My beautiful righty is not a twin of this ugly lefty.

I ran into a Fender issue the other day and wondered if I should send the following to FMIC, or approach some other way? Bought everything used, so nothing much to do but complain.

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I received a Tim Armstrong Hellcat (Righty) as a gift a couple years ago. SN is CSC11004538. It's beautiful - brown with great figures in the body. It sounds great and I've loved it since the day I bought it.

Recently, I bought my wife a used Lefty version of the same. SN is 311725352. It's not beautiful. It has a reddish finish, limited figuring, and looks like a cheap knockoff of my original. The cable from the pre-amp has detached twice in the first 24 hours, and both acoustic and electric output is much lower than the RH version.

The side-by-side difference visual difference is stunning. I'm not even sure if it's the same species of wood - it's certainly not the same finish. They are NOT the same guitar, and I'm very, very disappointed.

This was a 10th anniversary gift. I was embarrassed and upset when she opened the box.

The serial numbers are non-standard and none of the normal resources have anything close to the pattern. Can you help me understand what is going on? Did something change drastically in production?

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What do you guys think?

 

Maybe. Why would someone fake a $400 guitar?

 

This model has a preamp and jackplate, or I would’ve done that already.