"This clarinet was bought in Marseille and only used to prove it. their status is entirely new, default: exact replica manufactured in Korea, ....."
There are famous stories of Stradivari replicas, some of which are in museums and the very knowledgeable cannot tell which is which.
The history of fake musical instruments is a long one, however in the machine age, the question becomes a different one. Certainly a Buffet-Crampon is a corporate machine massed produced instrument. It might be fine tuned by humans at a few points, but these are not recognized individuals beyond their abilities, which are shared by many humans. If an R-13 is a set of specifications and measurements, is a measured replica a fake or just a Korean R13?
Is a German made Conn 424N a fake? Does the contractual arrangement between Conn and Schreiber make these real Conn 424N clarinets? Schreiber certainly didn't build those by their own specifications. And what about the Swedish Levins that were so identical to the C.F. Martin guitars that Martin finally built the company and moved the production of a couple of Martin models to Sweden (that did not last long).
Is something defined by it's intrinsic materials and dimensions or by a logo on it? Are stencils another type of fake? When we have reduced the human artifice involved and an instrument is mostly defined by measurements taken by machines and created by machines, the name on it might best be CNC Lathe, Router & Co.
One of the most disturbing forgeries was a submarine the Soviets built. It was precisely the design of a US submarine that Congress decided not to fund. Someone in the spy agency sold the Soviets the design and the first news the US Navy got of it was when one of the Soviet subs surfaced and a helicopter spotted it. That moment had to be a real eye opener.
The story made Life magazine back in the mid 1980s.
