Gibson files for Chapter 11 Bankruptcy Protection

[kodiakblair]

@Dan Dare

Are we thinking about the same Gibson ?

Word is morale in the Gibson factories was so bad that workers were sending out  any old rubbish as an "FU" to the company. 

"don't have to abide by any workplace or materials regulations,"  Take it you forgot about the raid and fine over illegal timber. 

" They should go back to making things that are special/desirable "

Aye,they should follow Fender's lead and start selling similar stuff to this 

[skankdelvar]

2 hours ago, Billy Apple said:

I agree, but everyone hates Rickenbacker.

Huis Clos - un drame de JP Sartre

(Scène: une chambre en enfer. Entrez John et Henry).

John: Regarde! Une guitare basse qui intègre des fonctionnalités de marque déposées par Rickenbacker! Où est mon avocat? Je veux menacer quelqu'un!

(Henry inspecte la basse)

Henry: Est-il possible de fabriquer cette guitare basse mais beaucoup plus bon marché? Et de le fournir dans une couleur que personne ne veut? Avec des potentiomètres qui ne fonctionnent pas parce qu'ils n'ont pas été soudés correctement?

Les deux ensemble: L'enfer c'est les autres!

Fin

 

Edited May 2, 2018 by skankdelvar

[visog]

Not forgiven them for killing off Cakewalk (amongst many, many other brands). Still it lives again - for free thanks to BandLab (https://cakewalk.bandlab.com/)

Agree with comments about Hubris and frankly delusional visions of lifestyle branding. But what not's been covered is their policy of shops buying stock effectively taking on the risk.

Also the autotuner malarkey which reveals their catastrophic lack of empathy with their customers...

All in all a perfect storm of failure...

PS... they didn't server us dog-beaters well did they?... Thunderbird maybe, RD possibly, Rippers, Grabber nah...

[SpondonBassed]

There's just been a piece on Gibson's current position.  You can hear it on Radcliffe and Maconies' music news approx 3/4 of an hour in if you do BBC iPlayer - dated 3rd May.

[visog]

Discussion ongoing here: 

R&M's coverage was a bit haphazard as neither is a guitarist/bassist. They made the point that Gibson targeted wealthy collectors - doctors and lawyers, rather than the player at the gig...

[Monkey Steve]

I checked out the current Les Paul range when somebody (a non-musician) told me that they'd finally got to this stage and was telling me to hold onto my Gibsons in case they become valuable collectors items in the future.  Clearly somebody will buy them and come up with a less ridiculous business model - they currently have about 200 different variations of Les Pauls to choose from, most of them small runs of very expensive signature editions - some more than $20k.  No wonder they aren't selling many guitars

[lemmywinks]

Somewhere along the line amongst all the corporate branding, collector-targeted pricing and buying up random companies to produce tat with a a Gibson logo on it they forgot to make serviceable, pro grade instruments at a price a working musician is willing to spend. They have been relying on brand aspiration and rich collectors for years and this has come to a head, I know only a handful of gigging musicians who regularly use their guitars, maybe things are different with classic rock bands but still...

I have a friend who is one of those "I want the guitar my heroes played" type guys, traded a lovely LP Studio (black with gold hardware, great sound and played itself) and £300 cash for an absolute dog of a LP Standard. Had a neck repair in the usual spot and can't hold its tuning for the duration of a song, weighs a ton, sounds terrible and can't be set up to play anything like his old Studio. He's well chuffed with it though, it's a burst LP Standard which superficially resembles what his heroes played, even though they wouldn't touch it with a bargepole. This to me is what Gibson are now - a prestigious brand with nothing behind it. 

 

A new regime would be the best thing that could happen to them. Besides it's not like the Gibson of today bear even a slight resemblance to the company of old who made all those great guitars you hear on classic albums, that went long ago.

[SpondonBassed]

Thanks for merging my post into the discussion.

I heard in the radio interview that Gibson had bought Philips audio products and were releasing them under different brand names.  If the mechanical quality of these devices was anything like I remember from my poor experience with Philips' stuff it can't have helped the comany's reputation.

[skankdelvar]

While we exult (or bewail) Gibson's Chap. 11 bankruptcy, spare a thought for Hank's creditors. Will they be paid? Will they only get a few cents on the dollars they're owed? 

Here's a list of who's owed what, with guitar-related creditors broken out at the top and electronics, logistics, prof services at the bottom. Funnily enough, the largest single creditor is a China-based speaker supplier, presumably for Juskiewicz's tattered dream of being a big playa in the home electronics market. 

Apart from the hundreds of millions owed to the banks, there's $11.5mn owed to companies which have provided goods and services in good faith. Timber for the bodies, tuners, strings, cases, metalwork. These debts could amount to a serious problem for the luckless suppliers and their employees.

So, not content with having tanked his own company, the stupid, stupid little man is wreaking havoc on the wider guitar industry.

Edited May 3, 2018 by skankdelvar

[spectoremg]

On 03/05/2018 at 00:17, skankdelvar said:

Huis Clos - un drame de JP Sartre

(Scène: une chambre en enfer. Entrez John et Henry).

John: Regarde! Une guitare basse qui intègre des fonctionnalités de marque déposées par Rickenbacker! Où est mon avocat? Je veux menacer quelqu'un!

(Henry inspecte la basse)

Henry: Est-il possible de fabriquer cette guitare basse mais beaucoup plus bon marché? Et de le fournir dans une couleur que personne ne veut? Avec des potentiomètres qui ne fonctionnent pas parce qu'ils n'ont pas été soudés correctement?

Les deux ensemble: L'enfer c'est les autres!

Fin

 

Wish I'd gone to a posh school. 

[NancyJohnson]

On 03/05/2018 at 20:13, skankdelvar said:

While we exult (or bewail) Gibson's Chap. 11 bankruptcy, spare a thought for Hank's creditors. Will they be paid? Will they only get a few cents on the dollars they're owed? 

Here's a list of who's owed what, with guitar-related creditors broken out at the top and electronics, logistics, prof services at the bottom. Funnily enough, the largest single creditor is a China-based speaker supplier, presumably for Juskiewicz's tattered dream of being a big playa in the home electronics market. 

Apart from the hundreds of millions owed to the banks, there's $11.5mn owed to companies which have provided goods and services in good faith. Timber for the bodies, tuners, strings, cases, metalwork. These debts could amount to a serious problem for the luckless suppliers and their employees.

So, not content with having tanked his own company, the stupid, stupid little man is wreaking havoc on the wider guitar industry.

Sometimes you just see a list and try to join the dots.  As an ex-credit manager, you try and do the maths...look at the Grover debt, $370K.  If Gibson are making 170,000 guitars a year, that's an average of c.14,200 a month.  A set of Grovers retail at £60-£100, so let's say $100 a set.  That's c.37,000 sets or 2.5 months of production.  Seemingly, everyone knew Gibson were in trouble months and months ago and I'd have withdrawn the credit facility on the strength of that alone, just to reduce the exposure; no freaking way would I have let it accumulate to $370K.  I'm sorry to sound harsh, but more fool Grover etc. for allowing Gibson to continue to ramp up debt.

I'd be interested in knowing what Samick were doing for them, given they manufacture guitars in South Korea and Gibson are allegedly US made.

 

 

[yorks5stringer]

Epiphones?

[kodiakblair]

@NancyJohnson

I can't see Gibson paying anything near $100 for Grovers. Grover tuners are made in China by Ping.

Great tuners but $100 for Chinese,even high quality , parts seems awfully high.

[skankdelvar]

4 hours ago, spectoremg said:

Wish I'd gone to a posh school. 

 Google Translate est mon ami.

3 hours ago, NancyJohnson said:

Sometimes you just see a list and try to join the dots. 

For me, it's the circa $1.5m on cases that's spooky. That and all the timber.

[SpondonBassed]

7 hours ago, yorks5stringer said:

Epiphones?

Bless you.

[SpondonBassed]

8 hours ago, spectoremg said:

Wish I'd gone to a posh school. 

No.  You don't.

[skankdelvar]

[Grahambythesea]

18 hours ago, skankdelvar said:

Cor, looks like Hank has learned a B7 😵

[ForestPoetry]

I wonder what Ed Roman would have to say about all this, were he still around?

Really it comes as no suprise to me. There was never any middle ground with Gibson as long as I was aware of them. It was either buy an Epiphone, their version of a Squier for £250 (still really good, although AFAIK Epiphone is effectively a seperate/sister company anyway) or drop at least close to, if not dead on, £1000 for a USA Standard SG or Les Paul or whatever. Outside of collectors and brand obsessives, who's really going to do that when you can spend £600 on a Gordon Smith LP which is probably a better made guitar anyway?

To say nothing about how buying out brands like Steinberger et al and effectively bastardising them (and this is me speaking as a Spirit owner) made them less than popular with a lot of people.

 

[Chownybass]

It's not great for the rest of the industry. My supplier of parts in Korea says Gibson had very bad terms with them, and they have loads of outstanding payments with doubt hanging over them.

[SpondonBassed]

1 hour ago, ForestPoetry said:

...To say nothing about how buying out brands like Steinberger et al and effectively bastardising them (and this is me speaking as a Spirit owner) made them less than popular with a lot of people.

Maybe that's why my '80s Hohner B2A feels a lot better in terms of quality and sound than my five year old Steinberger Spirit?  It puzzles me as my understanding was that Steinberger was supposed to be the Fender to Hohner's Squier, if you get my meaning.

[lemmywinks]

2 hours ago, ForestPoetry said:

.....There was never any middle ground with Gibson as long as I was aware of them. It was either buy an Epiphone, their version of a Squier for £250 (still really good, although AFAIK Epiphone is effectively a seperate/sister company anyway) or drop at least close to, if not dead on, £1000 for a USA Standard SG or Les Paul or whatever.

The LP Studio has been around for donkey's years, a proper USA Gibson without the fancy furnishings for £1k, it was around £600-£700 a few years ago too when a friend of mine went shopping for one. Also at one time Ephiphone had a Les Paul in the £900 range, now they have the Elitist models circa £500.

[ForestPoetry]

33 minutes ago, SpondonBassed said:

Maybe that's why my '80s Hohner B2A feels a lot better in terms of quality and sound than my five year old Steinberger Spirit?  It puzzles me as my understanding was that Steinberger was supposed to be the Fender to Hohner's Squier, if you get my meaning.

AFAIK the Hohners were designed to be contemporary licensed all-wood versions of the L/XL series Steinies (and the guitar versions). I briefly owned a fretless Hohner Jazz copy that was easily as good as a MIM Fender. Never owned a B series but I had a Jack for a while. Really good instruments, even if they did kind of "defeat the object" of the Steinberger at least in terms of construction.

[Mudpup]

Zombie thread alert!!!!! 

[neepheid]

19 hours ago, MaeKrugern said:

Hello,Chownybass! Since the beginning of the COVID-19 global pandemic, many businesses have gone down fast.

 

Thanks, Captain Obvious! Now get back in your time machine and try again. You suck at warning people about stuff!