Gibson Firebird X...

[Plucky]

W...T...F... Discuss.


http://www.ultimate-guitar.com/news/...irebird_x.html

[Plucky]

Hmmm... I've seen this before... 

http://i634.photobucket.com/albums/u...Gumby-bass.jpg

[Mark Hammer]

Dear lord, that's ugly. Between the Zoot Suit SG, the Dusk Tiger, and this monstrosity, it's like Gibson CEO Juszkiewicz got all the employees together and declared that "our new direction will be ongepotchket" (a Yiddish expression that roughly means cluttered and overdecorated, in a garish and unflattering way, kinda like 6 year-old girls who got into their mother's make-up drawer and had an undisturbed afternoon to themselves).

What the hell has gotten into them? Once upon a time we associated Gibson with looking classy. These guitars look cheap.

[dirtyroger]

I dont think it looks to bad actually, not my style but not too ugly!

But no way in the world am i gonna buy a guitar with bluetooth in it, WTF really don't see the point. Can you imagine the recording quality of bluetooth!!!

[David Schwab]

That's really ugly. And why one black knob and one chrome knob? Except for their classic designs, which the current company did not design, all their new designs have been horrid. They are tuning into Microsoft; no taste whatsoever and lousy designs.

Roger, I think the BlueTooth is probably for the wireless pedal controllers. If it could handle the bandwidth it would work fine for recording. People record with USB, and that's not made for that either.

Who every wrote that article? Juszkiewicz?

Henry Juszkiewicz made an announcement that staggered the music world

Gagged the music world maybe.

Bifilar pickups?

This is a $5570 flop.

[Sweetfinger]

I've said it before, and I'll say it again. Look in the dictionary under "creatively bankrupt". Gibson can come up with this feature creature but can't seem to eliminate orange peel from the finish on $2,000+ guitars?

[Ronsonic]

Properly made musical instruments last decades if not centuries. The electronics in this thing will be obsolete in 5-10 years - assuming they still work at all. Retrofitting useful electronics at that time will be extremely expensive. This assumes that we're looking at a properly made instrument that is worth the asking price. (yeah, I know)

This sorta reminds me of the people who were buying new homes five years ago with full home theater installs for which they signed on a thirty year mortgage. Those electronics are already out of date and the house's value has plummeted. Same thing, just with tuning keys and strings - bubble-think.

[David Schwab]

I've said it before, and I'll say it again. Look in the dictionary under "creatively bankrupt". Gibson can come up with this feature creature but can't seem to eliminate orange peel from the finish on $2,000+ guitars?

I've seen photos of a fingerboard from a new LP Custom that showed scalloping left from the planer or CNC. I guess sharp cutters or a little hand sanding is out of the question.

[Rick Turner]

At Jackson and now Fender, they've got some pretty slick stroke sander setups with concave radiused backing cauls that do a very quick job of sanding the machining marks out of fingerboards. If they're done on a molder, you'll see slight scallops across the finberboard; if they're done with a ball end cutter on a CNC, you'll probably see slight linear scallops. Either way, a quick sanding with a formed caul and you've got a nice fingerboard.

[Sweetfinger]

At Jackson and now Fender, they've got some pretty slick stroke sander setups with concave radiused backing cauls that do a very quick job of sanding the machining marks out of fingerboards. If they're done on a molder, you'll see slight scallops across the finberboard; if they're done with a ball end cutter on a CNC, you'll probably see slight linear scallops. Either way, a quick sanding with a formed caul and you've got a nice fingerboard.

I guess we can look forward to the day when Gibson hires a guy with a sanding block and decent eyesight! Fender and Gibson are perfect for a "compare and contrast" in different approaches to the same industry. If you look at the way each company has approached aspects of product design, implementation, and marketing, it is very clear that Fender has some working brains hidden somewhere in their structure which has enabled enormous growth as a corporation and Gibson seems to survive in spite of the seemingly endless supply of bad ideas.
Take just about any Fender- you can change out the bridge, neck, tuners, pickups, practically every part with a cornucopia of Fender made or aftermarket parts. You can remake your guitar into exactly what you want. You can rely on there being drop-in replacement parts for that guitar long after you're dead. Gibson has given us a really, really expensive guitar that you HAVE to like just as it is, because you can't change anything on it. When those motorized tuning machines break(and they WILL), you're going to need an exact replacement. I've disassembled one. I'm amazed they work as long as they do. Do you expect your car CD player or your cell phone to be working perfectly in 10 years? 20? 40? I don't. Gibson hasn't figured out that as a company, you exploit the existing market and move with market trends. You respond to cunsumer needs and demands. Nobody needed this thing. You can't FORCE customers to like something unpalatable unless you offer incentives like low price. Obviously that will not occur here.

[rf7]

You can't FORCE customers to like something unpalatable unless you offer incentives like low price. Obviously that will not occur here.

They'll be blowing those things out at loss leader prices soon enough. I've had customers pop in with Robot Les Pauls they bought for really low prices brand new.