Gibson Crimson shop closed

[MaxTwang]

Some of the loss of dealers may be initiated by Guitar Center: 10+ years ago I lived in a town with only a few smaller guitar shops. When Guitar Center moved into town the local Gibson dealer lost their dealership, they told me GC's agreement with Gibson didn't allow other Gibson dealers in the area. The town went from having a high-end Gibson dealer to GC stocking only a few Gibsons and a lot of Epiphones.

[Dutchbopper]

They are not making instruments that remotely justify their cost and haven't ever since they've started decoupling their prices from the nearest Fender, realizing that most people buying new Gibson instruments were Podiatrists buying a sense of childhood achievement more so than musicians in need of sensible value in a working tool.

Quite so. Gibson prices are ludicrous. L5 8-9k. Super 400 12k. Es 175 4-5k.

You'd be crazy if you buy new Gibson. For that money you can have fine vintage Gibsons that sound and feel way better.

I have never bought a new Gibson and I never will. I suspect the brand added value is at least 40%. Which simply means that you pay some 40% for the Gibson dream (psychological brand value).

And even used guitars are becoming more expensive because of the current new prices on the rise. 7k for a 90s Wesmo or L5CES? No way, Jose. I'd rather get a 1950s or 1960s ES175 for that kind of money. Or a 50s ES 350.

I think that if you pay 9K for a new L5 you will never get that money back. Bad investment. Those prices are silly to begin with.

DB

[Marty Grass]

It's hard to imagine that the inventor and, by far, the company that prevailed for 80 years in the market of the modern f holed archtop would cease production permanently. On the other hand, all of those pioneers are long dead and weren't from Nashville anyway.

[vinnyv1k]

ATH......welcome back ! I was worried about you. I thought you might had died. Missed you brother !

[Cunamara]

3. But ok if you think there's someone building Gibson level archtops for 'considerably less', shop their prices, and the options they offer, if any, and then see what you get. Or probably won't get.

Heritage. Eastman. Ibanez. Just to name three. And there are forum members who are luthiers and build high quality custom guitars for prices at or less than Gibson, as well as other luthiers out there in the world. Truth is, archtop guitar making is in good hands.... better hands than Henry J's, perhaps.

[GNAPPI]

It's funny you bring up Rolex. For my 40's birthday (1991) I was given a sub in SS/Gold and retail was ~$3000 nationwide. Since then my "quality" watch has been back to "R" incorporated twice for two different major (not neglect related) repairs in the first 5 years I owned it, out of $$ warranty of course. It's a Waayyy over rated POS.

Funny (or not as it happens) I lived in a yachting community where lots of well heeled yachtsmen had "subs" too and most of them went back to "R" (The name Rolex goes by for repair activity to prevent mail theft) for similar repairs. But like Gibson it doesn't seem to hurt their reputation at all.

Today it sits in my safe because it's not worth killing someone over or getting killed for it.

[Ren]

I poked around online and found a 1959 Gibson price list (my birth year!). Back then, a Super400, L5CES and ES175, sunburst finish, including deluxe case, set you back $810, $703.50 and $357 respectively. The equivalents in today's dollars are $6781, $5889 and $2989. Less than the price of new ones today? Oh yes. Perhaps increased by as much as a factor of 2. Now, what I don't know (remember, I was but a wee tot in 1959) is whether those catalog prices were heavily discounted back then. If they weren't, then the inflation-adjusted increase seems quite reasonable to me: I would expect a hand-made guitar, produced today in small batches to 1950s specs, to cost somewhat more than the inflation-adjusted 1950s price. So, I guess I'm saying $8-9K for a new L5 doesn't seem out of line to me. On the other hand, if the list prices were heavily discounted, then I would concede that there might be some unjustified price gouging here.

So, any of you cats old enough to remember what you paid for your 175 in '59?

[drbhrb]

$16k for a new super 400... Thanks but I'll take a Heritage and a used honda civic that will take me to the gig instead.

[rlrhett]

This is the man that did all the work you give Henry credit for.

Attachment 41158

An 80's and 90's icon that spawned an entire generation on the Les Paul. That was 20 years ago!
I think his loss, has been a loss Gibson will never fully recover from

In a way like my absence from this forum...

Attachment 41159


Hope you're all in the best of health and wishing you all a fantastic year. Missed you guys!

That guy, the growing affluence of the baby boom generation, and the fat stacks of benjamins HJ rolled in with. You can certainly give him credit for identifying a company with potential that had been drained of capital during the 60's and 70's and would make easy pickings for his hedge fund buddies. He was right. Great decisions about the management of the company...? There I think you will get a lot of opposition.

As far as HAVING to lay off people, it is true this is a business. It is not a retirement home for skilled craftsmen. Gibson is a profitable company, and HJ takes home an estimated $60,000 for EVERY DAY HE SHOWS UP TO WORK. He lays off people because he can, and doing so might mean he will make an extra $1,000 a day. So in that sense he HAS to lay them off. Why should he give them money he wants and can legally add to his bottom line?

You can say that is the way of the world, and that is his prerogative to throw whoever he want out on the street if it makes more money for him and his buddies. But do you really wish him well? To me it feels like watching someone go out onto his private land and kill all the songbirds because, after all, its his private land and no one can stop him.

[Ren]

ATH,

Nice to hear from you again! Not sure I would give you-know-who as much credit as you do; true, he revived interest in the Les Paul back in the 80's. But in the late 80's and 90's, when Gibson started to pump out those Historic Reissue Lesters for $4K, they were selling them to dudes like me, boomers who were in their 30s and 40s, finally had a few bucks and had been lusting for a Les since we were 15. Our heroes were Jimmy Page, Eric Clapton, Mike Bloomfield etc. I still have my 1994 "The Historic Collection" catalog. Coming out with those guitars at that time was marketing genius. And yes, at the time, folks complained they were overpriced.

[Archtop Guy]

Odd,My Social Security only went up .03 percent. Perhaps the government should be investing in Rolex and Gibson.

[Ren]

Scoop,

Welcome to the forum! Lots of good stuff to dig into here. My response to your Rolex example was that no such extreme (7 fold!) price increase over inflation happened with Gibson archtops. L5s do not list for $40K. But I completely agree with you that a lot of what us Gibson buyers pay for is the brand. And I'm cool with that. If you can get a guitar as good as my L5 for $1000, and have no sentiment for the brand, then great! I'm glad that there are high quality instruments available for reasonable prices. Though the L5 is a proprietary design, that's part of what we pay for too, so don't we get into the thicket of patent infringement, counterfeiting etc? Not really my wheelhouse, these issues.

[rio]

They realized they enjoyed brand value that greatly exceeded their intrinsic value as a product.

Rolex Watches used to be pricey- but accessible- because they were very high quality timepieces. In the 1980's, when mechanical timepieces were pretty much obsolesced because of advances in quartz technology, they (Rolex) realized that the only way they could survive as a brand was to start charging INSANE prices for their watches, thus elevating the narrative of their product from high quality timepiece to being a symbol of status.



The formula worked. You were really "somebody" if you had a Rolex watch. It became such that the strategy altered the entire Swiss Watch industry, where there was a race UPWARDS on price, to the point now that a $9000 Rolex is merely an 'entry level nice watch'.

Another rather amusing tale of this is Grey Poupon mustard.

The Ketchup Conundrum



The bottom line is that most people are incredibly stupid, naive and are willing to do whatever you tell them, so long as if you first tell them that in doing so, they're setting themselves apart from the crowd by way of their keen sophistication.

The Emperor's New Clothes - Wikipedia

This is all Gibson guitars are anymore and honestly, have been for quite some time.
Hand over your money and let them whisper in your ear what great taste you have.

That is all incredibly interesting (seriously) but the thing that Gibson has going for it is the amount of legendary music played on their instruments. The status symbol thing is true too and I'm sure that has weight with collectors and other cork sniffers. But in real life music land us common folk here x guitarist using a Gibson and equate their playing and tone with that instrument and brand, even though that is partially true and tone is always in the fingers guitarists will always think that getting the same instrument played by their hero is cool. People bought grey poupon because of brilliant marketing and not because some famous mustard hero ate it.

Of course I do agree that is how Gibson is treating it though. As much as I love the brand and I love having an L5, and love listening to players using ES175's and L5's etc. I really do not like their marketing because I could care less about the status of how much something costs, and I think real life musicians probably feel the same for the most part. If they push too hard with stuff like this then they will lose real life musicians wanting to buy from them, at least new instruments. But then again, at the prices they charge I would never buy a new Gibson vs a used one so that might already be something that is hurting them in the market - I wonder if they actually catered to musicians and not to people just wanting status if they would sell more volume at a lower price vs. less instruments at high prices when artificially trying to creat demand.


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[drbhrb]

Here I am hating on Gibson's prices while buying Grey Poupon like a fool. Store brand mustard from here on out.

Though all of my favorite straight ahead sandwiches were made with Grey Poupon...

[Ren]

@Ren- The majority of people who go down the brand rabbit hole believe in magical brand powers, magical quality levels, magical tone, magical 'feel', etc. Once they've made their trophy purchase, they then have enormous emotional incentive to defend it with all manner of bullshit, since nobody wants to admit they got hustled.

You're in a small minority who makes such purchases but appears to be otherwise rational about it.

Well, I appreciate the compliment, but it's totally undeserved; I'm as big a sucker as the next guy for Gibson "magic tone." Bottom line for me, as a believer in free markets, is that Gibson should price their stuff so as to maximize their profits. (I think we are agreeing here.) If they could make more dough moving 100 L5s a year at $5K vs 25 at $9K, why wouldn't they do that? BTW, there's really no marketing here; when is the last time you saw an ad for a Gibson archtop in a guitar mag?

Getting back to the OP, I hope Gibson resumes archtop production some time down the road. Vinnyv1k and I promise to support the new operation!

[rio]

It's the exact same thing.

Whether it's Grey Poupon validating one's sense of self-worth by selling them overpriced Dijon mustard via associating it with 'the elite' or (Insert Guitar Brand Here) validating one's sense of self-worth by associating it with a musician they admire, it's all marketing hokum.

In some cases, a guitar brand gets lucky and a player gets famous playing one of their guitars without having to sponsor or compensate them. It's still hugely influential to guitar players who admire that player and want to duplicate whatever they see them doing.

"Boy, I sure do like (Insert Artist Here)'s music and (That Same Artist) plays a (Insert Guitar Brand Here)... I sure do want a (That Same Brand)" is the standard formula, which is why guitar companies sponsor artists to begin with.

I do believe that there is some of that but mustard and Rolex etc. doesn't have the same thing because you can listen to a guitarist and just want their tone or sound. You won't get it of course but correlating tone to a guitar played by a guitar hero is something independent of just wanting status.


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[Ren]

We do seem to mostly agree. If they want to charge $100K for an L5, go ahead.
The discussion gets interesting when you find someone who bought one for that price and now has incentive to defend it in practical terms, rather than emotional terms. It will look an awful lot like what Stradivarius buyers have been saying for generations now. It boils down to whether or not their superlatives are credible (they're not).

Yes, Gibson does not market its custom shop offerings as crassly as marketing efforts we see for other things. They don't really need to. They know their market (the affluent-naive, egoists, etc) so in that regard, it's kind of like high end modern art or the high end wristwatch market. It sells itself to exactly the intended audience with very little effort.

The bone of contention is what value actually exists.

I think your analysis hits the mark when it comes to the 10K reissue Les Pauls. But archtops? Nobody but us jazz nerds knows what an L5 is. I really doubt that there are rich people out there impressing their friends by pulling out their Citations or Super400s. And I'm really happy about this state of affairs; if Gibson archtops were in any way status symbols, like '59 reissue Lesters are, then their prices would be truly astronomical and I wouldn't have any. And again, Gibson has done absolutely zero marketing for their archtops.

[Ren]

They probably don't sell enough of them to warrant some (x)-scale marketing effort. The people who buy jazz boxes already know they exist.

The center of discussion is what performance value they offer relative to other options that cost a lot less, because ask anyone who buys them, they invariably have a standard book of all the magical things it does that other less expensive options do not and for as predictable as it all is, basically none of it is true.

If you sell a lunchbox for $5.99 and I sell a lunchbox for $59.99, there is an implied difference there... but what if there's little to no practical performance difference? Yeti Coolers are a great example of something like this where they're basically just nice coolers at a super high price point that became a weird status-symbol in the redneck world, no different than a brand new L5 is in this world.

I will let go that you compared my L5 to an overpriced lunchbox. Seriously, welcome to the forum, I think you have some interesting things to say and I do look forward to adding your voice to the cacophony. I'm checking out for the night now, all the best.

R

[Dennis D]

Let's see - this thread has had Saudi Prince's business practices, corporate greed, personal greed, lemmings chasing a brand down a hole, Rolex watches and perfume, ( did I miss the Great Tulip Bubble of 1637 ? ), along with graphs and charts and type in bold letters.

But what this thread has sorely lacked is: at least one or two ' cruxes' and 3 or 4 ' juxtapositions'...

So I give you The Man himself to finish this thread in the appropriate manner.

[Bluedawg]

Here I am hating on Gibson's prices while buying Grey Poupon like a fool. Store brand mustard from here on out.

Though all of my favorite straight ahead sandwiches were made with Grey Poupon...

Hmm ....

I like Grey Poupon significantly more than plain old yellow mustard ... there really is a difference ... don't care where it's actually made

If there's something equally as good for less, then I'm willing to try it ... but plain old yellow mustard isn't it ... maybe French's Dijon (8oz for $2.50 on Amazon)

And we're only talking a few bucks more .. not thousands ... but I digress LOL

I love my Gibsons .... there are other great guitars out there ... some cost less and some cost more ... some cost a lot more ....

very few of the other guitars sound like Gibsons ... that doesn't make Gibsons better ... just different .. they are desired because they are part of the classic sounds from many classic records

If you can't tell the difference or prefer the other guitars then huzzah for you .. you'll save lots of money ....

I still say that Gibson's archtops have been priced in line with the other mid tier archtops when you consider actual street prices and not list ....

there are lots of archtops out there that cost you more than a new L5 ...

We'll see what they do with the archtop models ... I think the attempt to push the Crimson line was an overreach .. a more modest and limited approach to archtops would probably serve Gibson better

Of course a good economy could change every thing ... we'll see

[jads57]

Not trying to start a political post but it certainly seems from the current POTUS as well as many CEO's of businesses nowadays, GREED is everything! The fact that we the public condone this by supporting their policies,products,etc. is a very sad state of affairs.
I say this being a huge fan of Gibson's current guitars, which adds to my sadness. I sure hope more important things like love for our fellow human beings and real music makes a return before I die. And that isn't all that long from now,LOL!

[skiboyny]

You can spec a guitar from China or Korea, right now, to be every bit as good as a Gibson for 1/6th the cost (sometimes, the spread is even wider). Every bit in terms of materials and build quality, every bit as good in terms of playability and "tone".

It won't sound like a gibson not even close. That might be ok but if it isn't.....

[Doctor Jeff]

I like Grey Poupon wherever it's made and have always enjoyed the cheesy, genius commercials. However, if you get ahold of true Dijon moutarde like this you won't want anything else...

Maille Mustard Fine de Dijon 13.4 oz Jars - Single Pack

Personally I think we have to separate out Gibson's pricing and certain aspects of its business practices from the apparent decision to cut back on authorized dealers. I can be critical of pricing, but let's be honest none of us are marketing geniuses with MBA's. All CEO's want to make money. I don't think it's appropriate to link Gibson with controversial political stands.

HOWEVER, as a long-time consumer I do think the decision to cut back availability at the dealers is a huge mistake. Buyers care more about the personal relationship with dealers and seeing and touching and playing the guitar in the flesh than about price or even reputed quality. There's a certain visceral attraction you only get from holding a guitar in your hand and hearing it. Gibson would mess with that at their peril IMHO.

[Hammertone]

You can spec a guitar from China or Korea, right now, to be every bit as good as a Gibson for 1/6th the cost (sometimes, the spread is even wider). Every bit in terms of materials and build quality, every bit as good in terms of playability and "tone".

Perhaps prefacing this statement with "In theory," or "Conceptually," might make it more credible.

It won't sound like a gibson not even close. That might be ok but if it isn't.....

What proprietary skills or materials does Gibson posses that cannot be duplicated in guitar building shops elsewhere? The answer is absolutely none, but it's always amusing to hear the 'believers' try and make their case.

Yes, The answer is none. Can you provide any examples of instruments built in China or Korea that match the criteria you have described?

[Doctor Jeff]

To be fair, a number of manufacturers make great guitars that offer superb quality for (often) a much cheaper price than Gibson--Godin, Collings, Heritage, Eastman, Peerless. This would be quite an opportunity for them to get more guitars in the showroom at the dealers.

However, personally I still appreciate the unique sound and heritage of guitars like the ES-175 and L5. If you really like 'em, they're not really replaceable in the world of guitar manufacture.

And this is from someone with a Gibson, Peerless and Godin.