Re: EIGHT STRING GUITARISTS..?
Gibson need to do what the people want. There are many brands with better value for money than Gibson and a refusal to do anything else than 6 strings will ultimately get them closed down.
Consumers will just go elsewhere and forget the Gibson name which, given the current build quality, is all you pay for.
The reason other brands are successful is that they adapt their range to suit the market and Gibson haven't done that.
Furthermore, it's actually cheaper to get a bespoke model made than to buy a Gibson off the shelf.
The problem with Gibson making eight string models is that I doubt anything who thinks about getting thinks about Gibson as a lot of people view gibson as a rock and metal guitars but there’s so many companies that build awesome eight strings
Esp, LTD, Schecter, ibanez, Strandberg, Ormsby, strictly 7 and occasionally Jackson
Eight string still isn’t popular enough for the big companies like fender and Gibson to adopt it as it doesn’t fit with their brand image,
PRS have made eight string that are cool but they’ll never be a large portion of they’re income so making them on a large scale isn’t financially viable.
You can’t get economies of scale in vastly niche markets (players who want an eight that is also a Gibson) so even if Gibson made a eight string the price would likely be ridiculously high so that would scare off the potential consumer however they use could epiphone to test designs for example.
Gibson to me should stick to their core model and target market and focus on price and quality rather than trying to please everyone.
This is reason subsidiary companies exist for example you wouldn’t see fender make a Flying V with a Floyd and emg pickups but from Jackson (which fender own) it’s more accepted due to history of that name.
If Gibson jumped on the seven string band wagon back in the 90s that perhaps the Gibson name would have a different meaning in the extended range community but as of now no
The core fender brand doesn’t adapt to change and they’re doing well because they have all these subsidiary companies and brands on which they can appeal to a wider audience.
Gibson in my opinion should focus on the quality, price and presentation of their core lineup of 6 string including SGs, LPs, Explorers, Vs and RDs and then once they’ve refined those to a high quality for an acceptable price they could start new subsidiary’s or buy brands with whom they could start manufacturing seven, eight, nine, multiscale etc instruments without upsetting their core audience.
Also on the idea of brand image, my dad is 59 and the only guitar company he’s ever heard of is Gibson so that’s a perspective from a non guitarist who isn’t even interested in guitars.
Gibson is such a powerful and recognisable name not just in the guitar players community but in the rock community in general and the best Gibson can do at this point is reclaim that status to be as ubiquitous and iconic for quality and sound as they used to be, they need to aim to be the gold standard of rock guitars again. However people don’t buy them anymore because their QC sucks and they’re far too expensive for what they are hence why you have bigger bands like Priest, Trivium and In flames using Epiphones on stage because epiphone have developed a good price to quality ratio.
Also think of the artists that have left Gibson, the main ones that come to my head are bill kelliher of Mastodon and James Hetfield of Metallica both of which went to ESP.
So it’s simply doesn’t seem like eight strings would be worth Gibson’s time, for example the first eight I’ll buy is the Ibanez FTM33 but that’s just my taste in that case.
