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Omg wtf

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wah
Wah-wah-wah-wah
Wah

Brother...lol, my curiosity got the better of me.

I sent that wretched video to several pals around town... The most common reaction was "Uh-oh. Gibson is SO screwed now".

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"Act your age, not your shoe size" - Prince

Wow Kevin! I'm not always the most perceptive person but they may have possibly lost touch with their roots with that one.

The thing is.... They are trying to connect with somebody. The message you see there is "Gibson is cool and fun". Videos of 50 year old guys with fake nails playing freebird on their couches while their teenage kids roll their eyes may not prove quite as successful of a campaign.... . I am just saying...

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It's not what you don't know that hurts you, it's what you do know that's wrong.

JEEZ..... someone needs to put that guy out of his misery.

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"Act your age, not your shoe size" - Prince

This reminds me of one of my favorite jokes. You know how you can tell which tour bus on the interstate belongs to The Rolling Stones? It's the one going 35 mph in the left lane with its blinker on.

If Gibson wants to appeal to the younger crowd, it needs to pay attention to those young people who actually play guitar (not young people as a whole), look hard at what types of guitars those young people play, and sell those guitars at a price point that falls within a hipster's limited budget, without sacrificing core quality. I see people in that age group gravitating toward old Gibson acoustics that look like they are almost as worn out as Trigger. Tap into that, and you have a market. Recapturing what people liked in the past about Gibson is what can keep people liking Gibson in the future. Dreaming up goofy new ideas that wholly reject the past seems to me to be the road to ruin, and hiring runway models to pretend to like guitars is just pathetic. Martin gets all of that; Gibson needs to. Just my opinion.

To me... The thing Gibson needs to do a PR/Marketing campaign on is:
Aim at the people buying.
Aim at the people dreaming....
We make the high quality stuff you always dreamed of buying. Now you can afford it - so buy the best.

As you might imagine... It's going to require a significant number of fanboys coming out of the woodwork saying:
"Man - these new Gibsons are coming out of the factory bang on right"
"The playability, setup, and action was awesome"
"These guys hit "The Sound" bang on".
"The necks just feel fantastic.."
Etc.

There is a large population of these guys with Taylor and Martin....
Gibson seems to have suffered with inconsistency.... The reputation I see all over the place is:
"The good ones are fantastic, but the average ones aren't that good"... And that's a bad place to live from a marketing perspective.....

The other thing I see is...
They have to figure out how to *not* send the duds to Guitar Center and other huge retailers that allow folks to play them out... And if they do - how to get it back before 10,000 people play it and get the impression that Gibson makes junk.... ONE dud in a Guitar center = over 1,000 people handle a bad one that ruins your reputation.

That would be like a car dealer leaving a broke/lemon car on the lot for people to test drive....

Thank God for Collings/Waterloo and Martin making iconic G*bson vintage instruments properly.

Someone has to do it......

I'm going to toss this out just for the heck of it. A friend recently bought a new 2017 Les Paul Standard - roughly a $2500 street priced guitar. The warranty card in it is signed in march of this year. He dropped it off at my house the other day while he is on vacation and asked me to exercise it. He also said "if you want to tweak it, go ahead".

The action felt mighty stiff so I measured it - relief was 0.022, first fret heights were 0.020 to 0.022 and 12th fret action as 0.080 to 0.095. When I opened the truss rod cover to adjust it I found the inside painted black, including the acorn nut. I had to chip the paint off the nut to get my nut driver on it - there was no way this could have been adjusted at the factory. The nut was finger tight, I snugged it up, then took about a half turn to bring the relief down to 0.006. I brought the 12th fret action down to 0.060 to 0.075 and will talk to the owner to see if he wants me to lower the first fret/nut slots. Here is picture of the t/r cavity, I've chipped some of the paint off the walls with my nut driver, the thing on the yellow paper is the paint that was covering the nut.



I know, this is only a sample of one so I'm not going to make any judgements about Gibbies quality control, but I did chuckle when I took out the QC checklist card in the string pocket of the case.

I notice none of the edges of the nut are radiused.

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"Act your age, not your shoe size" - Prince

Chris, I had a whole list of little nits to pick, that was just one of them (I play in the first position and run into those edges). The action/relief/loose truss rod was, in my humble, simply not acceptable.

Crap! Ed, I'm sorry. I figured most GOT fanatics would have seen Sunday's finale by now. I apologize!

No worries, I got over it pretty fast. She may be the mother of dragons and all that but her inexperience in actually using them is quite apparent.

I'm just finishing up the last episode of season 6 here in the shop..... I started binge watching GOT several weeks ago and it's fantastic so don't ruin the ending please

Oh yeah, Freeman my friend G*bson QC and build quality totally sucks.... What you are seeing is one of the better ones......

What a crying shame.....

It ends with a singalong...

As Ramsay said to Theon: If you think this has a happy ending, you haven't been paying attention.

Yep, it sucks telling people that their new $2,000+ guitar needs $100+ of work before it will play right.

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Steve Smith
"Music is what feelings sound like"

Wow,...that video. I've recently retired after 35 years as a pretty high level advertising guy, and I'm pretty much gob-smacked.

You don't know your product.

You don't know its history.

You don't know your target market.

And you wonder why your business is failing?

Just say it, Steve - the video is pathetic.

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"Act your age, not your shoe size" - Prince

I have seen black paint on Gibson truss rod nuts as early as the 1950's. This is evidence that the factory is not giving the guitar enough time to settle before sending it out.
These days, nothing would surprise me about Gibson.

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John

For about 12 years now on this forum I have always spelled G*bson "G*bson" now you know why.

Don't get me wrong I love some of the G*bson designs, 335's, 175's, Les Pauls, SG's, and some of the variants. J-45's are killer or can be too, the old ones. And of course my favorite all time acoustic guitar, 1936-37 L-OO's.

It could be that G*bson tanking and Henry getting out might just be what it takes to provide someone else with an opportunity to provide real value AND resurrect such a great American brand.

I do wonder though.... if and when G*bson files for bankruptcy protection.... if Henry will write another oped piece for the WSJ blaming someone else for his failings.......

Before bankrupcy --- I predict he will ask for and get a government bail out package.

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Ken Cierp

http://www.kennethmichaelguitars.com/

We (as in the usual crowd to be found in the shop on a weekend) had a very interesting discussion about this topic with a former senior government appointee who served with the previous administration in a budget management capacity. It always amazes me the people that walk in the door of any business, but especially when that business is located close to Washington, DC. I did not understand all of the details, but the essence of the conversation was that - with the recent strength of the economy and favorable growth in jobs, real GDP, etc. (which he took full credit for as one might expect!) - Gibson and Fender both become much more valuable (versus inexpensive) and marketable properties for sale to other investors or their respective employee groups.

The possibility of the later - a sale to an employee-led consortium of investors - is something I find intriguing. Gibson in particular would benefit from jettisoning their senior management team, stabilizing their middle management teams, and mending the fractious relationship with their labor force. A resurgent company focused on their core business of guitar building, teamed with a committed labor force able to finally address the quality and workmanship issues that have plagued the company for decades, and a US economy finally moving out of a decade of little or no real economic growth would seem to be a recipe for seeing Gibson through their second century.

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A constellation only takes shape when one maps the whole.
- Beth Brower

Unbelievable...