The quality of the replicas and originals both varied. It is reasonably well acknowledged now that at least by the end of the "lawsuit era" (in 1977 Gibson sued

The quality of the replicas and originals both varied. It is reasonably well acknowledged now that at least by the end of the "lawsuit era" (in 1977 Gibson sued the distributor of Ibanez who was the main brand behind them) the Japanese copies were higher quality than the official product. There is vale in the name though and particularly when they were still producing a quality product.