Overall state of gibson

[meknight]

Craig,

I have been following the news/internet traffic about gibson: the problem with wood sourcing, quality of products, dealer policies, workplace environment, pricing of guitars.

As you are close to the company but I think objective, I am interested in your overall assessment of the company and its products. Your recent review of the new Les Paul trad is encouraging. I would like to like gibson due to their heritage, being American made, and players who use them. I don't want a total review of the wood source thing, but where you think they stand with regards to quality, company health, and future.

I als recognize the spotlight is on them more than perhaps others due to some of their problems.

Thanks

MK

[Anderton]

Originally Posted by meknight

As you are close to the company but I think objective, I am interested in your overall assessment of the company and its products. Your recent review of the new Les Paul trad is encouraging. I would like to like gibson due to their heritage, being American made, and players who use them. I don't want a total review of the wood source thing, but where you think they stand with regards to quality, company health, and future.

My involvement with Gibson was as a consultant, primarily doing sound design and documentation for their high-tech guitars, and most of that work was done out of my home office. I've actually never even been to the plant, so I certainly don't have a detailed knowledge of Gibson's inner workings. What I can tell you is that the people I dealt with were always straight with me, appreciative of what I did, and dedicated. Frankly, I learned a whole lot by working with the company. I don't know if I'll be doing any work with Gibson in the future; I've consulted to a ton of companies, and it's usually a sort of "studio musician" role...a company needs someone to play a particular part at a particular time, then move on.

Generally speaking, a lot of companies in this business are going through tough times, and I highly doubt Gibson is immune from that. However, based on all the Gibson guitars I've played in the process of doing documentation and such, they've been uniformly high-quality. (The Trad Pro I was sent for review was also a beauty.) Also, I don't think I'm revealing any trade secrets if I say that many times, guitars would go through multiple iterations during the design process - everything from necks, to pickup tweaks, slightly different shaving of the body, that sort of thing. I never heard "well...I guess it's good enough."

I'm totally aware that Gibson and its CEO are controversial in this industry. But, all I can really comment on is what I experienced, and overall it was both positive and gratifying.