Years ago I turned up to audition for a newly forming blues band, and rather than jam some Howlin' Wolf, Muddy Waters or Sonny Boy Willamson classics, the guitarist putting the band together wanted play Jack & Diane by John Meloncamp.
If you think these are expensive, check out the price of the very lovely Epiphone "Inspired by Gibson" 1963 Firebird V
https://www.peachguitars.com/epiphone-inspired-by-gibson-custom-collection-1963-firebird-v-frost-blue.htm?opt=47549&gad_source=1
If I was spending that much though I'd at least expect an indian rosewood fingerboard rather than indian laurel, and I'd want it to say Gibson on the headstock even if it is made in the far east.
Finally got around to watching 'a very English scandal' on BBC iPlayer. Rather disconcerting that every time Norman Josiffe/Scott speaks I hear Paddington Bear.
I have two awsome blue JMJ mustangs that are mostly neglected as I usually tend to play my otherwise identical and equally awesome black JMJ.
- update, one of the blue ones now resides in the guitarist's studio where we rehearse so it gets played once a week.
When my Tascam audio interface would no longer work after I updated the OS on my laptop, I vowed to never buy anything made by tascam again. I then bought an interface made by Native Instruments. After a few years this too was no longer supported after an OS update so NI was added to my sh1tlist.
Surely getting the development team to spend a few hours working on driver updates to ensure support for older products after discontinuation isn't going to cost these companies much, and the goodwill it would generate is worth a lot more to them than having people like me making a consious decision to never buy anything again with their name on.
Since then I've bought two focusrite interfaces and they've both worked without issue for a number of years and are still going strong after several OS updates. Similarly equipment by IK multimedia and Zoom have continued to work well beyond the date they were discontinued and are still in regular use.
Phillips made me redundant over 30 years ago and I've not bought anything sold by them since.
I wouldn't even be able to think about buying one as they don't seem to offer any mustangs in the CS range. If they did it would be interesting to see how they could possibly be an improvement over the JMJ.