Gibson just getting weirder and weirder.

[Unknown_User]

29 minutes ago, Crusoe said:

They couldn't have salvaged anything? Necks? Bridges? Tuners? Knobs? Nothing?

Exactly.  Complete cobblers.  A lame excuse following a stupid publicity stunt gone wrong.

[Dan Dare]

The real reason for this nonsense is to keep prices high. A lot of companies do it - destroying last year's stock, less popular models and so on - because people won't buy current stuff if they can pick up older stuff at a bargain price. "Unsafe" my foot. Unsafe for Gibson's margins is what it is.

[Crusoe]

13 minutes ago, Dan Dare said:

The real reason for this nonsense is to keep prices high. A lot of companies do it - destroying last year's stock, less popular models and so on - because people won't buy current stuff if they can pick up older stuff at a bargain price. "Unsafe" my foot. Unsafe for Gibson's margins is what it is.

Wasn't there a bit of a stink kicked up recently about Burberry or some other fashion house doing this?

[Stub Mandrel]

1 hour ago, Dan Dare said:

The real reason for this nonsense is to keep prices high. A lot of companies do it - destroying last year's stock, less popular models and so on - because people won't buy current stuff if they can pick up older stuff at a bargain price. "Unsafe" my foot. Unsafe for Gibson's margins is what it is.

Exactly what you say.

[musicbassman]

This has all the bad smell of a brand/company that has completely lost it's way.

If they were smashing up a shipload of knockoff Chinese copies and they were claiming they were 'dangerous' I could just about understand this, but to proudly and publically declare your own guitars are nothing more than useless firewood is mind numbing lunacy.

If you're deliberately going to destroy stock then you'd surely do that as privately as possible.

Will the last person to buy a Gibson please put the lights out as you leave.

[Teebs]

Very, very sad  

[Woodinblack]

Yeh, just watched that.

Pretty sad. Would have loved one of those.

[Cato]

Didn't Gibson used to have a policy of destroying slightly damaged guitars rather than allowing them to be sold as B stock?

I vaguely recall watching a youtube clip of a guy going through US music store's dumpster and finding a Les Paul that had been smashed beyond repair by the shop because of some slight flaw.

[visog]

Stupid statement piece by Gibson which for the reasons stated ring hollow. But no bass content so should go to the Guitar section. Bringing back to bass then, what is the 'new Gibson' doing with the Tobias brand they bought?

[Jean-Luc Pickguard]

They should have all been plugged into amps turned up to eleven so the horrific death noises of all those geetars could have been recorded. Without a quirky angle to dictate the narrative its just wanton destruction.

[SpondonBassed]

8 hours ago, NancyJohnson said:

Did anyone see this?

I know the Firebird X was a bit of a munter, but couldn't these instruments have been distributed to good causes or stripped and retooled?  I've no idea how old the footage is, but it does seem horribly wasteful.  Even the pickups (Gibson mini-humbuckers) are the same as the ones in regular Firebirds.  Maybe it's a way of giving ol' Henry's legacy the finger, but like I said,  Gibson just get weirder and weirder.

 

 

It probably makes corporate sense in some way that would not be immediately obvious.

It puts me in mind of our local Toyota factory.  They'd send whole cars to Sims metal yard for secure destruction.  These would be development test cars and such.

Although he was not allowed to get near them, my mate Jack was told by the yard supervisor that some of the cars had nothing wrong with them.   Some had less than 10,000 miles on them and looked as new.

They all got crushed.

[Bassassin]

8 hours ago, NancyJohnson said:

Gibson have made a statement:

“The Firebird X destruction video was an isolated batch of Firebird X models built in 2009-2011 which were unsalvageable and damaged with unsafe components. This isolated group of Firebird X models were unable to be donated for any purpose and were destroyed accordingly.”

Utter, shameless pack of lies. Completely despicable behaviour simply because to sell off an unsuccesful model cheap - indeed to admit to having an unsuccesful model - somehow devalues their brand.

Oblivious to the reality that their brand is rapidly becoming a laughing stock.

[taunton-hobbit]

.... and this is what happens when large companies are run by accountants..............

😎

[Stub Mandrel]

Three possibilities:

1. They didn't play authentic enough.
2. Someone fitted the strings in the wrong order.
3. They took advice from John Hall and he said "destroy any guitars that aren't genuine Rickenbackers!"

 

[Daz39]

Yeah, tax reasons in play here. Poor taste to do it like this too. People built these, and their work is being mocked.

[skankdelvar]

Mr @Skinnyman seems to have been among the first to identify the reason. They were trashing them to get them off the books before the end of the financial year. 

It also seems that these events may have taken place during the interregnum when Unhappy Hank had been sent to the end office without any windows but before the new 'management team' had fully taken their seats at the table.

Either way, it is unfortunate timing that the vid appear at a moment when Gibson are on a reputational knife-edge

[Bolo]

Every guitar manufacturer that does mass production has quality control at their regional distribution centres to double-check the factory's work. All instruments that fail QC are utterly destroyed to prevent possibly faulty parts reaching the market, even eBay or gumtree, because that would be a marketing nightmare.

[Doctor J]

Next video will be the creepy “play authentic” guy driving a Prius over a load of Deans shouting “DO YOU SEE, DEAN? DO YOU SEE WHAT HAPPENS WHEN YOU FUDGE A STRANGER IN THE PASS?!?!?!”

Edited August 1, 2019 by Doctor J

[skankdelvar]

It strikes me that the policy of destroying guitars because they are slightly sub-standard is a mistake. 

As a child I recall confectionery shops selling 'Mis-Shapes' i.e., chocolates which had emerged from the manufacturing process in a less than perfect state. These Mis-Shapes sold for less than the price of a perfect chocolate yet afforded their youthful consumers a not inconsiderably high level of satisfaction while stoking an ambition to purchase 'the real thing' at a later juncture and when possessed of the wherewithal so to do

Messrs Gibson and their competitors are in my opinion missing a trick here. Surely it is better to get £500 for a B-stamped £1500 guitar than hurl it beneath a caterpillar vehicle with all the attendant obloquy which ensues when the practice becomes public knowledge.

Of course, one can always make exceptions. Trashing Firebird X's was very much the thing at the time of that unhappy instrument's introduction. Why change now?

[Ricky 4000]

Broken biscuits... you'd think Gibson wouldn't have been stupid enough to have contractors with camera phones do that out of doors, with a catapillar tractor ffs... either they've been royally fitted up, or they deserve the bad publicity, or both.

[skankdelvar]

2 minutes ago, Ricky 4000 said:

Broken biscuits... you'd think Gibson wouldn't have been stupid enough to have contractors with camera phones do that out of doors, with a catapillar tractor ffs... either they've been royally fitted up, or they deserve the bad publicity, or both.

According to the Gomer who was in charge of destruction it seems that Gibson management required visual proof of destruction and insisted that events be recorded.

They just didn't think for a moment that everyone would go crazy when they saw Firebird X's being destroyed. For myself, my heart joyously skipped a beat as the noxious things were sent straight to guitar Hell.

[Ricky 4000]

2 minutes ago, skankdelvar said:

According to the Gomer who was in charge of destruction it seems that Gibson management required visual proof of destruction and insisted that events be recorded.

Priceless! 😄

[chris_b]

It's perfectly understandable that a company will destroy unfit merchandise. The old management had a reputation for less than perfect QC, so the new management has to do a lot of tidy up to do before they can restart the company.

No company would put known "bad" products out into the market place, so it's unrealistic to expect that Gibson would.

There's a lot of knee-jerking going on here!!

[Ricky 4000]

If I was going to do something that people would find obscene and/or disgusting - I'd have the decency to do it in a darkened room, and in private.

[chris_b]

. . . . or maybe the new management is doing this publicly in order to send out the message that it getting serious about QC and won't tolerate the working practises that the old management thought were appropriate.