Gibson 2019...the year of fail.

[NancyJohnson]

Been seeing stuff come through for the 2019 Gibson range over the last day or two.  I'm not on the market for another bass, but from that perspective it's lovely to see they're continuing to hold faith in the new EB models and have decided to look backward and reintroduce the three point bridge on Thunderbirds and whatever the SG-style basses are called nowadays.

Elsewhere, if you want Les Pauls and SGs, your demand is satiated and no doubt you'll be over them like a tramp on chips, but sadly (for a company so rooted in the issuing of heritage models), there's still no faithful Les Paul Junior DC or Firebird with a single mini-humbucker.  Nothing like not giving the masses what they want to ramp up demand.

And don't look at the prices unless you have somewhere soft to land when you fall off your chair.

[Austin7]

The SG basses are called SG Standard basses at this point.  I wouldn't mind having one since I like short scales and the sound of Gibson basses.  But they're overpriced for me and although it may seem like a minor point, I really dislike trapezoid inlays.  

[Cato]

Well at least they've started making Thunderbirds again.

The main thing that's struck me about Gibson in the last couple of years is the huge range of horrible colours they now have available for the various Les Paul and SG models, a trend they seem keen to continue for 2019.

The thing is, some of the lower budget models actually seem to be really good value for a USA made guitar, but only if you want them in faded turquoise or rancid vermillion.

Edited September 2, 2018 by Cato

[NancyJohnson]

4 hours ago, Cato said:

Well at least they've started making Thunderbirds again.

The main thing that's struck me about Gibson in the last couple of years is the huge range of horrible colours they now have available for the various Les Paul and SG models, a trend they seem keen to continue for 2019.

The thing is, some of the lower budget models actually seem to be really good value for a USA made guitar, but only if you want them in faded turquoise or rancid vermillion.

Thunderbirds:  They never stopped making them, but they did tweak the pickups, electronics and bridges.  I think they genunely missed a trick by failing to move away from the colour options of sunburst, black or (occasionally) white/ivory.  I couldn't give a rats donkey for the 50th Anniversary gold one or the other misfires; surely if you're painting all these effing Les Pauls a myriad of rainbow colours, how difficult would it be to slip a Thunderbird into the paint booth?  Fools.

[Newfoundfreedom]

I love Gibson guitars. Les Paul's especially. But I just don't think they look right as basses. Especially the SG types. They're just plain ugly. The Thunderbird, love it or hate it, is at least "different" and to me looks really cool. 

[bassbiscuits]

Bummer. Sounds like they've lost their way a bit. 

Amazed how a company with such  an awesome guitar making history can be ploughing such a strange furrow nowadays. 

[mikel]

Why do people take such pleasure in the demise of a fine old instrument manufacturer? So they don't make a P bass, so what? The EB range was a standby of pub and club bands back in the late 60s and 70s.

[FinnDave]

I bought a 2017 EB4 new a year ago, and it is a damn good bass. Babicz bridge, two humbuckers with coil taps, I've used for a few gigs and it sounds great. Very light as well. Surprised it was so badly received by the bass playing world, I think they condemned it without playing it or even seeing it in the flesh.

[skankdelvar]

12 hours ago, NancyJohnson said:

there's still no faithful Les Paul Junior DC

Indeed so.

The LPJ DC above costs $799. I'd cheerfully pay as much - or more -  for a plane ticket to the States, car hire and a hotel at the other end just so I could hunt down whoever came up with that monstrosity and give them the Chinese burn of a lifetime.

A Junior in name only. Too true, Gibson, too true.

 

[Cato]

1 hour ago, FinnDave said:

I bought a 2017 EB4 new a year ago, and it is a damn good bass. Babicz bridge, two humbuckers with coil taps, I've used for a few gigs and it sounds great. Very light as well. Surprised it was so badly received by the bass playing world, I think they condemned it without playing it or even seeing it in the flesh.

In the guitar/bass world word of mouth is everything.

Gibson's reputation is currently circling the upper bowl of the toilet, like a turd shark.

They're almost at the point where no matter how good a new line is, people won't be willing to give it a chance.

[NancyJohnson]

2 hours ago, mikel said:

Why do people take such pleasure in the demise of a fine old instrument manufacturer? So they don't make a P bass, so what? The EB range was a standby of pub and club bands back in the late 60s and 70s.

The pleasure comes from the fact they have a clueless CEO at the helm who put his faith in the future of the company with the Firebird X.

Isn't everyone just a little tired of Led Pauls and SGs?

Christ on a bike, considering their reliance on a handful of 60 year old designs, if Gibson were a car company, they'd have gone bust decades ago.

[skankdelvar]

30 minutes ago, NancyJohnson said:

The pleasure comes from the fact they have a clueless CEO at the helm

Possibly not for much longer. 

Here's a situation vacant ad posted in early August on execthread  a US jobs site for numero uno top honchos and grand fromages. Seems an established musical instrument manufacturer in Nashville with a $2bn turnover is looking for a CEO. 

But look at the 'preferred experience spec. Nothing at all about 'ability to walk face-first into clusterf*ck of biblical proportions while appeasing homicidally enraged customer base'. 

Good analysis piece from Guitar mag here

 

Edited September 2, 2018 by skankdelvar

[mikel]

16 hours ago, NancyJohnson said:

The pleasure comes from the fact they have a clueless CEO at the helm who put his faith in the future of the company with the Firebird X.

Isn't everyone just a little tired of Led Pauls and SGs?

Christ on a bike, considering their reliance on a handful of 60 year old designs, if Gibson were a car company, they'd have gone bust decades ago.

Do fender not rely, almost exclusively on 60 year old guitar and bass designs? They even go to extremes to make some instruments look 60 years old ffs.

[NancyJohnson]

1 hour ago, mikel said:

Do fender not rely, almost exclusively on 60 year old guitar and bass designs? They even go to extremes to make some instruments look 60 years old ffs.

We're not on the subject of Fender here, though, it's Gibson.  If you're aware of the current financial issues on Planet Les Paul, then you'll be aware that they need to satiate the demands of their creditors; they're between a rock and a hard place here...overpriced Les Pauls selling for £3K+, frankly shoddy looking Juniors for £700.00.  Fender are just as guilty in the innovation area, but their business model seems a tad more robust at the current juncture.

[Len_derby]

19 hours ago, mikel said:

The EB range was a standby of pub and club bands back in the late 60s and 70s.

My experience of pub and club bands now is that you very, very rarely see a Gibson bass. In my neck of the woods anyway.

[spongebob]

At least there might be some SG basses available at last. 

The US had the 2018's in stock last November. I pre-ordered, with deposit, one over here from a dealer.

4 months later (March/April), I cancelled the order, as there was clearly no sign of it ever arriving. Was originally promised a few weeks....over 16 later, deal not done.

I could have probably walked to the States quicker to pick one up. The UK stock apparently comes from the US to Amsterdam, and then sent here. I kept being told 'there's a shipment next week....yours is on that'.

Never again, another lost customer for Gibson! 😤

[Woodinblack]

19 hours ago, NancyJohnson said:

Isn't everyone just a little tired of Led Pauls and SGs?

People say they are until they come up with something else and then they rant about why aren't they just doing les Pauls and SGs.

As you see from above, people even get upset if they do them in other colours.

19 hours ago, NancyJohnson said:

Christ on a bike, considering their reliance on a handful of 60 year old designs, if Gibson were a car company, they'd have gone bust decades ago.

Or a bike company?

[bassbiscuits]

Gibson and Fender are each sitting on a pile of awesome, classic designs for guitar and bass. 

Fender manage both to make both faithful representations of their classic models, and updated versions with sensible, useful amendments.

Plus a product range spanning various custom shop, MIA, MIJ, MIM, along with the large Squier range to cover a lot of different price points.

Gibson on the other hand haven't even regularly produced an accurate version of some of their existing models, for example the original EB basses, SG or LP Juniors or Firebird 1 guitar (or single pickup Thunderbird bass for that matter).  

The tweaks made have often answered questions no one has asked - the Firebird X, SG Zoot Suit, the robot tuners, the wider neck and lower frets of the 2015 range etc. 

Gibson need to concentrate both on making the best possible versions of their own classic designs (which merit the hefty price tag), and make sure the improvements/developments they make on more contemporary models are based on what players might actually want. 

For what it's worth the Epiphones I've played seem to have a closer take on that that Gibson ironically - models like the Jack Casady Bass, Thunderbird classic pro and the Casino Gary Clark Junior model I have are brilliant designs - sensible rejigs of classic models to make them versatile, affordable instruments. 

Edited September 3, 2018 by bassbiscuits

[AndyTravis]

20 hours ago, NancyJohnson said:

a handful of 60 year old designs, if Gibson were a car company, they'd have gone bust decades ago.

Not quite the same thing, but...

(oh and PS - the £3.3m Aston won’t be road legal...😳)

[spectoremg]

5 hours ago, mikel said:

Do fender not rely, almost exclusively on 60 year old guitar and bass designs? They even go to extremes to make some instruments look 60 years old ffs.

Fair point. 

[steve-bbb]

23 hours ago, NancyJohnson said:

The pleasure comes from the fact they have a clueless CEO at the helm who put his faith in the future of the company with the Firebird X.

Isn't everyone just a little tired of Led Pauls and SGs?

Christ on a bike, considering their reliance on a handful of 60 year old designs, if Gibson were a car company, they'd have gone bust decades ago.

so out of morbid curiosity i went for a peek at this ... the comments are entertaining

http://www.gibson.com/Products/Electric-Guitars/Firebird/Gibson-USA/Firebird-X.aspx

[NancyJohnson]

4 minutes ago, steve-bbb said:

so out of morbid curiosity i went for a peek at this ... the comments are entertaining

http://www.gibson.com/Products/Electric-Guitars/Firebird/Gibson-USA/Firebird-X.aspx

Thing with the Firebird X is that it shouldn't have progressed beyond a couple of prototypes.  I believe you also needed some additional hardware to make it work properly, or at the very least use it to it's full capacity.

[AndyTravis]

14 minutes ago, NancyJohnson said:

Thing with the Firebird X is that it shouldn't have progressed beyond a couple of prototypes.  I believe you also needed some additional hardware to make it work properly, or at the very least use it to it's full capacity.

You can imagine the look on our faces when the Gibson rep at the time (a great bloke called Nick) unveiled the Fireturd X and it’s badly designed footswitches and charging packs and spare bits and counter-intuitive control set up.

We’d fought tooth and nail to be Gibson dealers, and more and more shite turned up, the Robot Guitar, Dark Fire, Dusk Tiger, Robot Explorer and so on. Then there was the “everything in the range has a hideous 120th anniversary inlay in the fingerboard” stuff which they delivered on mass in the autumn of the 120th anniversary year - meaning we still had stock a year later.

The last I saw they’d put “les Paul 100” on all the headstocks.

They really are an odd company. 

I think it got to a point where they just took money out of the company account and sent us stuff they thought we “should” have.

We had to unpack stuff to check for damage as they wouldn’t accept blame if a fault was discovered more than a week after delivery - the farce of that was that we had 10+ shops so everything came via the warehouse and could be over that time before we got to see it.

That then led to customers accusing us of selling ex-demo gear as we’d unpacked it.

Nuts.

The custom shop (R7/R8/R9/RO) Les Pauls were very special, the Memphis 335’s etc were lovely.

The standard stuff was somewhat variable.

The Robot stuff was crap.

 

Anyhow, that was 4/5 years ago - as far as I’m aware, things have not improved.

 

Edited September 3, 2018 by AndyTravis

[rushbo]

15 minutes ago, NancyJohnson said:

Thing with the Firebird X is that it shouldn't have progressed beyond a couple of prototypes.  I believe you also needed some additional hardware to make it work properly, or at the very least use it to it's full capacity.

I quite like the shape, but it looks superhumanly fiddly to navigate.

[AndyTravis]

17 minutes ago, rushbo said:

I quite like the shape, but it looks superhumanly fiddly to navigate.

If you can imagine trying to knit a jumper while wearing mittens in the dark with a monkey bouncing on your head - you’re somewhere near how complex it was.

Bearing in mind it really did seem to have a mind of it’s own and was akin to a Rubix cube with strings...and once you almost sussed it, the battery ran out.

Edited September 3, 2018 by AndyTravis