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Well as you all know I just bought a Gibson 1959 VOS ES175. Gibson paints their vintage sunburst VOS F holes with a unique color brown paint. One of my F holes had a big splinter sticking out that was bugging me (wish Gibson would sand their F holes after they cut them ). Anyway pulled off the splinter causing a unpainted chunk in the side of the F hole. Made the mistake of using a furniture touch up pen. Totally wrong color. Well I did find a 100% perfect color match paint. Go to Home Depot and get a 7oz can of Behr solid color exterior stain and the color is SC-142 Cappuccino. It is a absolute perfect color match for all you VOS owners that may need to touch up a F hole or give them another coat to hide the laminate layers better.
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02-08-2015 03:58 PM
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It's odd with such lack of finishing touches on expensive guitars from a market leading maker. The other day we saw pictures of flattop braces with rough edges and splinters, apparently straight from the band saw. Something which could have been fixed with a piece of sand paper and 1-2 minutes of somebody's time. Not that it means anything to tone or playability, but anyway - it's sloppy.
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Gibson has become a corporate entity and like any other time is money. Also it saves money using the customer as the final QA station. To the corporations for mass produced products it's cheaper to fix post sale than take the QA time also they know some flaws will go unnoticed or customer won't brother to return, so more savings. I saw this all the time in the computer industry. First working for small companies and we didn't have enough staff to working for the biggest names and they did it to save money. I'd say the one company I worked for that really cared was Sun Microsystems, but sadly they eventually got bought out by one of the worse corporate whores.
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I sold cheap (like $300) acoustic guitars back in the day when THAT was a lot worse than today's Walmart guitars. The quality on the lower end stuff has consistently gone up while retail prices have gone WAY down in the last 20 years. With computerized manufacturing they're producing really amazing cheapo instruments for the amount of money that they now cost.
So, anyway, it makes me wonder how much of the midgrade-and-up stuff is simply spit out of a machine and they check a few of them here and there. I'd be curious to know how much it actually costs them to produce some of these guitars that apparently don't have much in the way of hand finishing. It just seems like the quality of everything at all price points would've gone up over all this time. I've always assumed that the stuff that costs more had more human labor involved.Last edited by matt.guitarteacher; 02-08-2015 at 06:49 PM.
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I posted in another thread about some issues with a "new" roadworn. Upon further investigation some of the issues I had were not uncommon (basically fender roadworn guitars are great guitars at a great price but lousy fretwork and if you cant do it yourself or the musicstore you are buying from wont do it then you really arent saving much money.)
Originally Posted by matt.guitarteacher
In this case the selling shop was lucky since a)I am an impatient SOB b) I recognized that there was something wrong with the guitar but nothing I couldnt fix if the price is right so I didnt return the guitar.
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Seems quality inspection is no priority for Gibson. The local gear shop has a brand-new 335, and the binding on the pickguard has rough edges and shavings hanging off of it.
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By coincidence I was looking at the detail shots of this VOS 1959 ES175 just a day or so ago. This one appears to have no treatment of the f-hole edges at all !.
Gibson 1959 ES-175 Vintage Natural Nickel #A06795
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Do they not offer the burst variant anymore?
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pubylakeg,
Gibson uses a white stain on the F holes of the Nat VOS 1959's and the Cappuccino stain on the VS VOS MODELS.
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Unacceptable.
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Wow! This can't have left the facility looking this way. Originally Posted by Jehu
Unacceptable.
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That's shake my head bad.
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In Gibson's defense, it was take your kid to work day.
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I have this on my Gibson L5. The texture on the edge of the pickguard towards the top is very rough, like someone was sanding it and said, "fucc it,-DONE." Another issue is the binding on the fretboard, there is a long line from the 12th fret on both sides of the neck where it looks like someone may have laid an additional strip over it. I have to wipe if off periodically because it catches dirt easily. Not MAJOR issues for me since I bought it cheap and it sounds excellent to me, BUT I don't get how these flaws made it past QC, especially on a hand-made guitar presumably made in such small quantities at a time. Originally Posted by Marwin Moody
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Actually the white F holes on that nat '59 look way better than mine. Mine has more whiskers than a cat. Funny Gibson is the only archtop maker that doesn't clean up their F holes. You would never see a Heritage with F holes all splintered up or Guild either for that matter. Looks like they used a real dull blade when they cut mine as their are some little chunks missing on the edges of the F holes too. Good thing I found the perfect touch up paint. Other than the sloppy F hole work it is a nice guitar. Now that they raised the price of these to $5199 you would think they could add one more QC step and spend 2 minutes a guitar on sanding the F holes before painting them.
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Whatever the cause, it's unsustainable in a business. I think there is more to it than just maximising profits. Its a great shame.
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Makes me feel good about the bound F-holes on my 1999 Epi Joe Pass (Samick) which were impeccable, as was the rest of the binding.
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Vinny, With all due respect, I think you should sell it and stop buying Gibsons.
Seriously. There is always something wrong with your Gibsons. You and Gibson = Oil and water.
Its not worth it. Sorry man. Just my opinion. Always something..
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Pardon me Joe, I beg to differ. I started this post to be helpful to other VOS VS owners. I already said that I loved this guitar. Yes it had a splinter that I pulled off and found some paint that was a perfect match and fixed it perfectly.
This guitar is great just like ALL the Gibsons I own. I thought this site was a place where we could share useful tech tips that could be helpful to others. What I am finding though is a place were you can get easily torched for saying one little wrong thing. Didn't you read my Eddie's post were I said how special this guitar is ? Yes I believe Gibson should sand the splinters off their F holes but no big deal I fixed it perfectly my shelf with a tech tip for the next guy if he needs to make this minor repair also. I can see why people don't stay too long on this site. Good grief and God bless, Vinny
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At least my good buddy Patrick didn't chew me up this time.
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Mr. B. This is definitely not the Queen's English!! Have you no grammatical decency?? Originally Posted by mr. beaumont
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Maybe. But, one would assume it was . . be sober . . when you, "take your kid to work day". I'm not a tolerant person. I would fire someone's ass over this. I would fire the craftsperson who did the shoddy work . . and I would fire the supervisor who was supposed to over see this procedure. Originally Posted by Jehu
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No rebuttal from me, Vinny. That's just plain wrong. If that was my guitar, I'd be sending these photos all the way up the echelon demanding a pound of flesh from someone. Originally Posted by vinnyv1k
At least my good buddy Patrick didn't chew me up this time.
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Also BTW my L4CES' F holes were cut probably with the exact same type of router cutting device and the F holes were sanded smoother than a babies bottom with the F holes cut to absolute perfection and it sold for the same price as my plywood VOS 175. It probably costs Gibson half the price to build a 175 compared to a all carved solid wood L4CES. So I am sorry but in my mind 2 guitars made by the same guitar company selling for the same price should have equal QC standards ? And Joe BTW I am not as picky as you accuse me of being. I find the F holes on that blonde 175 in the above pictures to be of completely acceptable quality for a mass produced guitar but splinters sticking out and painted over no.
Last edited by vinnyv1k; 02-10-2015 at 12:04 AM.
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