Originally Posted by
rage2
The bigger problem is Gibson management. Gibson has seriously gone downhill in the last 1/2 decade or so, from working conditions to quality of product. From the product perspective, they've increased prices, lowered standard features, and made customizations a massive PITA. Try replacing a pickup on a new Les Paul. Unless you buy Gibson quick connect pickups, which adds unnecessary complexity purely to lock in aftermarket sales, it's more expensive to the end user but saves on soldering. That complexity has also added more failures, poorer quality control. Take a look at the entry level LP Studios (now rebranded as faded), 30% more expensive, completely butchered with the cheapest parts. It just looks and plays like shit.
Rock might be dead, but the guitar market is still relatively strong, especially on the acoustics side. Gibson's failure has nothing to do with market conditions.
On the bright side, vintage Les Pauls are going nuts in pricing. Even shit as new as 2000's are going up in price and selling more than original purchase price. Unintended profits for my LP collection haha.
Totally agree with this. If you look on some of the guitar forums people are ripping Gibson a new one for how bad the quality is on what are supposed to be custom made guitars in some cases. Through in an inflated price on any signature model (Chad kroeger? really?), insane prices on just parts and you get a recipe for a company flushing itself down the toilet. There are so many better guitars out there for half the price these days.
With prices going up for the old ones I should get my 74 Les Paul deluxe re-evaluated. Last time I checked it was in the %6500-$7500 range
"if you disagree with my views are cannot adequately my criticism then ignore my posts." - Nusc
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