Gibson goes Chapter 11
 

No, not Mel; Gibson the guitars:

https://news.google.com/news/story/d...us&hl=en&gl=US

Yikes!

A few years ago the right-wing blogosphere went nuts because Gibson imported some illegal wood for some of their guitars. Feds raided a factory, which is SUCH an abuse of power, y'know? Law enforcement should be against the law!

Owner was friend of John Boehner. Got an invite to State of Union.

Fuck 'em.

the kids are buying fewer guitars these days

i thought i posted something about that somewhere but yeah

anyway chapter 11 is not bankruptcy but reorganization so they’ll just have to shrink to fit their market.

eat your peanuts and dont panic!

Maybe if they had realized they are a Heritage brand and concentrated on quality of the models people actually wanted instead of building stupid robot guitars that cost a million dollars and look ridiculous, they would be in a little bit better shape.
I love my ES-335 more than any other guitar I've ever had, but wow has this company made some boneheaded moves in recent years.

As far as I can tell, small luthiers and handmade instruments are the things most people seem to be gravitating towards these days, rather than the package deal of what has been represented as what people need at a certain level of accomplishment. Boutique pedals, Boutique amplifiers, and handmade instruments with personality. The little guy is sort of winning right now in certain ways.

this reminded me of portlandia’s artisanal lightbulbs ha ha ha, but makes perfect sense— in this country anyway and europe

the mass market kids in developing economies who would buy the mass product are working off laptops

as always the Dutch are partly to blame for Gibson's bankruptcy. See e.g. this article or this one


In 2004 the Gibson company bough the audio divisions of Dutch company Philips and Japanese company Onkyo. So Gibson would be manufacturing the products (e.g. headphones), but selling them under the original names. They spent a lot of money on it, and that's the reason that the Gibson company is now bankrupt. They also bought other brands like Tascam and Teac.



In my hometown there were still working like 60 people for the former Philips audio division that was bought by Gibson. Today is in the newspapers that that division will be closed.