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Who would be first to jump in front of the mechanical death machine if the guitars were Gibson L5s?
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08-01-2019 10:48 AM
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An ES-175?
Originally Posted by Wildcat
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As much as I understand the many different observations here on all sides. I'm with Jack Z on this one. Should have been donated to underprivileged kids at some sort of public school.
They could have turned that into a good PR campaign ,especially in light of their bankruptcy and change of ownership. These were not defective instruments other than battery and possible tuner issues.
Corporations or Big Business have a tendency to always think like protective lawyers, instead of philanthropic citizens. After all no one was going to be poisoned or maimed by gifting these instruments.
And the positive press would have outweighed the actual issues with batteries, etc.Last edited by jads57; 08-01-2019 at 09:41 PM.
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Having started many business ventures, having had hundreds of employees, having dealt with dozens of government officials (if that doesn't make a Republican out of you, you are hopeless!
), and having lost money in that game a time or two, I can say that Monday morning quarterbacking a businessman's decision on an Internet forum is much easier than making the tough decisions that affect the health of an ongoing business concern. And it is not nearly as good a use of your time as practicing your guitar is.
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Corporations are not philanthropic citizens and they are not meant to be. They are meant to protect and increase the value of the corporation. At least in theory, the benefit to society is added jobs, increased economic growth, investment opportunities etc. Originally Posted by jads57
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People who are doing Gibson's public relations in this thread (instead of practicing
) have every right to do so. But those who criticize Gibson's actions are also very justified in their position because they are customers of guitar products.
Internet is allowing customers to have more complete information about companies' practices then how they choose to present themselves in paid commercials. Companies in the modern world are not only judged by their products but also by their impact on the society, environment and treatment of their employees etc. That's because in almost every sector there are competing products by many brands with similar value. It's in the interest of the customers to want the companies who are committed to improve their lives outside of their immediate businesses to survive and want those companies with more negative (or less positive) externalities to go extinct.
It would've been more costly for Gibson to find a less wasteful solution to this. That's the financial cost they saved. A creative and philanthropic solution would've gained them positive coverage and avoided potential negative coverage. That's their opportunity cost. They did their cost benefit analysis, chose the first one. Fine. Now they can't complain about critical opinions of potential customers. They already calculated that cost in their decision.Last edited by Tal_175; 08-01-2019 at 09:47 PM.
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Not covert, but I REALLY doubt they called CNN to show it off. Originally Posted by wengr
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At least with the ES destruction video they seemed to be stripped to just wood, or never got past the finishing stages. Were they planning to go through all those crushed Firebirds to strip them for recycling? I am not being facetious. Seems like if they wanted to make a statement of “righting” their brand they could have explained better what they were doing and rationalized an approach instead of the “America, we have big trucks that can destroy things” approach. And the labor costs to strip them has got to be negligible. It would probably be greater if they planned to do it after the crushing. If they weren’t planning to recycle any of the materials that sucks IMHO. Also, In this day and age the SCOTUS has ruled the corporations deserve many of the same rights as people. A socially conscience decision about how this should have been handled was warranted IMHO. I don’t see one from what little info is out there.
Last edited by lammie200; 08-01-2019 at 03:35 PM.
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Laughable. Why would they have to explain themselves? Who do they owe, and what do they owe them?
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They should have sold them at discount and donated the loot to PETA to do away with leather guitar straps.....
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Maybe that's the real issue . Who do they owe? I think most of us are a bit older on these forums,I'm 62. After being a Pro Musician for over 40 years and seeing a
bit how life from most sectors works.
I'm always taken back how selfish we all are. Be grateful for what life brought you wether it's your family,kids, or great Music,or just good health.
And when at all possible share your joy through giving. That's what most religions and Spiritual Journeys try to teach. And I'm not a religious person.
So when we accept winner takes all,and it's just the way business is done.I think we need to change that mentality. After all we are the real bosses with our purchasing power as stated in an above post.
It's much like a an all you can eat buffet, which I find incredibly gross. After all, you can only play one guitar at a time unless you're Michael Angelo Battio,LOL!
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It seems like after twenty or thirty of these “unsafe” and “unplayable” guitars rolled off of the line, some bright manager would stopped production and figured out how to make a salable instrument.
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On one hand they owe a lot of people a lot of money. They went bankrupt as the company that they were. They won’t get collected upon as that company, so on another hand they owe no one anything for their corporate decision making except KKR and their stockholders. Originally Posted by Jazzstdnt
I am just saying that from a crisis management standpoint there were probably better ways to handle this. And Gibson filing for bankruptcy was pretty big news. So is recycling for that matter. So is charity. Monster truck shows, maybe no so much.
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I have to wonder if the bankruptcy judge was in the loop on the destruction on of 400 guitars with a conservative value of $160,000. Seems like these could have had an Epiphone sticker slapped on the headstock and shipped to Sweetwater and GC to blow out and cover payroll for a week or two. Originally Posted by lammie200
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I don't know how to break this to you guys but the guitars were defective.
The guitar portion of Gibson has (or had) a billion in sales every year. You would be surprised how many $500K - $1M projects go bust in a $1B+ company - all the time. Sh!t happens.
So, the video was taken why? To ensure that the write-off would pass an audit? Then somebody leaked the video so that sensitive people would say something like "oooohhhh no! Those poor guitars!"
As Gibson said, they give plenty to charity every year. Maybe they should stop, for all the thanks they get. They are NOT obligated.
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Ok, I’ll buy that they were defective. Maybe they were “defective” as in not sellable due to no demand. Still no excuse for not stripping them and recycling the metals, batteries, etc. Not sure that I want to give Gibson the benefit of the doubt that they did that. Personally I would have given Gibson a lot of credit if they would have had Mark Agnesi come out and say that “Gibson had made some mistakes in the past. This is one of them. We weren’t listening to our customers about what they wanted. We are going to have some fun destroying them and disposing of them responsibly. Now we promise to not make the same mistakes again.” Like people have said before, I feel most sorry for the poor blokes that bought one. At least for the people that really have to scrap to get a new guitar and this was their pride and joy.
P.S. All of the above and my posts in this thread are based on pure speculation that these were authentic Gibson’s and Gibson did the video. I have no idea if either is true.
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Probably would have been fired on the spot. Originally Posted by Alder Statesman
I'm watching this video, Henry introducing the Firebird X.. hard to believe someone can be that clueless, things must have been very strange at Gibson during that time..
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Thank God Gibson doesn't have a good QA. Otherwise that would be the destiny of every guitar leaving the factory.
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May have been an economical business practice for Gibson but the video was certainly not good optics.
There is an organization nearby - as I am sure there are in many cities across the USA - that uses physically & mentally challenged folks to do legitimate but menial work.
All of the pickups, the tuners, and many of the necks (after stamping) could probably have been salvaged and sold as-is on eBay. Heck, even the bodies could have been defaced in a way that they couldn't be sold as a legit Gibson part but still be re-purposed. While I get that there are reasons not to donate whole guitars, these could certainly have benefited some charitable organization(s).
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Interesting reading so far.
The economic reality is probably that the cost of dismantling, sorting, repacking, temporarily storing, transporting, selling etc the different components of these instruments, exceeds the total sale revenue, and when you add in the lost revenue from guitars that could not be produced because staff were occupied in dismantling etc then it probably makes economic sense for Gibson to trash the instruments.
I have to ask myself if we would be in favour of a 15% surcharge on all Gibson products if the company committed to dismantling and recycling usable components on guitars that are below standard, defective or un-sellable?
How many of us on this forum disassemble and recycle everything that stops working ? Things like washing machines, effects pedals etc. and then take the time and fuel to transport them to the different places around town or the state that could make use of them- many of the parts of defective kit are potentially re-useable after all......
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My guess is that corporate accounting and legal requirements drove the decision to destroy rather than salvage. They wanted to immediately get the value of those instruments off their books and not invest more time and money into attempting to salvage any value from them. They also wanted to erase evidence of such an ill conceived instrument from the legacy attached to the Gibson brand.
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That's what we need to do,take the time and effort. My daughter's and wife are always on me just about composting. It's really what we all have to start doing in today's Climate and over Populated world of Consumerism.
But as pointed lot in above posts, it was more cost effective to junk them. That's where we as consumers need to hold companies accountable.
For me as example I never buy at Guitar Center or Big Box stores when I can support smaller businesses. I do realize though this isn't always possible, but we get what we support $
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Earth called, she wants all the endangered mahogany and rosewood used on those guitars back from Gibson.
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Yes I think that is basically what the contractor who filmed the video said, in his rather long and rambling explanation in the second video (see post no. 24). Originally Posted by KirkP
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The destruction was strangely ritualistic and creepy... as is making a video and putting it out for us to view.
Why the trouble to place the guitars carefully aligned face up?
They were going to be crushed into indistinguishable scrap; I don't arrange thing that are going to the trash.
Why place them head to toe so they take more passes to crush?
Random placement with overlapping bodies and crossed necks would crush faster. The guitars were placed and positioned in the way that would take the most passes to destroy.
Why lay them out is straight rows?
Just doing slow motion doughnuts over a random scattered area of them would have done it.
Why not just take them to a junk yard with one of those crushers that hydraulically presses vehicles into big cubes of scrap?
Why not just heave them into an industrial chipper? If it's all about satisfying accountability to the insurance company, why not just have the representative from the ins. co. simply attend the simple junk yard crushing or industrial chipper shredding, sign-off on it, and then all go home quietly?
There was no business need to make a weird video causing guitarists to question Gibson's internal business decisions.
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