skankdelvar

"I was wondering who'd be the first to spot that"

More legal shenanigans. Guitar.com reports that Heritage Guitars of Kalamazoo, Michigan are counter-suing Gibson after the latter accused Heritage of trademark infringement. This is despite the existence of an existing 30 year-old legal agreement between the two companies that allowed Heritage to make guitars that looked pretty much like Gibsons (apart from the headstock). Guitar.com story here. The irony is that Heritage only came into being when Gibson shut down their Kalamazoo plant leaving behind the workers and the machinery that had produced the classic old Gibson electrics. In a sort of local MBO the workers kept the plant going, turning out guitars that many believed were equal to or better than modern Gibsons. This is the latest in a round of litigations initiated by Gibson's new team. Yet, in December 2019 Gibson exec Cesar Gueikian claimed: '“We inherited, from the previous owners, a legacy of confrontation and litigation, which we have essentially now been putting to bed. There are literally just one or two situations that we haven’t been able to resolve amicably, and not because of a lack of intention on our side. But everything else, why not collaborate with those who are doing really cool things?” Some people might suggest that aggressive litigation is very much at the centre of Gibson's 'collaborative' ethos and that despite their many emollient pronouncements to the contrary Mr Gueikian and his hirsute boss Mr James Curleigh are in fact lying f**kface rat bastards, spawned from the sphincter of a satanic 'luxury brand' hedge fund that's more interested in shutting down competitors prior to selling the company on at a profit. These accusers would - of course - be completely wrong. It is plain to the meanest intelligence that Gibson merely wants to be everybody's friend and just concentrate on channelling their passion for really, really great guitars.

'Here's our set list. Choose any of them you like for the audition because we all know them really well'. 'We're really committed'. 'We rehearse every week and start at 7 o'clock prompt' 'We've got lots of gigs booked in' 'I'll go away and learn these new songs for next week' 'I can't come this week because the wife / kiddie / mother-in-law feels ill'. 'This is the only band I'm in'. 'You won't mind if Carl watches the rehearsal. He's just a friend of the band'.

to the forum Brent! Hope you enjoy it here

Given that sustainability / environment is the hot topic du jour it makes sense for any aspiring luthier to make 'green-ness' a feature of his product offering. Almost nobody would object to the wood being from sustainable sources but loads of people would kick up a fearful stink if it wasn't. It's just how things are.

I think the OP has pretty much got the benefit of the BC hive mind. Perhaps we should leave him to his stratagems and catch up further down the road.

I'll play anywhere for anyone as long as the money's good enough. If they pay half upfront I'll even play requests.

Welcome, John - enjoy the forum

Outstanding review. Thanks, @VTypeV4

Right. (Nods head sagely).

God, is it 25 years? Thinking about it: how little has changed in the intervening period. Clothes, sounds, attitudes, whiny victim-hood as the basis for about 75% of pop lyrics. It's like popular culture got stuck in 1995 and hasn't moved on since.

Sadly not possible as the guinea was only ever issued as a coin. A big, heavy coin. So that's better, actually

The stylistic differences and intellectual hinterland would suggest not. Well, that's a disappointment. I was hoping the two parties would strip naked, oil their rippling torsos and settle their differences wrestling on a rug in front of an open fire. As men do.

It's more the principle of the thing, IMO. When you pay someone to do something that's what you expect them to do. If I wished to engage a tradesman to come round and twang his banjo till he went cross-eyed and shot his filthy yoghurt into an amplifier I would tailor my expectations accordingly. Should said tradesman arrive and proceed merely to clean my carpets I would be as disappointed as I might have been had the opposite obtained. In any event, were I Teebs I'd be looking for some compo.

Let me get this right. Someone came round allegedly to clean the carpets and had one off the wrist into Teebs' practice amp? I'd leave a bad review on Checkatrade. It's only fair to other people.

Really? Hunts down a perfect stranger, buys stuff from him on eBay, sends him a gnomic message then joins a web forum to tell him he's done all this just to teach him a lesson? Sounds perfectly rational to me.

This is so exciting.

An essential vade-mecum for today's young people. I not only doff my hat but execute a bow while so doing. Edit for clarification: A bit like this ↓ only a bit lower, probably

Mock Genesis though I may, the hook from Invisible Touch is now on repeat in my head and it's not even one of my favourite Genesis songs. The bastards

Seamless pivot, there Idle curiosity: Do people still use photocopiers? I'd have thought Behringer would use a scanner and / or a printer

Charity Appeal We've all got busy lives but we should each take a moment to think about some elderly, disadvantaged people. Just to make it more real, let's call them Tony, Phil and Mike. Tony's a bit of a brooding curmudgeon and his family might like to see the back of him for a year or two. Phil can hardly hobble to the cash-point these days and worse still his bank is in Switzerland so it would take him six months to walk there and back. As for Mike, it's like he barely even exists the way people never think about him, not even on bass guitar forums. Just £700 from each individual who reads this appeal would help Tony, Phil and Mike to get out and about and stay at some nice hotels and do some interviews, possibly on Graham Norton. Don't turn your back on them. Thank you.

That or a 'hot pork lunch', as we were accustomed to say at that time. One afternoon about five o'clock I left the pub and worked my way along the Strand buying and eating a burger from each of the major chains and from a couple of independents. I think I must have had about 6 burgers and after all that salt I needed a drink, so, back to the pub. This is what young people are missing out on. Please give generously to my crowdfunding effort.

Quite so. Are the worlds of PR and Meeja any more productive, efficient or 'ground-breaking' since a bunch of po-faced puritans took over, insisting that they are 'passionate' about doing things even though 'passion' is about the last thing you'd associate with these bloodless, rule-making bean-counters? No, they are not. My poor niece works for a global PR behemoth and her life (and that of her colleagues) is pretty much as I describe above. When I outlined the 'spare jacket on the back of the chair' ruse to her she reacted as if I'd suggested robbing the poor box, so inculcated is she with the corporate BS. I hold out little hope of bringing her over to the Dark Side just yet. For all their so-called freedom and open-mindedness many young people today are little more than bowing, scraping sararimen which is why I am launching an outreach mentoring project where old industry hands such as myself and @FinnDave teach our shining-faced youth such valuable lessons as how to successfully function in the workplace after a lunch comprising four pints, two bottles of wine, a large brandy and a pork pie.

My dear old love, PR people - like the rest of the meeja - don't go to wine bars these days, even if wine bars existed. Christ, they don't even do Charlie anymore and that used to be a sine qua non, believe me. No, they're all 23 year-olds stuck at their desks from six in the morning till eleven at night, frantically tweeting corporate bollocks in between messaging their little friends and whimpering 'Oh, I'm so depressed, I'm working all the hours that God sends and I haven't got a life and I'll never be able to afford a place of my own because fascist baby-boomers, obvs, do you think Zoe likes me?'. Then they go home and lie awake all night sobbing into their Greta Thunberg pillowcases and cursing mankind for burning the planet. They're all stressed out of their tiny minds so no wonder they're doing weird shít like mocking up fake synths and pedals to annoy some dweeb 'journalist' who shouldn't even be on their radar and even if he was, just pay a couple of guys to break his fingers. If only they'd just relax and go down the pub at lunchtime and slope off early at half-four and throw sickies so they can spend the day in bed with an extensively tattooed hooker they'd be far happier and probably much more efficient.

AFAICS the real mistake Behringer made was leaving themselves open to (wildly overplayed) allegations of anti-semitism. Other than that, I thought it was quite funny. Sure, it's not a good look to have so many pops at the same journo over a short space of time but sometimes people get under other peoples' skin to such an extent that they just lose it. Over time Kirn seems to have said some fairly unpleasant things about Behringer so a degree of pushback was probably inevitable - but Behringer overdid it in some peoples' eyes. Silly spat between an Internet 'influencer' and a gear cloner: who really gives a rat's anyway?