Shizenda wrote:The Kurokumo Mosrites are the ones you see for sale in the shops in Tokyo, but they are made in Nagano prefecture, in the mountains. When I lived there (left in 2005) they all pretty much had the Ventures logo on the headstck, but looking at their website I notice these days they don't, and I think somebody mentioned that the lawyers put a stop to that. The actual Fillmore shop is in Mitaka, Tokyo, and these guys were the ones that stepped in a bought the rights to the Mosrite name at some point. I have met these people, and they are classic Japanese 'fanatics' which is to say they have whole heartedly taken on 'Mosrite' as their own and are more into everything Mosrite that you can imagine. It's kind of quaint and cool. Their guitars were quite beautiful but considerably more expensive than Kurokumo. For memory, at that time, they had Mosrite for Classics on their headstock, and serial numbers on the fretboard, which Kurokumo didn't. I seem to remember them being quite paranoid about Kurokumo and considered them to be 'fake' and inferior and untrustworthy, which was kind of amusing. To my eye, Fillmore Mosrites looked and felt better, but that's just an impression, because I played both and I thought the Kurokumo sounded amazing.
For interest, Kurokumo means 'Black Cloud'.
This is great information. The only Fillmore I've played had "Mosrite of Classics" and no Ventures logo on the headstock and was heavy. For those reasons I didn't favor their appearance and feel over the Kurokumos. What I see now from the Fillmore video looks very nice. They do indeed appear to be fanatics. Judging the.output, I'd have to say the Kurokumo employees were also quite fanatical. -Marty.