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Looks like Behringer treats employees better than Gibson


Frets99

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Ahhh the illustrious Henry Slimeowitz is getting his due. Just some of the fun stuff he has done:

 

Does a surprise walk in to a sales meeting (mid late 90's) and says if you all don't increase sales by 50% in 3 weeks, you all are fired. And fire them he did. And then you saw them in every mail order catalog on the planet.

 

Goes up to the Flatiron factory Christmas party and congratulates them on being the most profitable arm of the company. Then fires them all and tells them he's moving operations to a mall in Nashville and that they are welcome to apply for a job.

 

In the 90's during the "box store" retail scare (Mars anyone?), he changes his retail dealer requirements from 20 in a year pieces to 50, cutting out HALF of his dealers as they are mostly brick and mortar, single storefront operations. While doing the same with Epiphone. "Cept Epi went from 30 peices to 80.

 

He also ordered some unprecedented concepts in his dealer agreements, such as telling dealers that they must hold to the all requirements, but Gibson at anytime and for any reason, violate ANY of the terms.

 

And he implemented such brilliant quality control concepts like making sure the $7/hr noob doing 3 miniute fret jobs on Epi Special II's is also doing the same thing on the neck of a $3500 335. A pal of mine bought a super 400 cuz it was his dream guitar, and had to have a fret job done on it the day after he got it. Oh, and orange peel craters on the finish....on an 8k instrument.

 

There are sooooo many more stories about that guy....glad when he's gone.

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I hope they can get their {censored} together, as a well made Gibson is a heck of a good thing. They need to get back to basics and give up on buying and killing brands, or saving those that should have died long ago, and developing products that people laugh at. The need to cut prices and increase QC while increasing the perception of VALUE and QUALITY among players. This has been slipping as of late, and it is a real shame, as Gibsons used to be considered THE top guitar. You see it every day on here, "this brand X is as good as a Gibson", so they still have some name value, but they really have to kick it into high gear to keep that value.

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i have a behringer Vamp pro, got it a few years back for a very cheap price, wasnt sure how to work it, emailed berhinger and got a quick response, he told me what i was doing wrong and what i should do to get the results i wanted... today the thing is still working great , have had no issues with it at all :thu: ,,, btw i also own a line6 podxt live and both products give me a cool array of tonal options. :thu:

i dont know, i just think behringer is getting a bad rap, which is probably due to their old bean shaped V-amps which were made of plastic instead of metal like line6's were... again maybe those were not exactly strong enough for getting bounced around on stage and live gigs. but for the average home or hobby user they did the job at an affordable price (accessible price for some of us) ...

cheap or expensive if it gives you a tone you like then its all good in the end imo...

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Maybe Behringer will end up buying Gibson. Then we can buy guitars that burn up to go along with their amps.

 

 

Perhaps not the most unrealistic scenario. Behringer recently purchased Midas and Klark Teknik, 2 of the most respected names in high-end pro-audio manufacturing.

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BTW .... yeah i too hope gibson can get their {censored} together too. I dont own a gibson, but they are a historic company, and i too would think it would be a great loss to the guitar community if we lost them....

ive played Gibsons and they do make good guitars,,, :thu:

fingers crossed and Wishing best of luck for Gibson :)
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True. Like I said, I'm not privy to anything inside of Gibson. My point simply was that we don't know what's behind what goes on.

The financial news (or lack of same) is troubling. I hate to see an iconic name like Gibson fade away.

Love their products, hate the prices. As much as I like the stuff they build, it irks me to see what they ask for some of it.

You'd think with those kinds of prices, they'd be fat with cash. I can imagine their margins are pretty high.


EG

 

 

By the time an article like that is published, the people with the power already know what's going to happen. Despite 4 extensions they still haven't delivered audited 2008 financials? 3 CFO's in a year and already engaging in debt negotiations? Another sign in my eyes was the big dividend payout last year, seems like a last hurrah and thank you to the equity holders before their private stock becomes worthless...

 

Add to this the Moody downgrade last year and the endgame is pretty clear. Bankruptcy, or new owner. Normally I'd say a massive debt restructuring, but the market (not to mention the companies financials) isn't strong enough for a great return on an IPO and the downgrade is going to make additional debt pretty darn expensive.

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Why not Gibson.:poke:

 

 

Because Gibson is a pimple on the ass of the US economy... It's simply too small a market to warrant that sort of government attention.

 

I'm waiting for the "Gibson death watch" thread...

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Surely Epiphone makes a profit? Not enough to keep the whole company afloat?

 

 

The article assumes a debt to equity ratio of around 4, which is fairly light. However, as the company has yet to provide their financial reporting this is based purely on Gibson's projected financial data and we all know the economy, especially higher end consumer products, hasn't been doing as well as expected...

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Maybe all the Gibson endorsee's could pool their money and buy Gibson? Page (for instance) should have some change around ...
:idea:



Hopefully they'd get somebody with a clue to run it. The only thing worse than Henry running things would be a group of musos.

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I would guess it would be easier to throw money at things like an onsite health clinic and employee food service when you don't need to fund a R&D department?

 

 

You mean the Gibson R&D department? I dunno, don't think the single monkey eats so much.

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Hopefully they'd get somebody with a clue to run it. The only thing worse than Henry running things would be a group of musos.

 

 

Well sure, if it Slash and Zakk and whatnot doing the actual running, but surely at least one of them knows some solid financial managers ....

 

 

Though it COULD be fun for laughs to see them run a board meeting ...

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