Gibsgone. Maybe

[Simon Barden]

Voldemort and co. may not be around for much longer....

https://www.thestreet.com/story/1428...-its-debt.html

[Sonic Mountain]

Seems to have been in decline for a while now.

[Simon Barden]

I know. All they needed to do is make the same guitars well but try and make them less expensive - but they couldn't do that.

2015 must have been a terrible year for them - with a self-inflicted wound.

[DrNomis_44]

I can see why the quality of their guitars has declined a bit, I saw a video on youtube of a guy who had bought an expensive Les Paul, only to have to return it to get it replaced as the quality of the instrument was below par, he explained that he had to return every replacement he had been sent and that he wasn't going to buy any more guitars from them.

[king casey]

Methinks the lawyers took all their money.

BTW All the legal wrangling seems to be centred around the 'Les Paul' brand?

cheers, Mark.

[wazkelly]

$1.2B turnover and still cannot manage their finances.....gotta wonder how much has been or is still being wasted on non income producing executive salaries. Usually the first place to look to save a business going under. Not that I care that much as would not buy one of their new instruments given the high price to low QC aspect.

[Simon Barden]

Gibson guitar quality has often see-sawed. It was terrible in the '80s. My mate had a guitar shop in the mid-late 80s and sent most of the guitars back to the distributor have the necks reset. I never liked any of the LP's I tried in the music shops in the '80s - I bought a Yamaha SG3000 instead. But my '95 LP is superb, so they must have got it back together at some point. And then probably lost and found it again several times.

[wazkelly]

Know what you mean. When my eldest son went shopping for his Explorer about 10 years ago he went to several stores and all the black ones were so poorly finished that you could see the glue lines where planks had been glued together near the control knob wing. He ended up with a white one as it felt the best, probably due to being the only one available with an ebony fret board, and was also best finished too.

[Fretworn]

That fact that they seem to be unable to stay in tune is a negative thing. They can sell off Kramer and some of the other brands, kill off some of the models. They'll survive, but there will definitely be changes.

[Marcel]

Saddest thing is the basic design though on some aspects is mechanically flawed is also a damn good sounding instrument.

If you were 100% certain to get a quality build then most other issues fall by the way side and the chances increase dramatically that you would buy it anyway regardless of price... Most other instrument manufacturers CEO's have worked that out, or have at least bastardised it reasonably well into a more user friendly version of 'you get what you pay for' regime.... I suppose I should count myself as one of the lucky ones with my 2016 model LP that so far has only had its Switchcraft switch fail.

But hey, with $1.2b in revenue and they still can't manage the numbers says buckets about who is running that show...