Ever seen a Les Paul style guitar by Fender?

[jguitarman]

My keyboard player shows up at rehearsal with a Les Paul copy made by Fender/Squire. I've never seen or heard anything like it. It actually played well for a cheapo guitar. The headstock read Squire and on the back of the headstock it says "crafted in Korea". The pickups said Designed by Duncan (Seymore?). It has a gold, sparkle finish. He paid $300. at a Guitar Center.
Just wondering if anyone knows anything about these?

 

[RodeoTex]

I never heard of that but I do remember Gibson making a Strat back in the 80s...

 

[MulliganChebichev]

Its part of the Squier 24 series

They also did a SG and ES 335

 

[J-man]

Its part of the Squier 24 series



They also did a SG and ES 335

I remember checking those out on the Squier site a long time ago, I've never seen anywhere that carries them though..

 

[MulliganChebichev]

Finally, I was looking through the wayback machine's caches and found this: LINKY and This

 

[Bob Arbogast]

After Fender deep-sixed the DeArmond line, those solid-body Sq 24s replaced the M77(T), which I guess was an homage to the Guild Bluesbird (or its ancestor).

Bob Arbogast

 

[marshman]

I think most of those models were created, particularly the Dearmonds, to fill the holes on GC walls when GC & Gibson had thier falling out. Once Gibson & GC made peace, they Dearmonds were discontinued.

 

[51mike]

Those DeArmonds, for the most part, were great guitars and an awesome deal when they came out. It was Fender probing the market for desireability of the older Guild Electric designs. I had an M75T from the second year of production and really liked it. I ended up selling it to get a good set of drums but now wish I still had it. Musicians Friend had huge blowout sales when Fender discontinued them and I got an S73, (their SG clone) that was, again, a really good guitar. The hollowbodys and thinlines are still fetching big bucks on Ebay.
When Fender raped the line and replaced the DeArmond pick ups with the generic Duncans I fell out of love with them. They seemed to take all the character out of the guitar. Hence, they didn't sell well which lead to the ultimate demise of the whole idea. They had it right the first time with the DeArmonds but got greedy and didn't wait long enough for the marketplace to realize how good the guitars were.
MHO anyway.

 

[Brian Krashpad]

Those DeArmonds, for the most part, were great guitars and an awesome deal when they came out. It was Fender probing the market for desireability of the older Guild Electric designs. I had an M75T from the second year of production and really liked it. I ended up selling it to get a good set of drums but now wish I still had it. Musicians Friend had huge blowout sales when Fender discontinued them and I got an S73, (their SG clone) that was, again, a really good guitar. The hollowbodys and thinlines are still fetching big bucks on Ebay.
When Fender raped the line and replaced the DeArmond pick ups with the generic Duncans I fell out of love with them. They seemed to take all the character out of the guitar. Hence, they didn't sell well which lead to the ultimate demise of the whole idea. They had it right the first time with the DeArmonds but got greedy and didn't wait long enough for the marketplace to realize how good the guitars were.
MHO anyway.

Agreed to all. I owned an M-75 and just last week sold my M-72:

The DeArmond M-series setnecks were/are great bang-for-buck imports with the US-made DeArmond pickups. The only reason I don't have the 2 M-series guitars I previously owned is that I also have a Jet Star, and all of mine had the same Gold Tone pickups as on the Jet Star, so they all sounded pretty similar. Also, I subsequently obtained a singlecut Gibson LP Classic so I had the "2-HB mahogany singlecut setneck" base covered.

The M-series were based on the old Guild Aristocrat, which later became the Bluesbird. Here's an Aristocrat:

image removed

The S-series were based on the S-100 Polara, Guild's offset SG, iirc:

 

[Brian Krashpad]

After Fender deep-sixed the DeArmond line, those solid-body Sq 24s replaced the M77(T), which I guess was an homage to the Guild Bluesbird (or its ancestor).

Bob Arbogast

You're right about the Bluesbird homage. However the Squiers were based on the DeArmond M-70 and M-77 (retaining the model number but with some changes, the most important of which was ditching the US-made DeArmond GoldTone humbuckers and using Duncan Designed imports), rather than the M-77T. The "T" at the end of the model number was for "tremelo" and the M-series models with "T" at the end had a Bigsby-style trem and single-coil DeArmond 2K model pickups. Thus the trem models were substantially dissimilar to the non-trem models that featured the GoldTone HB's, and thus to the later Squier Series 24 models. The 2K single-coils on the DeArmond trem models were designed to look like old Dyna-Sonics, but to sound like P-90's:

Recently some import Gretsches have appeared with a similar-looking pickup called the DeArmond 2000. Although these retain the Dyna-Sonic look, they have been internally redesigned to sound like Dyna-Sonics as well, here's these newer 2000 pickups on my Special Jet:

 

[tiktok]

And I thought this was going to be a Robbin Ford Signature model thread...

 

[Brian Krashpad]

And I thought this was going to be a Robbin Ford Signature model thread...

Despite their existence from early on in the guise of Specials and Juniors, the overwhelming majority of folks flat don't associate doublecuts with the term "Les Paul." I figured this would probably be about the DeArmonds or Squiers, it never even occurred to me that it might be about the Robben Ford.

And I say this despite owning a Les Paul Doublecut.