My reliable source confirmed something....

[R Baer]

My guess and it's just a guess, is that Fender will discontinue all GB and SWR products and incorporate some of the SWR and GB technology into their own new products somewhere down the road. Look, it's just plain business. If sales of bass amps are down, you eliminate the competition and absorb their technology. Businesses have been doing this forever, so nothing surprising there. It's also standard practice in a buyout to pick up the top talent under a couple of year contract and have them sign a longer term non-compete agreement.

 

[Jim C]

Roger,
I agree with what you have said but wouldn't rebranding the GB line maintain some of the GB loyalty as well as let the Fender name enter with a competitive product, and, have zero R&D costs and the ability to deliver immediately?
Totally agree regarding picking up the top talent through an employee contract with a not to compete clause.

 

[Tunaman]

Roger,
I agree with what you have said but wouldn't rebranding the GB line maintain some of the GB loyalty as well as let the Fender name enter with a competitive product, and, have zero R&D costs and the ability to deliver immediately?
Totally agree regarding picking up the top talent through an employee contract with a not to compete clause.

As a Genz lover, I wont touch a rebrand...

 

[Jim C]

As a Genz lover, I wont touch a rebrand...

You might 2-3 years from now when the same guys that brought you GB amps come up with a new killer amp based on their designs (with a different name tag on the front)!
Who knows, it could be manufactured and assembled by the same original people.

Why would Fender want to screw up a succesful company with a top notch reputation, reliability, and designers?
Hopefully the owners got piles of cash with just a year or two of emplyment responsibilities.

 

[B-string]

You might 2-3 years from now when the same guys that brought you GB amps come up with a new killer amp based on their designs (with a different name tag on the front)!
Who knows, it could be manufactured and assembled by the same original people.

Why would Fender want to screw up a succesful company with a top notch reputation, reliability, and designers?
Hopefully the owners got piles of cash with just a year or two of emplyment responsibilities.

As it turns out that would be a industrial controls manufacturing firm in Taiwan?

 

[60bass]

As it turns out that would be a industrial controls manufacturing firm in Taiwan?

If (and I know it's a big IF) Fender decided to either rebrand GB amps as Fenders, or have Jeff and what's left of the team design new amps, I'd be OK with that.

That said, only if the amps were still produced using GB's existing facility as I know the quality coming from there. If Fender moves production to a different facility let's say China for example, them I'm out.

 

[B-string]

If (and I know it's a big IF) Fender decided to either rebrand GB amps as Fenders, or have Jeff and what's left of the team design new amps, I'd be OK with that.

That said, only if the amps were still produced using GB's existing facility as I know the quality coming from there. If Fender moves production to a different facility let's say China for example, them I'm out.

Yes from what agedhorse has said the Taiwan supplier was chosen with extreme care. Not the lowest bidder by far!

 

[R Baer]

Roger,
I agree with what you have said but wouldn't rebranding the GB line maintain some of the GB loyalty as well as let the Fender name enter with a competitive product, and, have zero R&D costs and the ability to deliver immediately?
Totally agree regarding picking up the top talent through an employee contract with a not to compete clause.

My guess is that Fender, as a corporation only has interest in one thing and that is building of the Fender brand. With that in mind it makes more sense to incorporate GB technology into new products that will bear the Fender logo. This is just the way corporations do business.

 

[JimmyM]

My guess is that Fender, as a corporation only has interest in one thing and that is building of the Fender brand. With that in mind it makes more sense to incorporate GB technology into new products that will bear the Fender logo. This is just the way corporations do business.

If they're smart, they'll let Jeff take over the bass amp division. He can sell a bass amp and knows what bass players want while Fender constantly shoots themselves in the foot. They've finally started making good stuff since the 90's, but they always seem to have a flaw that makes people not want to buy them.

 

[Randy S]

Whatsa matter? You didn't like those little flashy lights on the Dumble 300?

Nothing Fender would do could surprise me. Not since they killed Tacoma. Tacoma took logs in one end and put guitars out the other.

I will likely buy a GK amp soon.

Fender, Genz-Benz, and SWR are not even on my list. I refuse to buy imported amps. Sold my Peavey amps when they became traitors. Even sold my old TL-5.

 

[BogeyBass]

they always seem to have a flaw that makes people not want to buy them.

Like what?

they offer small light neo cabinets now, and large neo cabinets.

which includes all the latest needs, like small 2x8 cabinets
or single 1x12 or 1x15 neo cabinets.

The lightweight amps, have simple controls, with no baked in compression or other BS emulators. and even include distortion circuits with the new trendy wet/dry or "blend" feature.

The tube amp series actually offers a 100 watt head with a 2ohm tap, and includes post power amp direct out and switchable power.

not to mention the newer classic blackface style 300 watt tube amp that came out, which includes traditional 3 band channel, and another channel that has that Mid freq thing...hmm

and i dont remember seeing any fender threads about multiple revisions and amps blowing up or crackling. unlike some others which seem to break often.

If Fender feels like buying up the competition to put them out of business, then oh well that is how it works.

 

[DigitalMan]

Based on the very limited financial info we saw prior to the withdrawn IPO (and many of you probably have seen more than me), it seems that the decisions are going to be made at a higher level. What little I saw showed about 1% income on $175M revenue, which is razor thin. They appear to be saddled with debt probably related to acquisitions. I'm no CFO, but there are reasons to kill a business unit that are more related to the value of write-downs than to profitability. The trick is to transfer the value of that business unit into the core of the company without "paying" for it.

If FMIC was publicly traded this would be a simple conversation. As it stands, we're reading tea-leaves and I for one am not qualified to do so.

Hopefully they maximize the good assets they have and right the ship soon so they can keep bringing the products to market that people want.

 

[jeff7bass]

There's no good way of spinning this, and some of the posters who were chastised in an earlier thread concerning this appear to have been vindicated.

Bad news.

 

[fdeck]

Based on the very limited financial info we saw prior to the withdrawn IPO (and many of you probably have seen more than me), it seems that the decisions are going to be made at a higher level. What little I saw showed about 1% income on $175M revenue, which is razor thin. They appear to be saddled with debt probably related to acquisitions. I'm no CFO, but there are reasons to kill a business unit that are more related to the value of write-downs than to profitability. The trick is to transfer the value of that business unit into the core of the company without "paying" for it.

If FMIC was publicly traded this would be a simple conversation. As it stands, we're reading tea-leaves and I for one am not qualified to do so.

Hopefully they maximize the good assets they have and right the ship soon so they can keep bringing the products to market that people want.

This. Also, they are owed money by Guitar Center -- another company that has been losing money for years.

 

[JimmyM]

Like what?

they offer small light neo cabinets now, and large neo cabinets.

which includes all the latest needs, like small 2x8 cabinets
or single 1x12 or 1x15 neo cabinets.

The lightweight amps, have simple controls, with no baked in compression or other BS emulators. and even include distortion circuits with the new trendy wet/dry or "blend" feature.

Fender has lightweight amps? Only ones I ever heard of were the ones in the Bassman TV's, which are all discontinued.

OK, let's take a few examples of shooting themselves in the foot:

The Bassman TV series...great sounding and looking little combos that use micro amps, with no expandability and a high price tag.

The Rumble series: OK little beginner/intermediate amps that are really just OK at best and ain't the prettiest things on the market. They sell OK but nobody's beating their door down to buy them.

Have not heard the neo cabs or the Bassman tube amps yet, so I'll take your word for it that they're good.

and i dont remember seeing any fender threads about multiple revisions and amps blowing up or crackling. unlike some others which seem to break often.

Heard of a good amount of problems with the Rumble series. The rest don't really sell in a good enough number to even begin to compare with Ampeg. But the reason you might not have heard about revisions is dependent on whether Fender wants you to know that info or not. Do they even denote any revisions?

 

[lpdeluxe]

I hope G-B survives. My Shuttle 3.0-10t is on the floor beside me. Eighteen lb, about a foot on each side, 175 watts. I have another 10t that gives it 300 watts into 4 ohm. This amp has extended my gigging life with its light weight and large sound. In this relatively small community, three of my bass playing friends are G-B owners, and are very happy with them.

I was told by the local G-B dealer that his profit margins were much tighter for G-B gear than for others (he would still match online prices, but no lower).

There are a lot of opinions in this thread. Me, I proudly play a '51 P ri, a Classic '50s P, and an AV '57. No significant improvements have ever been made to these instruments in the 60+ years they have been in production. Obviously, Fender is selling these dinosaurs!

Fender guitar amps are terrific. I have owned only one Fender bass amp, and it was a loser. It sounded good with my '51, but not with any other bass I played through it. I can't speak for the other models, but I notice that all the young guys around here play Fender Jazz guitars through Peavey bass amps (the local dealer sells those, too).

Their business flourished under Schultz, less so under Larry Thomas. I believe most of the acquisitions came on Schultz's watch. In any case, my local dealer found Fender's changing policies to be wrong for his business, and he dropped Fender last year, replacing his inventory with G&L ( I don't know about G-B -- I'll have to go check). He replaced Gibson/Epiphone a couple of years ago with Heritage for similar reasons. He has been in business for years, and he's no dummy. This is a sign of something not going well at FMIC.

So we'll have to Wait And See.

 

[JimmyM]

Well we all know Fender's pretty financially insolvent right now. Pretty common knowledge at this point.

 

[gustobassman]

I haven't been able to access the GB website for days. After picking up my Streamliner i'm a happy camper.

I can just imagine Fender adding a compressor and an "aural enhancer", making it 2 rackspaces tall, and calling it "Upgraded!!"

Yes, that was sarcasm....

 

[JimmyM]

The website's fine. I just got on it no problem.

 

[beans-on-toast]

I don't know of a company that doesn't constantly evaluate and restructure their business. Fender is no different. They are currently producing top notch instruments that are as good, if not better, than any of their vintage products. I remember when Fender shut down US production. It shows you how far bad management can go. Nobody would let that happen again but change is part of business.