The Zoot Suit is not a stupid idea. It IS a straightforward guitar worth the money. It's like a thousand bucks and it's a real Gibson that is impossible to warp or break the neck on -- meaning it's gonna last these next 50 years AT LEAST...
I seriously doubt they are pressing the birch-ply laminate themselves.
It's really funny to talk **** on Gibson for their price points, when Fender needlessly raised their prices 20% across the board last year and PRS only start getting good around the $2000 mark.
It's just a business...it costs money to build guitars and it costs more money the bigger your company is...everybody in the country is on hard times right now, and GGC is one of them...but to wish or hope that they go bankrupt or out of business means you want to see one of America's oldest and most respected companies fail and all their employees without jobs. Why? Just cuz you can't afford a $6000 limited edition collector's reissue?
Please. If you don't like their guitars, that's one thing, but until you've run your own successful guitar manufacturing business i don't really think you have any experience to say what things should cost or how they should do business.
I think Gibson does a good job of doing what they're known for (the vintage-correct guitars) while still trying to innovate and improve the guitar game. A lot of people talked crap on the Robot tuners without even trying them...I've spent a lot of time with the ones at my shop and it is a **** COOL system to have on a guitar...it works really well and makes PLAYING easier because you're not constantly checking your tuning...
Same with the Zoot Suits...they directly addressed one of the biggest problems EVERY guitar manufacturer has...warped or damaged necks...then they took a lead from Martin and tried using birch-ply laminate. The guitars sound and feel great and are pretty much indestructible...if a small independant company like Composite Electrics had made it, y'all would've thought it was this hip new idea but Gibson did it so it's stupid and destined to fail.
Guess that's why all the Robots at my shop sold out in less than a week and we can't even keep Zoot Suits in stock because young kids who down-tune love the fact that they can't bend the neck on 'em.
After a year at that shop, i've seen probably 50 Gibsons come and go through my doors. I've sold three Paul Reed Smiths and still have the same 6 plastic-wrapped no-tone $3,600 chunks of mahagony on the wall that were there when i dropped off my application. I spend at least nine hours a day, every day, in a place with hundreds of guitars, and the Gibsons from the custom shop are almost always the best-built and best-sounding in the building.
If we lost Gibson, we'd be losing a huge part of guitar culture in general.
