockrecords]

jfine -
As a Japanese speaker, let me explain. Phonetic Japanese uses a syllabary rather than an alphabet, so to transliterate from one language into Japanese requires quantizing the sound to the fewer building blocks available in Japanese e.g. Bakersfield becomes Be-ka-zufi-rudo. Reversing that process for proper nouns is something robotranslators find difficult.

[Veenture]

A thought just hit me about Fillmore possibly substituting "by Semie Moseley" with "by Dana Moseley".
Shure, Dana may be heavely involved in making/winding pickups or even 'just' supervising construction, as well as having possible other general involment but at the end of the day, she did not design the Mosrite guitar as we know it. SEMIE MOSELEY is her father of course but also the 'father' of the Mosrite guitar and his name should therefore remain fully honored and respected, deserving of 100% credit and recognition, IMO.

The description "of Classics" & "of Originals" ["off Originals" would have been a tad better perhaps but still...] has always bothered me and -been an important factor in my decision not to buy one. If I wish to own a Mosrite guitar it would definitely have to be one that says "Mosrite of California" on it.
And I have a Japanese Kurokumo Mosrite that says exactly that

[MWaldorf]

Paul,

I agree, credit and honor should always be given to Semie Moseley. But no one involved in making Mosrites now had a hand in the initial development of the design. In that sense every Mosrite or clone should say "by Semie Moseley" on them, because they wouldn't exist without him.

As far as Dana's guitars, since they cost more than the comparably equipped factory model, from a consumer perspective, you should still be buying the premium "Mosrite of California" logo. Anything else is a downgrade from the original. Since Fillmore isn't going to stop putting the "Mosrite of California" on the factory guitars, (and I don't see why they should) it seems to be a sensible delineation for her the guitars to say "Mosrite of California by Dana Moseley". That way, as a consumer, your getting the desirable "Mosrite of California" logo and the added nomenclature of the guitar being a Moseley constructed special.

At least that's what I would want.

Mel

[Strat-o-rama]

+1 What Mel said.