Capitalism is a word that gets thrown around a lot and possibly with very little understanding of what it means.
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More bad behavior from Gibson
- Thread starter Stranger Danger
- Start date
Actually it's this sort of product I love to see people overpay for. Joe Executive used to rock and roll back in the day and collects Gibsons and Fenders. Overpays to show he can, probably jams with others and always brings his newest conquest. Then he learns that there is a private stock of unobtainium gee gaws that he can pay the fancy shop to install. In fact these geegaws cost less than his evening cigar. When he gets his "axe" back weeks later (busy guy, you see) he'll brag about his wise choice and convince himself that the guitar sounds much better. Then he drinks too much expensive scotch, jumps on his Executive 1-percenter model Harley, and crashes his brains out.
Yea, a guy can dream.
Yea, a guy can dream.
Then define it for us, O Wise One.
Or were you including yourself among the ignorant masses?
Remove "Capitalism" and insert "Socialism".
Then your sentence makes sense.
At least in Western civilization, everyone knows the definition of "Capitalism". It's exceptionally simple. Private ownership of means of production to make profit. That's capitalism in the nutshell.
ggunn said:Then define it for us, O Wise One.
Or were you including yourself among the ignorant masses?
Well the main problem with using the c word is that the system we are under in the USA and most of the Western World is a Mixed Economy not true Capitalism. Think of it as an amp with two channels that can be blended, both clean and distorted signals depending on whose doing the blending affects the output. Much in the same way we live in a representative republic not a democracy.
None of these terms has anything to do with Gibson charging 230 times cost for a part and insulting the intelligence of consumers everywhere. There is NO way that a reasonable thinking person could possibly envision a process of making a capacitor of this size that would cost this much. A capacitor for a commercial ac system? Maybe. Not for a guitar.
Never underestimate the money you can drink from a Guitard player
Well lets be fair its a 2 pack of caps.
So its only 66 bucks for one cap
better than that they say the shipping weight is a 1/2 pound.
So just the shipping cost would buy you at least 30 capacitors.
Orange Drops, Gum drops, Tropical fish , Bumble bees
sounds more like a Candy store at the Zoo.
I hate all this "tone magic" garbage.
Gibson ain't the first to do it.
I bought my "hand wired" tube screamer for 300 bucks then I added some vintage 133 dollar "Bumble bees" then i bought some 20 dollar vintage 9volt
.......woo hoo I must be the most awesome guitard in the world.
Well lets be fair its a 2 pack of caps.
So its only 66 bucks for one cap
better than that they say the shipping weight is a 1/2 pound.
So just the shipping cost would buy you at least 30 capacitors.
Orange Drops, Gum drops, Tropical fish , Bumble bees
sounds more like a Candy store at the Zoo.
I hate all this "tone magic" garbage.
Gibson ain't the first to do it.
I bought my "hand wired" tube screamer for 300 bucks then I added some vintage 133 dollar "Bumble bees" then i bought some 20 dollar vintage 9volt
.......woo hoo I must be the most awesome guitard in the world.
So, you are an expert on the fabrication of electrical components now?
I worked for over 20 years as an engineer in the semiconductor business, and I can tell you that an integrated circuit chip that costs a few dollars when they are made by the millions could cost you hundreds or thousands of dollars (or much more, depending on what it does) if you tried to make a single one or tried to emulate its functionality with discrete components. In very short runs, set up costs are frequently much higher than materials cost and the pricing of finished goods reflects this.
I submit that a even reasonable thinking person who has no expertise in the field and no inside information cannot possibly know what the production costs of a very short run of an electrical component could be simply by comparing it to the retail cost of a mass produced item.
You are, of course welcome to form your own opinion, but I do not necessarily accept it as fact. I am merely playing devil's advocate with no information one way or the other, but if the asking price of something offends you, don't buy it.
So, you are an expert on the fabrication of electrical components now?
nope, but I have set up and torn down production lines at the largest American semi conductor manufactures.
but who cares......production time for the 1000 pieces that Gibson bought. maybe 3hrs on a line, little more with inspection and packing.
its a repackaged Wesco capacitor from the 32PL series.
you can buy a pair on ebay for 2 to 3 dollars
and you can buy a AC motor start capacitor on ebay too, ranging from 50 to 150 dollars so the original comment was correct.
Same thing Dunlop did when they bought the rights to the Fuzz Face and did a limited run of Germanium pedals with the "original" transistors.
Which was just a NTE transistor that had been remarked.
it was a Germanium but no where close to the original.
need info on the original Sprague bumble bee compared to the Wesco 32PL
ORIGINAL BUMBLEBEES
Lead Size: .025" to .035"
Foil Dimensions: height .890" tall, .0005" thick
Paper: Thin, brown craft paper; height .900", thickness .001"
Layers: foil/paper/foil/paper (4-ply)
Ends: lead based metal, 60/40 lead/tin
REISSUE BUMBLEBEES
Lead Size: .025"
Foil Dimensions: height .650" tall, .0015" thick
Poly (separator/dialectric): height .750" tall, .0015" thick
Layers: foil/poly/foil/poly (4-ply)
Ends: lead based
The difference between a 20% paper roll to a 2% Poly, huge
the modern 2% poly being a better buy not worth 113 bucks.
Like I said, if the price of something offends you, don't buy it. The original "vintage" caps go for big bucks on eBay; they figured if they build the reissues to the same specs, they are just as "good". Which, FWIW, they probably are. Personally, I don't believe that they make any appreciable difference to the sound, or at least not enough to warrant going to the trouble of changing them out, much less paying $60 apiece for them. But there are those to whom it is worth all that, so why not take their money? The cost of manufacture isn't really that much of a factor; I was just playing the game. No dog in this hunt.
There are artists who throw buckets of paint at random onto a canvas and try to sell the result for major moolah. Some of them actually succeed at it. What did that piece of art cost them to make? Anything is only worth what someone is willing to pay for it; the cost to the seller is irrelevant. As long as the buyer is aware of what he is getting, no one is being victimized.
Off that article, there was another link to a cap shoot-out of 11 caps.
I couldn't tell the difference. I'd like to say the only one I could tell was different was the clip without a cap at all. But honestly, this early in the morning, I couldn't tell.
Here's the "home" page - then you can see the links to the shootouts:
[Invalid or Expired Link Removed]
It has links to the blind and the keyed clips.
For me, this puts to bed any notion that I need to spend more than a few cents on a cap.
I'm guessing many got bored and quit reading...
Further down was this:
[Invalid or Expired Link Removed]
That's Gibson historian justifying the expense, and then a dissecrtion of the Wesco capacitor... a standard cap disguised as a reproduction.
Fraud is not capitalism.
BTW, great find, OP! Very interesting thread, and timely for me right now.
Further down was this:
[Invalid or Expired Link Removed]
That's Gibson historian justifying the expense, and then a dissecrtion of the Wesco capacitor... a standard cap disguised as a reproduction.
Fraud is not capitalism.
BTW, great find, OP! Very interesting thread, and timely for me right now.
Exactly. The concept of "worth" is dictated by what the buyer is willing to pay, not by the costs of the ingredients and labor that went into it.
If I build a bridge to the moon with matchsticks, it will cost me quite a considerable amount of materials and labor and time. And yet I will be unlikely to find a buyer or an investor for my whimsical project.
Likewise, if I can magically produce a proven, reliable, transportation system to the moon that costs me only a few hundred bucks, I'd be a fool not to charge billions for anyone willing to pay me to use it.
avvie said:
Thanks. I thought it was an interesting topic as well.
"Fraud is not capitalism." exactly right
I see situations all the time in which I think items are priced too high. I'm not particularly referring to things relating to music, although that could be applicable, too. Much of what has been created by the law of supply of demand doesn't look fair, just, sensible, or ethical, but that's the nature of the beast. I don't particularly like it, but I see little that can be done about it unless human nature itself is altered. In the meantime, the ultimate judge is the buyer who either does or doesn't pay for something. I'm not going to start making individual judgments on how I think one or another item should be priced.
Recently, I sold a personal possession to make some extra money. I bought it to keep, but decided to sell it. An "expert" advised me to sell it for much, much less. But I ignored his advice and sold it for the high price. Others were selling the same thing for the same price. An outside observer might come along and start making judgments about this. But to a large extent this is something between buyers and sellers. I'll agree that on the surface the price seems high. But at least in my case I was selling something very reluctantly anyway. My point is it's impossible for people to be fully able to make accurate judgments on business transactions in the gigantic market out there which operates by the law of supply and demand, brutal and blind as that law may be.
Recently, I sold a personal possession to make some extra money. I bought it to keep, but decided to sell it. An "expert" advised me to sell it for much, much less. But I ignored his advice and sold it for the high price. Others were selling the same thing for the same price. An outside observer might come along and start making judgments about this. But to a large extent this is something between buyers and sellers. I'll agree that on the surface the price seems high. But at least in my case I was selling something very reluctantly anyway. My point is it's impossible for people to be fully able to make accurate judgments on business transactions in the gigantic market out there which operates by the law of supply and demand, brutal and blind as that law may be.
Years and years ago when I was a member of the dark side, I had a machine head go bad on my Les Paul special, Gibson sent me 6 new ones no questions asked. That was abut 15 years ago however, Not a fan of the Gibson basses so haven't owned a Gibson since I converted.
