OTOH, if you rotate the product lines, you're still selling glue, wood and stain. Look at Taco Bell, they only use 4 ingredients for everything, and yet they keep coming out with new products.
Ovation/Adamas are the same type of synthetic bowl-back guitars.
Tacoma, IMO, has shuffled off this mortal coil, as a brand name(
).
Takamine still has a rep as a good guitar with a great pickup system,
Guild's acoustic line has it's rep,
That leaves the solidbody lines.
I don't think it would be cannibalizing it's own line to do a run of s-100's or s-90's. IIRC, Hamer doesn't have a line of sg similar guitars. They cover the shred-stick and lp-knockoff market, shape-wise. Since so much of it is automated anymore, I don't see it being a problem to throw a little variety into the mix. After all, not everybody wants 12 variants of the 6120.
That being said, Fender would be happy to see us all playing telecasters, instead of what we prefer. If we want a hollowbody, they'be be happy to see us with a Gretsch in our hand.
Believe you me, I hate this consolidation crap. All it does is hasten the day when we don't have choices at all.