Re: I've always defended Gibson QC, now I got burned - Twice
I am not defending shoddy manufacturing at all. No excuse not to put forth your best effort every day you go to work. But the reality is, we all have bad days it seems. I think they used to have two piles. The best ones used to go to the small indy dealers (the ones that are picky and will send back the duds) and then there's the ones that used to be considered "2nd's" and I think those now go to MF/AMS/GC/SamAsh etc.
Notice on the used market you used to see guitars marked as 2nd. Now you never see them any longer. I think this is the heart of hte issue. THe peckerhead that runs Gibson is selling his 2nds as regular merchandise.
This is another reason to cut out the small Indy dealers. They cater to anal guys like us. We all know what to look for and won't accept 2nd best. I imagine those Indy dealers sent back enough stock that Gibson probably had to start spending more and more time checking their orders. Too much time spent on a very small minority of all their stuff that they sell.
They are either poised to be sold or they are up to something else. I'm the last consipiracy theorist on this earth. I think all that stuff people come up with is highly entertaining. But there is no doubt in my mind that Gibson is setting themselves up for a major move of some sort. They've stopped or decreased production on certain guitars, they are consolidating their lines of distribution, they are decreasing their number of dealers. Too many things going on that add up to a major change of some sort. They guy that runs the place is a major peckerhead apparently, but he's probably a pretty smart guy, one that just doesn't care about the 1/2 of 1 percent of his customers that expect the best.
How many people go out and buy Gibson pickups to put in their Epiphones? TONS of them. We are such a minority when it comes to the overall massive guitar market. Take 100 guitarists and show them a guitar with a poorly cut nut and ask them to find the one flaw on this guitar. 90 or more of them wouldn't be able to find it.
I think it's damn sad how the smaller dealers are getting squeezed. I wish I was running the show.
Gibson cranks out a ton of guitars. THey're percentage of crappy ones is probably the same percentage that Hamer and Heritage, et. al. have. It's just that Heritage only makes 1/100th of the number of guitars that Gibson makes (probably less than that). So, if they crank out 2% of their guitars with issues, they get handled at the dealer level (hopefully) and we don't see too many of them. My 535 Heritage arrived with sawdust in the case. It just kept showing up each time I'd open the damn thing. I think it was actually from the case itself, not the guitar, but I digress.
if Gibson cranks out that arbitrary 2% of duds, that translates to a huge number of guitars. I truly believe that is what you are seeing.
Now when it comes to tone, there just aren't that many guitars that can give me the Les Paul tone. I've tried a lot of them, but when it comes to feel and tone, give me one of my Les Pauls any day. How many American Strats have you played with issues? I've played a bunch. Fender cranks out their share of duds as well. It's the nature of the beast.
Just my two cents, and I'm as anal as the rest of you guys. But with a little search and patience, you can find a great one.
