Firebird X's Being Run Over By An Excavator

Quantum Strummer

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I agree the videos aren't a good look for Gibson. I also think some folks are looking for reasons to outrage in public. The company is a convenient target, which is partly its own fault. They should spend less energy litigating and more making good guitars.

-Dave-
 

richardp69

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I'm likely not a great judge of quality or anything else for that matter. But, I keep hearing on several sites about the lousy Gibson product/quality and I just gotta say. I have 4 J 45's, a Hummingbird, a vintage Dove, a SJ and an older J 100 Xtra. Most of them (maybe all) are Custom Shop builds so maybe not a fair comparison but I will say, I can't find a thing wrong with any of them. Maybe not a popular thing to say these days but here it is. I'm a Gibson fan and am unashamed of it. (no worries though, I'll always love Guild more)
 

GAD

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I'm likely not a great judge of quality or anything else for that matter. But, I keep hearing on several sites about the lousy Gibson product/quality and I just gotta say. I have 4 J 45's, a Hummingbird, a vintage Dove, a SJ and an older J 100 Xtra. Most of them (maybe all) are Custom Shop builds so maybe not a fair comparison but I will say, I can't find a thing wrong with any of them. Maybe not a popular thing to say these days but here it is. I'm a Gibson fan and am unashamed of it. (no worries though, I'll always love Guild more)

I've owned five or six Custom Shop Historic Gibsons and they've all been stellar, but yeah - they're custom shop instruments with commensurate prices. The QC complaints I see are from the more pedestrian instruments.
 

walrus

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I've had two "regular" Gibsons. A 2001 ES-135 which was well made, and that I liked a lot. Sold it to fund a Bluesbird at the time. I also had a 2011 ES-339. which I returned (Guitar Center) because the fretboard dressing was messed up and affected the high E string playability. So, not statistically relevant, but that's a quality issue 50% of the time...

walrus
 

Grassdog

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I'm likely not a great judge of quality or anything else for that matter. But, I keep hearing on several sites about the lousy Gibson product/quality and I just gotta say. I have 4 J 45's, a Hummingbird, a vintage Dove, a SJ and an older J 100 Xtra. Most of them (maybe all) are Custom Shop builds so maybe not a fair comparison but I will say, I can't find a thing wrong with any of them. Maybe not a popular thing to say these days but here it is. I'm a Gibson fan and am unashamed of it. (no worries though, I'll always love Guild more)

+1 In my opinion their golden period is late 50's - mid 60's for acoustics (while manufacturing was still in Kalamazoo as Dread pointed out), but I've owned several that were made in Bozeman and I've had no complaints with any of them. My '64 Country Western is above the rest by a wide margin, but then again it's 55 years old and it's not really a fair comparison to the modern day models. If I buy another Gibson acoustic, it's probably going to be a late 50's J-45 or SJ.
 

GAD

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As a consultant I've worked at or with hundreds of companies. In my experience, when companies get to a certain size they focus more on being a company than anything else and that's when they start to lose their way.
 

fronobulax

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As a consultant I've worked at or with hundreds of companies. In my experience, when companies get to a certain size they focus more on being a company than anything else and that's when they start to lose their way.

Interesting insight. To which I will add the curse of outside investors. In general they know and care nothing about the business but are very interested in the return on their investment.

That said, I am convinced that part of this video is the result of an agenda. While you can justify the decision to destroy the instruments, rather than remainder them or strip them for parts or donate, the decision to lay them out in a line and drive heavy equipment over them, is the act of someone who is trying to make a point. Maybe the point is how clever they are by trashing them in this way?
 

bobouz

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I'm likely not a great judge of quality or anything else for that matter. But, I keep hearing on several sites about the lousy Gibson product/quality and I just gotta say. I have 4 J 45's, a Hummingbird, a vintage Dove, a SJ and an older J 100 Xtra. Most of them (maybe all) are Custom Shop builds so maybe not a fair comparison but I will say, I can't find a thing wrong with any of them. Maybe not a popular thing to say these days but here it is. I'm a Gibson fan and am unashamed of it. (no worries though, I'll always love Guild more)

Likewise, I truly love my short-scale Gibsons, both acoustics & electrics. If I had to pare everything down to one acoustic & one electric, it would be the J-185 & ES-330.

And unlike Martins, the instruments coming out of Montana don't need a neck reset or binding repaired at the waist after just a few years (both having been widely reported on the UMGF).

Down periods? Yes indeed. But there are tons of great to stellar Gibsons out there. Guild of course recognized this & patterned many of their instruments after similar Gibson designs. And more recently, Ren was working his magic in Bozeman long before landing in New Hartford.

Want to play bluegrass? Fire up your boilerplate Martin dread. But for the type of fingerpicking that comprises about 99% of what I do, nothing works better than my Gibsons & Guilds.
 

Quantum Strummer

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That said, I am convinced that part of this video is the result of an agenda. While you can justify the decision to destroy the instruments, rather than remainder them or strip them for parts or donate, the decision to lay them out in a line and drive heavy equipment over them, is the act of someone who is trying to make a point. Maybe the point is how clever they are by trashing them in this way?

I also suspect there's an agenda at work behind putting the video on YT. I'm not sure, though, whose agenda it is. The answer likely depends on why the video was made in the first place.

-Dave-
 
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