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Just hopping on the train of Things that could've been.

What a funny place the guitar biz is in.
If you take brands like Gibson and Fender, through the past few decades they have tried introducing new designs. People have generally rejected them all.
Now they find themselves in a place where they need to keep broadening their market share so they don't lose ground. Unfortunately instead of hiring designers who can do something cool, they are just going back through the vaults and re-issuing all of the failures of the past.
Then take a company like Rickenbacker. They are comparatively small and in the past decade they have DELETED a few models and yet operate at max capacity.
There are those that complain that they want something new from them but for now they have a strong business.
The moral of the story is that nothing grows or appreciates indefinitely and eventually things can get so big that they become unsustainable.
Personally I think it alpears to be a grasping at straws on the part of both Gibson and Fender. I wouldn't say they are on the brink of collapse or anything but I think they will need to shrink a bit to stay viable.
Fender has been great at over saturating the marketplace. There is such a huge inventory of used fenders from the past 25-30 years that fewer people buy new ones.

All I want are pelham blue SGs, and better QC from Gibson. If you're going to charge thousands of dollars for shit at least make it fucking playable.

Jeff-7 wrote:If you're going to charge thousands of dollars for shit at least make it fucking playable.

As soon as they figure out how to make a logo playable I'm sure it will happen, until then... sadness and disappointment..

It's just a little maddening that with the newer production models you have to play a few to find a decent one, and even then there's a good chance that you'll find finish flaws, rounded off truss rod nuts, etc. They can produce 9 different Slash LP's for thousands of dollars but the two affordable and awesome Sig models *imo* ,The Tweedy and Elliot Easton SGs, get axed after a very short time even though they were great sellers? Just making a living off the name on the headstock nowadays it seems.

Jeff-7 wrote:It's just a little maddening that with the newer production models you have to play a few to find a decent one, and even then there's a good chance that you'll find finish flaws, rounded off truss rod nuts, etc. They can produce 9 different Slash LP's for thousands of dollars but the two affordable and awesome Sig models *imo* ,The Tweedy and Elliot Easton SGs, get axed after a very short time even though they were great sellers? Just making a living off the name on the headstock nowadays it seems.

It was that way in the 90's too.... I can't even think about how many fucking stores I got drug to when my guitarist was looking for a LP.. and in the end they bought a used Heritage

It'd be nice if more people did that, Gibson might pull their head out of their ass then. I'd totally rock a Heritage H535, especially with the price/quality ratio compared to a Gibson 355.

Jeff-7 wrote:All I want are pelham blue SGs, and better QC from Gibson. If you're going to charge thousands of dollars for shit at least make it fucking playable.

Ugh, this. So hard.

I legitimately WANT to like Gibsons, I've always wanted a nice SG especially, but every single time I play one under the $2000 mark in a store it just has some glaring flaw in finish/build quality...
At that price point I don't think anybody expects sloppy paintjobs and wonky binding and sharp frets.

A LITTLE (note emphasis on "little") of the problems (especially thinking of sharp fret ends) could be on negligence at the store level. A small regional music shop that I used to work for decided to try selling heritage guitars after I left.
They had a gorgeous blonde 555. Flamed top and back, ebony fingerboard, the whole ball of wax!
I told them they needed to keep those guitars humidified but they were too lazy to do so.
In a couple months the top and back veneers had dried out and looked like ripple chips. The fingerboard had dried and shrunk so terrible that between the frets (which were poking through the binding) it looked like scallops.

The guitar wasn't like that when it arrived but the store and their laziness ruined it.
Now that doesn't happen for finish flaws and stripped truss rod nuts etc.

One thing everyone should know is that guitar center sells all of the "b" stock for manufacturers. I had a convo with a guy who worked at schecter. He would set up guitars when they arrived before being sent out to stores. He said that guitar center had such huge orders that they would send all of the flawed instruments there.
I would imagine gibson and martin are the same way.
I make no excuses for factory guitars though. In my situation I cannot control is a bug gets on a finish. I do my best to fix it but can't promise something won't get there.
The difference is that I spray in my garage and they have a super fancy spray facility. Heck they probably have automated clear coat machines. (Martin does for sure).

I wonder what would happen if...well how about Fender for example, went back to the days of selling THE Stratocaster, THE telecaster, etc instead of having 70 strat models?
Maybe it would fail but what a concept!

For Gibson, maybe have a couple vintage reissue les paul models and then 1 standard "modern model" (like the american standard strat)

The more often a company deletes models, adds models, deletes those, etc etc it looks like they are grasping at straws with no direction.
They could argue that they are going after the niche markets, making their money, and moving on, but I don't think public perception matches.

At least in the midwest unless you go to a major metro area the only place you're finding Gibsons are Best Buy and Guitar Center... I don't think the GCs around here actually care about taking care of the instruments because some shithead little kid is going to come fuck it up anyways or steal pieces of hardware off the damn things. I got lucky with my SG as it hadn't hit the sales floor yet. Now if only I could find someone with a Tweedy SG that wanted to swap for a white one...

Think I got lucky with my SG. No real finish problems and plays as well as I would need a guitar to, all for $650

Got it from MusicZoo, they seem to take care of their shit. Was marked as used but I can't find a single thing that would indicate that it was

Jeff-7 wrote:At least in the midwest unless you go to a major metro area the only place you're finding Gibsons are Best Buy and Guitar Center... I don't think the GCs around here actually care about taking care of the instruments because some shithead little kid is going to come fuck it up anyways or steal pieces of hardware off the damn things. I got lucky with my SG as it hadn't hit the sales floor yet. Now if only I could find someone with a Tweedy SG that wanted to swap for a white one...

A white SG you say?

Yes'suh. White w/black pickguard and ebony fretboard.

That's part of the reason I avoid big box stores.

I know my local shop doesn't do Gibson anymore because their initial amount for an order of inventory is huge, especially in this day and age, when people are most likely going to buy the guitar online anyway.