vic wrote:
Perhaps he can mention, just to be fair, if he had repaired/fixed/tweaked any other prominent brand name guitars in his long career?
Quite literally everything. I had all the national warrantee work for Gibson, Martin, Cort, Johnson, Fishman and also the Cape Ibanez agency in the '90s (so I was seeing a lot of brand new guitars). But I also took on work from retail shops and directly for musos. So I got to see it all. Bellini to Larrivee, Angelica to vintage Fender & Gibson.
I believe that all guitars need the odd fix or tweak....maybe the LP's from the 70's and 80's needed just that little bit more ?
True. There are some basic design flaws (and they sometimes vary from year to year), Gibsons with broken neck/headstock issues, Ibanez' with Wizard necks cracking at the lock nut bolts, Fenders with cracks at the heel, Ovations with cracked tops. Some things you get sick of seeing.
But Gibsons were the only brand-new guitars that had to be fret dressed and setup
before they could even be sent to the shops. Those that had frets that
had been dressed at the factory, were not crowned and polished. In fact, they were usually dirty, dusty and full of polishing compound right out of the case. Gibson's official stance was "Not our problem - you're the agent, you do the setup" or even "We can't do the setup, because your climate is different" (utter crap, BTW - if a guitar is set up properly in the factory, it will just need a little tweak to compensate for a different climate).
Quality control was very lax - how can you do QC on something that doesn't even have a basic setup? One in 20 guitars would be a near write-off - misplaced bridges, incorrect neck angles, twisted necks, etc. I just used to fix those as best as I could (within a certain price range - no neck resetting, etc.) and the agent would have a public sale once a year where he would sell them off at his cost or less. The one time when he complained about quality to Gibson, they threatened to take agency away from him (and they did eventually, giving it to Melodies - and we all know how
that panned out). That, for me was the big issue - Gibson didn't care about their quality of product and had a "you need us more than we need you" attitude. No manufacturer is perfect, but it's how they handle things when things go wrong that makes all the difference.
So forgive me if I seem unduly biased against Gibson, but I do try to be as open, honest and fair when looking at them as I am with any product, regardless of name, regardless of price (from Cort to Paul Reed Smith), but I do call it as I see it. And if a brand new R30K-R50K guitar has to have of work done to it before it is playable I call foul.
And no, I'm not a Gibson player and am unlikely ever to be (because I don't get on with the scale length), but I can still judge them based on what they are - the same way that I can judge an Ibanez metal machine even though I would never own one. I have seen and played some very nice Gibsons in my time and can appreciate when others play them. I still look at Gibsons in the store when I see them, hoping to see an improvement, but judging from what I've seen in the shops recently, it's no better than it was in the '70s.
BTW - The trem I dissed is a wonderful Steinberger design, but was manufactured by Hohner out of cheap pot metal that warps and cracks under normal trem usage. I have yet to see a guitar with one that is still working...
