Gibson's Demise/Future?

    O.K. - Who's going to step up and buy this company? Oh, and please start makin' guitars for "GUITAR" players again! :P


    "The company’s total debt outstanding as of Dec. 31, 2017 was $519 million", S&P Global said. A Nashville newspaper reported that "Gibson has laid off about 15 employees from its Custom Shop". The Nashville Post quoted Gibson Chief Executive Henry Juszkiewicz as saying that the staff cuts are “part of broad initiative throughout the company to prepare for our refinancing.”


    Some interesting thoughts, comments...


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    This has happened with Gibson before and will happen again. I also recall in the 80's they let go of some custom shop guys and ESP picked them up for their short lived NYC shop USA built(ESP would not allow them to indicate USA made) guitars.


    I see Gibson as another business that allows some truly stupid ideas at times..... lets build a distortion into the guitar itself or force robo tuners on everyone. I think if they had cut back 20 years ago on quantity of guitars built and stressed quality they would be in a better position. I recently got rid of my Les Paul(Replaced with PRS McCarty 594) do to some build quality issues and it was a fairly new guitar. The guitar market is so saturated by Les Pauls that I had no choice but to eat the loss.

    It's a shame. I was recently looking at a traditional model because I love those fat necks. I pointed out to the sales guy, that you could feel that the top and binding were not fully flush with the body. You could literally feel the groove between the them. He indicated that was normal for those guitars. I looked at him, you mean normal for a guitar with a $4000 price tag? ?(

    Quote from apr13st

    It's a shame. I was recently looking at a traditional model because I love those fat necks. I pointed out to the sales guy, that you could feel that the top and binding were not fully flush with the body. You could literally feel the groove between the them. He indicated that was normal for those guitars. I looked at him, you mean normal for a guitar with a $4000 price tag? ?(

    =O



    I'll stick with my lawyer/dentist brand, thank you very much

    Read an interesting article the other week, where a big name music store in America was recommending people source 2nd hand models if they wanted a good Gibson, due to the build quality of the instruments they were getting on 'new' models. Seems the market has fallen out the bottom out of the 'new' Gibson market, and the second hand market is rocketing! Isn't there also some issue/difficulty with swapping the p/ups in a new Gibson? Soldered onto a circuitboard as opposed to just wired? VERY SAD!

    Gibson have been churning out overpriced rubbsh for years imo, they don't listen to their customers and the current CEO couldn't steer a car in a straight line never mind a muilti-million$ company. Sad indeed.