Re: 2014 Gibson Lineup Released
Hmmm. Well. Their heads are still firmly planted up their asses through 2014. Still no proper nut slotting, fret dressing, and setup - the things that cost them the most, and that make the largest difference in the apparent level of "quality" that the guitar has. If you don't do that kind of work yourself (and most people don't), you have to add $150 to $200 to the cost of every model in order to get it to where it should be right out of the factory. And this refusal to put the labor time into this stuff is after introducing labor-saving changes like across-the-board Plek'ing and frets over the binding. Plek'ing sounds good on paper to an idealist, but in practice, it can easily be used by a company as an excuse for not doing proper, hands-on fret and nut work individually tailored to each guitar. Anyone who falls for these changes as being more beneficial to the user than they are to Gibson is crazy. So, for 2014, they spend less and they give you a product that is no better than the embarrassing crap that they have already been putting out for at least 10 years. Gibson since the mid-'80's has unfortunately gone from a brilliantly resurrected historical American company back to being an absolute embarrassment to American manufacturing. They're even worse than they were under Norlin IMHO.
