Why Does America Always Have Worse Box Art Than Japan

One of the most worn out cliches in the music industry is that it's a small world, and people remember your mistakes.

But shaking a bad reputation is difficult in any industry, and that's a fact Gibson Guitars may be learning the hard manner.

Over the past several years, there has been a groundswell of anger directed at the legendary guitar manufacturer. From unhappy customers to scorned endorsers, y'all don't have to wait also far these days to find bad news about Gibson.

There are a lot of reasons Gibson's brand has been tarnished recently, only at the crux of the blowback is an alleged dip in quality command.

A shining example of this was over the summertime when Gibson unveiled the 2017 Les Paul Standard with a photo that showed an obvious ding in the $4,799 guitar's stop.

Earlier this calendar month, a high-profile quondam Gibson endorser, Mastodon guitarist Bill Kelliher,revealed why he stopped working with Gibson and instead jumped ship to ESP—just like Metallica frontman James Hetfield before him.

"They kept f***ing up my guitars that I was asking for," Kelliher said in no uncertain terms to Ultimate Guitar. "I didn't ask for a lot – I just had a few certain things that I would like with my guitar – I told them I didn't want information technology chambered and they made my 2d guitar chambered."

He goes on, painting a picture of disarray at Gibson, saying the A&R department was constantly turning over making it impossible for him to maintain a relationship.

Further, Kelliher'southward signature guitars were beingness shipping without beingness properly ready. He says he would regularly become messages from fans asking why their guitars didn't sound right.

"They weren't even tuning the guitars to my settings or specifications – simply little things like that."

But customer and artist relations isn't all of it. In 2016, Moody's Investors Service downgraded Gibson's credit rating  outlook to Caa2 or "negative," reporting that the company owes over $fourscore million to a supplier and $45 million in accounts payable.

Outstanding debt could be a reason for a dip in quality, meaning Gibson is trying to increase product and sales at the expense of the details. A Gawker  piece goes even deeper into what's awry, and it's all pretty damning.

"Gibson faces two main problems: their employees hate them (particularly CEO Henry Juszkiewicz), and their customers think they're crap."

One woman toldGawker she got to know Juszkiewicz over the course of a job interview.

"The CEO is HORRIBLE — hateful, nasty, uber-controlling," she wrote to Gawker. "If anyone in the visitor dares to have a different thought than his, you can pretty much guarantee that they will be fired - on the spot."

YouTube gear reviewer Sean Pierce Johnson — an avowed Gibson fan — said in a video this summer that Juszkiewicz "doesn't come across as the kind of guy that gets guitars."

"He kind of looks at Gibson every bit more a consumer electronics [company]. Which is axiomatic in that before this year Gibson showed off their modernistic double-cutting at the CES [International Consumer Electronics Evidence] in Vegas a mere two weeks before the wintertime NAMM [National Association of Music Merchants] show.

"And when I went to the winter NAMM show, that guitar was nowhere to be seen in the Gibson room. And so what's up with that?"

Now, in spite of all that, if there's one company that tin reverse a bad reputation, it's Gibson.

Gibson has built up decades of skillful will with its customers. And as a result its guitars are inextricably tied to music history—and to artists like Metallica, Led Zeppelin, Aerosmith, B.B. Rex, Air conditioning/DC, Guns Northward' Roses, Bob Marley, Black Sabbath, Eagles, Green Mean solar day, Tool and then many others.

If Gibson wanted to (or felt like it had to), it could throw all its might around dispelling its bad rap past rebuilding its relationships...and the high-quality guitars for which it's been so love.

Photograph: Getty Images

knottstherembeens.blogspot.com

Source: https://q1043.iheart.com/content/2017-10-16-why-so-many-guitarist-are-turning-away-from-gibson/

Share this post