Fender and Gibson, the cost is it worth it...Discuss amongst the group.

[Dedman]

I call that the "no tomorrow" wholesaling theory. You force unsaleable product on a retailer forgetting that tomorrow he'll be broke and won't be around to sell ANY of your product. You be surprised how many board members have no idea what their sales dept are doing and aren't interested so long as the sales come in. Just last year I had the owner of a large US company confess he had no idea his only Aus distributor hadn't placed an order in 2 yrs.

[wazkelly]

It happens in many industries, including the car business where Toyota just keep pumping stock into dealers whether they want it or not. Unfortunately not even Tony Abbot can stop their boat loads of stock from turning up whether it is needed, wanted, or unwanted. Not the only brand to do this as most mass produced stuff chasing market dominance is equally as guilty.

[Simon Barden]

It is corporate thinking short-sightedness. It means that only the very large music store chains have any leverage in dealing with the likes of Gibson, which then means that it's only the large chains that end up stocking Gibson - and we all know what the general level of service is from large chains. Even in the US it's just as bad. Our keyboard player recently worked in Boston (on a software contract) and got to know some other musicians in his office. There were two large chain stores in Boston that sold Gibsons, but if they didn't want the pushy sales staff that going there entailed, they had to go to New York, over 200 miles away, to find an independent dealer.

[wazkelly]

Absolute arrogance and totally out of touch with their market & customer base.

[Simon Barden]

I have to agree.

[Andy123]

I know this is a fairly old thread, but I felt compelled to contribute something:

I started out with a bottom-of-the-line Ibanez strat (gift from the folks to get me started) and eventually bought myself a Yamaha AES500. When I got seriously gigging, I changed the pick ups in the yamaha and bought an Epiphone Explorer as an onstage back up. All of that gear was purchased for <$1000 each. I would never have dreamed of buying a real guitar.

Until it happened...

My band broke up in 2006 and I'd had enough of the regular rock gig lifestyle. To make sure I didn't give up on music altogether when the band finished up, I decided to commit myself to further musical activities by investing butt loads of cash into a DAW and a heavily discounted genuine Gibson Les Paul Classic 1960s reissue. (This strategy didn't work, but thats another story).

I asked the staff in the store why it was so heavily discounted, and no one was able to tell me. I plugged it in and it was the best sounding guitar I'd ever played. I couldn't spot anything wrong with it, so I laid a deposit on it and went home buzzing.

After I payed the rest and got it home I noticed why it was so heavily discounted: the paint was dented where it had been sitting in the guitar stand (back of the neck and two spots on the base) and in some of the spots it looked worn through to the wood.

I'm not sure what would cause a finish to behave like that and I'm paranoid that regular use will see it happen in other places on the guitar as well. I'm wondering if my guitar is just another statistic in the slide in Gibson's QC implied elsewhere in this thread.

[VonScott]

I’ve just been reading a great series of interviews on reverb that throws up some interesting info, like that Les Paul wasn’t nearly as involved with design as he claims to have been. I’ve only read the Dan Smith and Ted McCarty ones so far, but will get to the others.

Really interesting reads if you’re into this kind of thing: https://reverb.com/news/former-gibso...avy-management

[Marcel]

When I was a child my uncle left his guitar with my parents while he sailed the 7 seas in the Navy. I 'played' with it a lot, mostly by imitating the those who I saw on TV (Elvis) and by driving my Matchbox toy cars under the strings. As I hit my teenage years my parents offered me lessons, and it quickly became apparent I needed a better guitar, so dad lashed out and got me my first acoustic being one recommended by my teacher as 'a good one', a full AU$60 for a Fender F-25.
The F-25 withstood the rigours of my teenage years of learning the entire Beatles and the Rolling Stones song books, plus those birthday parties at friends homes, and then the 6 years I spent in the air force, and then the years on the road as 'the sound guys acoustic axe' until it along with a plywood strat copy and a Italian 12 string suddenly were all stashed in the corner wardrobe for near on 25 years to hide them from the three all invading and investigative rug rats...
The rug rats left home. I was bored. I was cleaning out the wardrobe.... guess what I found... Hmmm, needs new strings.

That's all it took. a new set of strings to get both the 12 string Eston and the Fender F-25 back into a playable state. The Ason plywood body Strat wasn't so lucky. A broken truss rod had virtually killed the Ason (most incorrectly pronounced it Anson). Quotes from various luthiers had me having thoughts of binning it, but I found some cheap replacement necks on Ebay and thought 'how hard can it be?'... plus there was all this other cheap guitar parts, so I bought a few "things" to make ever so small improvements. And then I found kit guitars...lol
As a tech for nearly all of my career and while working as a sound guy the cheap Ason also suffered the humility of becoming my test bed for experiments. Switching, all manner of PU's, pre-amps, and other Frankenstein-ish stuff, my fist task was to restore it to what most would consider normal. But I was never really happy with the result, most probably because I knew what it could be because I had seen elsewhere what was possible. A benefit of being the crew sound guy/tech is that nobody stops you from getting up on stage and having a hit of a drum, or a strum of a guitar, or a "Wun, Tooo!" into a microphone. It's part of your job. The sound guys ears are as much a part of the band as the singers voice or any guitar. So my hands got to 'feel' and ears got to hear so many incredible guitars....
Now at home, the years have past, good fortune has seen my collection of guitars (and amps and pedals) has grown. A 2016 Gibson LP studio, a mis-labeled Fender 2017 MIM Strat, plus a myriad of partscasters and kits that are each very unique for multitudes of reasons. Now I'm the first to say I'm not the best at putting a finish on a guitar but that is not where it's at for me, the tone and feel and sound is what makes any guitar great. I can forgive a thicker neck, or a radius that seems awkward, or a body that feels heavy or bites into my ribs, but I can't forgive what my ears hear, and that is for me what truly counts. The axe itself is what it is, but how it sings to me is most important as that is what is carried to an audience. Be it a radio or a CD or via MP3, you only hear its voice, not the label or the colour or the flame Maple. Yeah... but being pretty is often nice too ...
That said, the best voices are not always where you think they may be. My PRS-1H build has a wonderful acoustic quality that has me forgetting that I can in fact plug it in. My denim Tele partscaster with PBG neck PU just works for me for my desired Tele tones, but the MIM Fender Strat Deluxe and its noiseless PU's effortlessly gives me those clean start tones I could only have imagined getting any time over the last 30 years. I've learned that SD rails PU's sound better on YouTube than in my feeble hands, and that a kit SGM-1 with the right PU's has the tone I like but doesn't sit in the hands anywhere as near as comfortable as my Gibson LP studio who is sometimes fussy on which OD pedal it is happy to 'sing' through...

Okay, I bought the cheapest Gibson LP I could find and coming off the same production line as the way more expensive versions it easily gives me the LP tones I want, It's a mid range Fender MIM Strat sold on a special deal that came from the factory with the wrong headstock label (lucky me), The F-25 is 45 years old and the Eston 12 string is nearer 40yo, and the kits are all less than 3yo. But the kits are what I put into them, and for me the name brands I keep are more as a reference. In my time I've seen, played and felt some 'top end' instruments, and all in all for any given model/specification and the dollars paid I haven't seen a huge range in difference in the sounds that come out of them. Some have nicer or unique paint, others have nicer neck profiles, some do or don't stay in tune regardless of treatment, this PU is crisp or that PU is dull and muddy, some have history or the owners claim 'Mojo', they are what they are, however there are some rare ones that do have awesome voices for certain songs...

In the end my opinion has come to this - No matter the choice or the reasons behind it, It is only worth what someone is willing to pay for it.... and if you like it enough you will still be happy if you needed to pay just a little more to get it...

[Simon Barden]

Andy 123, any nitro finish can be affected by some foams used on guitar stands, not just Gibson. It's just the way the nitro reacts with some of the foam compositions. It's the stand makers fault for not choosing a non-reactive foam. Poly finishes won't react, but then you don't get the nicer ageing you get with nitro IMO.

[wazkelly]

When I was a child my uncle left his guitar with my parents while he sailed the 7 seas in the Navy. I 'played' with it a lot, mostly by imitating the those who I saw on TV (Elvis) and by driving my Matchbox toy cars under the strings. As I hit my teenage years my parents offered me lessons, and it quickly became apparent I needed a better guitar, so dad lashed out and got me my first acoustic being one recommended by my teacher as 'a good one', a full AU$60 for a Fender F-25.
The F-25 withstood the rigours of my teenage years of learning the entire Beatles and the Rolling Stones song books, plus those birthday parties at friends homes, and then the 6 years I spent in the air force, and then the years on the road as 'the sound guys acoustic axe' until it along with a plywood strat copy and a Italian 12 string suddenly were all stashed in the corner wardrobe for near on 25 years to hide them from the three all invading and investigative rug rats...
The rug rats left home. I was bored. I was cleaning out the wardrobe.... guess what I found... Hmmm, needs new strings.

That's all it took. a new set of strings to get both the 12 string Eston and the Fender F-25 back into a playable state. The Ason plywood body Strat wasn't so lucky. A broken truss rod had virtually killed the Ason (most incorrectly pronounced it Anson). Quotes from various luthiers had me having thoughts of binning it, but I found some cheap replacement necks on Ebay and thought 'how hard can it be?'... plus there was all this other cheap guitar parts, so I bought a few "things" to make ever so small improvements. And then I found kit guitars...lol
As a tech for nearly all of my career and while working as a sound guy the cheap Ason also suffered the humility of becoming my test bed for experiments. Switching, all manner of PU's, pre-amps, and other Frankenstein-ish stuff, my fist task was to restore it to what most would consider normal. But I was never really happy with the result, most probably because I knew what it could be because I had seen elsewhere what was possible. A benefit of being the crew sound guy/tech is that nobody stops you from getting up on stage and having a hit of a drum, or a strum of a guitar, or a "Wun, Tooo!" into a microphone. It's part of your job. The sound guys ears are as much a part of the band as the singers voice or any guitar. So my hands got to 'feel' and ears got to hear so many incredible guitars....
Now at home, the years have past, good fortune has seen my collection of guitars (and amps and pedals) has grown. A 2016 Gibson LP studio, a mis-labeled Fender 2017 MIM Strat, plus a myriad of partscasters and kits that are each very unique for multitudes of reasons. Now I'm the first to say I'm not the best at putting a finish on a guitar but that is not where it's at for me, the tone and feel and sound is what makes any guitar great. I can forgive a thicker neck, or a radius that seems awkward, or a body that feels heavy or bites into my ribs, but I can't forgive what my ears hear, and that is for me what truly counts. The axe itself is what it is, but how it sings to me is most important as that is what is carried to an audience. Be it a radio or a CD or via MP3, you only hear its voice, not the label or the colour or the flame Maple. Yeah... but being pretty is often nice too ...
That said, the best voices are not always where you think they may be. My PRS-1H build has a wonderful acoustic quality that has me forgetting that I can in fact plug it in. My denim Tele partscaster with PBG neck PU just works for me for my desired Tele tones, but the MIM Fender Strat Deluxe and its noiseless PU's effortlessly gives me those clean start tones I could only have imagined getting any time over the last 30 years. I've learned that SD rails PU's sound better on YouTube than in my feeble hands, and that a kit SGM-1 with the right PU's has the tone I like but doesn't sit in the hands anywhere as near as comfortable as my Gibson LP studio who is sometimes fussy on which OD pedal it is happy to 'sing' through...

Okay, I bought the cheapest Gibson LP I could find and coming off the same production line as the way more expensive versions it easily gives me the LP tones I want, It's a mid range Fender MIM Strat sold on a special deal that came from the factory with the wrong headstock label (lucky me), The F-25 is 45 years old and the Eston 12 string is nearer 40yo, and the kits are all less than 3yo. But the kits are what I put into them, and for me the name brands I keep are more as a reference. In my time I've seen, played and felt some 'top end' instruments, and all in all for any given model/specification and the dollars paid I haven't seen a huge range in difference in the sounds that come out of them. Some have nicer or unique paint, others have nicer neck profiles, some do or don't stay in tune regardless of treatment, this PU is crisp or that PU is dull and muddy, some have history or the owners claim 'Mojo', they are what they are, however there are some rare ones that do have awesome voices for certain songs...

In the end my opinion has come to this - No matter the choice or the reasons behind it, It is only worth what someone is willing to pay for it.... and if you like it enough you will still be happy if you needed to pay just a little more to get it...

Well said Marcel.
I performed setups and string changes for other students at the guitar teacher my boys went to and was quite often underwhelmed with most expensive brand name guitars.

Even in a shop full of gibbos and epis can you truly pick the difference as the genuine one does sound a lot better but sadly the price difference has you walking out with an epi and choice of pickup upgrades and less damage done to your bank balance. Brand snobs will still pay extra just for bragging rights.

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