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More woes for Gibson

#41
I'm for anything they do that leads to better quality. They hit well below their weight in that department, and have been for close to 20 years now. It started then, and has only got worse since, as quality has drifted downward and prices have drifted upward.

For what their guitars cost, they at the very least need to actually dress their frets and feature properly crafted string nuts. High quality hardware would be a plus too.

Alternately, keep making them as lazily and poorly equipped as they are, and cut prices in half or to 1/3 in order to reflect the level of attention to detail and the quality of the components they put in to the instruments. Sure, that's gonna happen...

A compromise between the two would be ideal to me. Make the company lean and mean: fewer models, lower production, more time spent making each guitar. Put the additional man power into proper fret and nut finishing, but leave hardware and pickups as is. Accept less profit; you don't need to get richer and richer; you just need to maintain. Reduce prices 20 percent to compensate for how bloated they are now.
 
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#42
Diamond_Dave said:
14 Heritage Guitar Workers off the job as company heads in new direction
Click to expand...

Interesting article. Without knowing more details I can’t help thinking that the guys who got let go over objections to CNC machinery and a PLEK system probably did a little more that just disagree over it. And I find their line of reasoning about “hand craftsmanship” superseding the proven benefits of modern machinery or PLEK for some operations is a little disingenuous. Especially the part where they say the builds weren’t perfect and then get into a romantic justification that it’s because they were built by hand. Companies like Music Man seem to have hit a happy balance between machine and hand operations, selecting the best approach for each step involved. I don’t get the dismissed employee’s argument as given. Seems a little luddite to me.

Quality is quality. Romance is romance.

I’ll take quality.
 
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#43
Henry was never interested in making Gibson a better company or interested in the musical instruments or the company legacy/heritage. It was an investment he could make and put himself on the king's throne. End of story.

Dont forget that Gibson also bought up Steinberger, Tobias, resurrected Kramer guitars, bought into Onkyo home theater products, bought Wulitzer jukeboxes, Cakewalk software, KRK monitors, etc.... Nevermind the other awful biz decisions he has made, such as hiring his down-on-his-luck engineer buddy to design guitars. Hence the "holy V" and "holy explorer" were born. Then his using Gibson as his soapbox for political commentary...

It is also worth mentioning that around Nashville Henry was buying up venues, some to put under the Gibson umbrella, some as little side projects. The Gibson Cafe in the Opry Mills mall was a Gibson/Baldwin/Tobias/Slingerland/Wurlitzer store as well as a performance venue and bar/restaurant. I had heard from a Gibson employee at one point that the rent on that place was 20k/month. After the Nashville flood wiped out the mall, Gibson chose not to rebuild the venue. There was also a coffee house downtown that Henry had quietly purchased and he would hang out there. I was told by someone that played that coffee house that Henry would sit in the back reading and when he tired of the act on the stage he would lower their FOH volume himself out of annoyance.
 
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#46
The first thing HJ did in 1986 was introduce an accurate reproduction of the 1962 (think it was '62) SG, because he always wanted one himself. Of course that was five years after CBS/Fender started their Vintage Series. As a Gibson (and Fender, Guild, Martin, Yamaha, Ovation, Peavey, G&L, Washburn, etc.) dealer Gibson was among the worst companies with which to do business (G&L by Hyatt was pretty awful too). But that was the same arrogance and inconsistencies under Norlin too. HJ seems to have reveled in that dung, and destroyed the dealer base.
 
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#47
40Hz said:
It is, but it wasn’t junk. The acquisitions were all well established and respected companies within their respective markets. Gibson (under Henry) was just clueless about what to do with what it acquired. And I suspect Gibson lacked both the commitment and managerial acumen to pull it off. Baldwin pianos and Slingerland drums are in a totally different world than guitars despite also being musical instruments. And a lot comes down to the way Henry likes to insert himself in places he isn’t necessarily qualified to lead and then rule it with an iron hand. His ego tripping is at the core of Gibson’s current problems. Sure, he waded in intially and straightened out Gibson’s glaringly obvious efficiency problems. A third year undergraduate management major could have done as much. The problem and solution were a classic casebook study. A pure midterm exam type question.

What came after that was the bigger problem. Because it takes a certain set of management skills to do a turnaround. And a different set of skills to run an ongoing profitable company. The first involves risk taking and daring. The second some risk taking (there’s always going to be some risk) tempered with a hefty dose of restraint and prudence. That’s why business founders usually end up stepping down or getting booted once a company becomes solidly established. The entrepreneurial and operations managerial mindset are completely different things.

And I don’t think Henry is even a good entrepreneur. I think his real achievement was he administered a dose of tough love to a company that knew what it needed to do but couldn’t come up with the gumption to do it by itself. But after that it became pretty obvious he thought he knew better than the company - or its customers - what Gibson’s “real business” was. So by my analysis he’s the managerial equivalent of a one hit wonder band.

Oh well. So it goes.
Click to expand...
One of the problems with Gibson guitars specifically is that everything seems to be decided by Henry's preconceived notions of what is cool, not in any rational way. And because of that, they never pivoted to a younger market... they've just continued making stuff for blues lawyers, because that's what Henry J is. That was a good strategy in the 90s, but by now almost all the blues lawyers who were going to get a les paul either already have one, have gotten one then abandoned it and resold it, or they're dying off. Henry J is completely out of touch.

2F/2F said:
I'm for anything they do that leads to better quality. They hit well below their weight in that department, and have been for close to 20 years now. It started then, and has only got worse since, as quality has drifted downward and prices have drifted upward.

For what their guitars cost, they at the very least need to actually dress their frets and feature properly crafted string nuts. High quality hardware would be a plus too.

Alternately, keep making them as lazily and poorly equipped as they are, and cut prices in half or to 1/3 in order to reflect the level of attention to detail and the quality of the components they put in to the instruments. Sure, that's gonna happen...

A compromise between the two would be ideal to me. Make the company lean and mean: fewer models, lower production, more time spent making each guitar. Put the additional man power into proper fret and nut finishing, but leave hardware and pickups as is. Accept less profit; you don't need to get richer and richer; you just need to maintain. Reduce prices 20 percent to compensate for how bloated they are now.
Click to expand...
Indeed. How many different models of les pauls are there with no real differences besides available finishes and other minor cosmetic details?

If I want a Gibson style guitar, I can get a better one cheaper from a small builder.
 
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#48
40Hz said:
Interesting article. Without knowing more details I can’t help thinking that the guys who got let go over objections to CNC machinery and a PLEK system probably did a little more that just disagree over it. And I find their line of reasoning about “hand craftsmanship” superseding the proven benefits of modern machinery or PLEK for some operations is a little disingenuous. Especially the part where they say the builds weren’t perfect and then get into a romantic justification that it’s because they were built by hand. Companies like Music Man seem to have hit a happy balance between machine and hand operations, selecting the best approach for each step involved. I don’t get the dismissed employee’s argument as given. Seems a little luddite to me.

Quality is quality. Romance is romance.

I’ll take quality.
Click to expand...

Sometimes marriages don't last. It can be the fault of management, or the workers, or both.

I think all of us in 2018 walk the line between old-school traditionalism and embracing technology. I mean, my jazz is essentially the exact same thing you could've bought in 1965. On the other hand, I can program my compressor with my cell phone, and I have a modeling amp for my strat (also basically the same as they made 'em 60 years ago).
 
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#51
In 2004, when I was young and dumb[er], I bought a new Les Paul Standard for $2,000, which was standard retail price back then. It had Honduran mahogany and Indian rosewood, rather traditional Gibson materials that are no longer used TMK (except maybe on higher end models). It needed major fret dressing and a replacement nut. It had a thick so-called "nitrocellulose lacquer" finish and a few minor finish flaws (binding scraping went wrong in one spot). The inlays still clearly showed deep sanding marks. By now, the bridge has collapsed. When I went to replace it, it became clear that the original bridge anchors weren't even seated solidly into the wood. They'd fall right out if you turned the guitar upside down with all the strings and the bridge off. If you look inside the control cavities, there is router flash that was just left and finished right over with that goopy crap they called nitro.

Even back then, the thing was overpriced for this level of quality. But it looked purdy and I really, really, really wanted it. Plus it came with a free Les Paul Melody Maker as part of a sale (a $380 guitar that I also really wanted at the time), so that sweetened it. The LPMM needed the same work as the Standard, except the bridge lasted on that one, and the tuners broke on it (tuners stayed stock on the Standard).

I put the work into making them nice, and I still have both. I love to play them now, and they are lifers. But never again, man. I play scores of Gibsons every year in shops, and I have seen no general improvements since. I've bought a few Gibsons since then, but always used, and always knowing that they would need $150 worth of fret and nut work to be "complete" guitars by my standards...and would probably need a bridge eventually too. I only buy Gibsons as projects any more, not as complete, ready-to-play instruments.

Point being, their quality and attention to detail has been suspect for a long time, but at least they were priced more accordingly back then (albeit still overpriced for what you got). The same guitar now doesn't use the same woods, the hardware is no better (possibly worse), the fret and nut work is even worse (they let the PLEK do all the coarse work, and then don't bother to put the necessary time into finishing it), the reputation of the brand has gone down, the company is in trouble...yet you'd have to pay about 50 percent more for the equivalent guitar. Even considering the approximately 30 percent general inflation since then, that's a major price increase...and from what I see on new Gibsons, the quality is even worse now, so that makes this price increase even farther out of line.

If you keep cranking out products with this general philosophy (progressively skimp more and charge more), eventually it will catch up to you. Hopefully now is that time for Gibson guitars, whether it's their guitar division that causes the fall or not. It has been a long time coming.
 
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#52
Diamond_Dave said:
Sometimes marriages don't last. It can be the fault of management, or the workers, or both.

I think all of us in 2018 walk the line between old-school traditionalism and embracing technology. I mean, my jazz is essentially the exact same thing you could've bought in 1965. On the other hand, I can program my compressor with my cell phone, and I have a modeling amp for my strat (also basically the same as they made 'em 60 years ago).
Click to expand...

Agree. I like the old-school vibe for some things and state of the art for others.

One thing I am not into is the whole “fine handcrafted” thing where it doesn’t make (to me) a real difference. I’m squarely in the “form follows function” school. Sure I like a nice bass. But to me, a bass is fundamentally a tool - not an objet d’art. If I want a piece of wood sculpture I’ll buy a pedestal for it and display it in my living room. It’s not something I feel the need to carry around with me. And I think from what I’m getting from the ex-employee statement, they’re confusing the two.

And PLEK is a clearly superior solution, as are CNC fabricated neck pockets and fret slots. So I’m sorry Heritage guys. But there are just some things a machine does far better than human hands are capable of doing. If your goal, as stated, truly is to produce a superior guitar, I don’t see what the issue with using some advanced automation where it clearly makes for a better product is. Or how your argument holds water when speaking of a musical instrument.

They’re called ‘instruments’ for a reason.
 
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#53
40Hz said:
Agree. I like the old-school vibe for some things and state of the art for others.

One tjing I am not into is the whole “fine handcrafted” thing where it doesn’t make (to me) a real difference. Sure I like a nice bass. But to me, a bass is fundamentally a tool, not an objet d’art. If I want a piece of wood sculpture I’ll buy a pedestal for it and display it in my living room. It’s not something I feel the need to carry around with me. And I think from what I’m getting from the ex-employee statement, they’re confusing the two.

And PLEK is a clearly superior solution, as are CNC neck pockets and fret slots. So I’m sorry Heritage guys. But there are just some things a machine does far better than human hands are capable of doing. If your goal, as stated, truly is to produce a superior guitar, I don’t see what the issue with using some advanced automation where it clearly makes for a better product is. Or how your argument holds water when speaking of a musical instrument. They’re called ‘instruments’ for a reason.
Click to expand...
It's not about the best quality a machine or a human can do. It's about the consistency.
 
#55
40Hz said:
Agree. But when you can get the best possible - and get it consistently - it’s hard to assume that’s an either or choice. You can have both.
Click to expand...
Well yeah. I'm sure a human can cut fret slots as well as a machine, paying really close attention, once. But can the human do it that well all day, every day? The machine can.
 
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