Re: New Musicman Offerings for 2014
I love Music Man guitars, but their forum almost makes me want to disown them. It's just a bunch of dudes rimming Sterling Ball for every single little damn thing he does. It's pretty sickening. They don't even let you talk about other brands of guitars, and if you express a negative opinion of EBMM every forumite will tell you how wrong you are.
What a bunch of asslickers. EBMM makes the best playing guitars I've ever picked up though. And while they seem expensive, that's just the MSRP. For their quality, EBMM's are priced very competitively.
I wouldn't go so far as to say that, but yeah the EBMM forum is pretty hardcore for brand loyalty. They're good for information about any and all things Music Man, though. And their CS department is great about repairs and ordering spare parts.
EB/MM makes great guitars but if never give them a dime of my money. I don't like the way they handle themselves if their business.
The thing that really bugs me is their reason for not having a custom shop.
Sterling's favorite lines on the subject are, more or less "a custom shop is for when your production line sucks" and "Our guitars are configurable in over 10,000 different ways, that's enough for
anyone." and my favorite "It's not practical for have to re-tool for every single person who wants something different."
All three of these statements are bollocks and I'll tell you why.
1) Custom shops are for people who want an instrument the way THEY want it to be built because the options they want aren't available off the rack.
2) If the 5-digit number of options should be enough, why do people constantly ask for a custom shop order (or cannibalize/customize their their guitars like I did)? Hmmm.... 10,000 options and the ones I want aren't among them. How picky of me.
3) Not practical my ass. Endorsed EBMM artists show up with custom-ordered axes in public all the time. Prototypes can be found on eBay occasionally.
I've friggen held factory customized guitars in my hands for God's sake, though the owner of the guitar even said "Don't let out on the forum that I have this, Sterling would be pissed if word got out." Why does he have it then? Connections. They can and do build customized one-offs. All. The Time. Not offering them to the paying public is just elitist crap.
My '01 Silo Special is the best guitar I've ever had, at least it was after I got done customizing it with the help of a few luthiers. Until they open up an EBMM custom shop, I'll be DIY-Customizing used ones, or just playing other brands or my own builds freely.
