Flight959 Posted October 24, 2011 Share Posted October 24, 2011 I post a serious question and i get stupid answers. I'm starting to see why people stop posting here. Where was the question ??????... Looked more like a rant/observation to me! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
DiamondJig Posted October 24, 2011 Share Posted October 24, 2011 This month I uncounted my first real problems with a Gibson. I have about dozen and this is the first non setup problem. I do not consider setup a problem, too many things can change when a guitar leaves the climate control of Gibson factor and travels to the it destination and then to me in the North East where we have 4 seasons and the neck will change with all 4. Plus I always tweak them to my taste. The problem I have with the new guitar I purchased this month happen right out of the box, the pickup is not right, it's too weak and thin, it seems it's only using one coil or it's shorted and only using half the coils. the measure DC resistance is half of what it should be. The second one is the truss rod nut, it's too big, the Gibson tool wont fit around it. It looks like a regular nut just to fat. Besides those 2 problems the guitar is great. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
carv3r Posted October 24, 2011 Share Posted October 24, 2011 qc is always a hit or miss... after all these are humans that are doing their jobs.. and we all know that at the end of a 12 hour day our judgement slips some.. the main thing is, is gibson will stand behind the product, and never buy something you can play first. that simple.. id avoid ordering gibsons online or any other brand of guitar for that matter, you have to try them feel them, hear them and hell sometimes open them up before you pull the trigger. the newest gibson i have is a 97 lp. and its in fine shape and made very well from what i can see. but it also was probably the 15th lp i tried that day before i bought it. hahaha trial and error. Gibson Fender and Ibanez. thats what makes up my collection and i wouldnt have it any other way. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
duane v Posted October 24, 2011 Share Posted October 24, 2011 I've owned: Gibbys Epi's GMP Washburns Mosers Kramer Charvel Fender (My daughters) Guild Rickenbacker ........and not one QC issue with the above in 37 years Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Thundergod Posted October 24, 2011 Share Posted October 24, 2011 Last sunday i went to my local guitar center (yes yes i know OMG a GC), i talked around with the guys and then the manger was telling me of the new MM's they just got in stock. They didnt put them on the floor yet because of strange problems with wiring and the pickguards being all ****ed. So i asked if i could see them, they had a blue MM explorer with a pickguard full of scratches, like a cat was on top of it and went nuts. He then showed me the blue SG which had wiring problems with the pickup selector and the tone knob not working. These guitars are brand new, made maybe a month or two ago. What the ****? Now for story number two. I hit a music store thats a Gibson dealer and they had these brand new Les Paul studio's. The guy told me he just put them on the floor that morning, so i start playing them and checking them out. The first Les Paul had cracks near the neck meeting the body and one of the tuning keys were not straight. The thirdi les paul has wiring problems, sometimes it would go to the neck pup, you just put it in the middle selection. The 2nd les paul sounded very dull and it felt like the frets werent put right. This was about a month ago. I love Gibson guitars but now im slowly staying away from them, my loyalty is dying to them. Its like they dont care anymore and just ship out guitars without looking at them once. I'm sure you have all seen the complaints by everyone on this forum and other forums about new guitars from Gibby. My loyalty to them died a year and a half ago... after repeated episoides like the one you just experienced and also after their strange policie towards the customer and the little guy. Now to hear the Gibson Crusaders tell us we are wrong and Gibson is the best and that even if they use illegal wood the govt should stay out of it and let them 'cause they make the best of the best of the best guitars. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
duane v Posted October 24, 2011 Share Posted October 24, 2011 My loyalty to them died a year and a half ago... after repeated episoides like the one you just experienced and also after their strange policie towards the customer and the little guy. Now to hear the Gibson Crusaders tell us we are wrong and Gibson is the best and that even if they use illegal wood the govt should stay out of it and let them 'cause they make the best of the best of the best guitars. Has traffic slowed some on your social club forum Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Silenced Fred Posted October 24, 2011 Share Posted October 24, 2011 Has traffic slowed some on your social club forum does that have anything that relates to thunder's opinion? I don't think anyone here can say that Gibson is all about "the little guy". unless that little guy is henry Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Thundergod Posted October 24, 2011 Share Posted October 24, 2011 It's not like Fenders have perfect QC either.. but I'm a lot more forgiving when there's an issue with a $1000 guitar than a $2000+ one. What pisses me off is to take a look at a 300 dollar asian guitar and finding no issues (other than the overall quality of components, which is debatable) and then taking a look at a 4000 dollar guitar I have been GASsing for and noticing lots of flaws and stuff that wasn't there in the 300 buck asian guitar (like 2 different screws on a pickup' ring, a bridge so high you fear it will pop out with a strum, rough fret/binding ends, cracks in the finish especially in the neck/headstock joint area, and so on). The fret end thing is ridiculous... some of the custom shop models I tried had gaps between the fret end and the binding and the strings would get stuck in there, the guy at the store said lots of them come that way and the ones I played were actually the ones where it was less noticeable. Guess who's not putting his money on a Gibson Custom Shop giutar... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest Farnsburger Posted October 24, 2011 Share Posted October 24, 2011 I've avoided this thread because I DO have an axe to grind right now but Gibson has not yet been given any chance to resolve it. That said the finish, feel and sound of my R6 was exellent when I bought it, one month after its birth date but the wood has changed shape a lot and cracks have appeared at all the joins, some gapping cracks. This HAS affected the tone, I don't pretend to know why but it has gone dead, flat, lifeless. I can only imagine that some of the joints have become less than tight and that's sucking tone. I am yet to see a Gibson, new, in a shop with a bad finnish or construction that was obvious from new. I'm gonna take mine to the dealer next week and I shall continue to be positive and assume it will be dealt with. Gibson's cs so far have proven to be about the best I've ever dealt with. Cs in Europe in general is very poor, especially in the UK so perhaps it's simply better than I am used to. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
stein Posted October 24, 2011 Share Posted October 24, 2011 Has traffic slowed some on your social club forum This isn't the social club forum? Am I in the right place? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Riffster Posted October 24, 2011 Share Posted October 24, 2011 Gibson is not about the little guy, but they don't claim to be and they don't need to be if there is not a profit in it. To satisfy a few clients and die in the process is not wise, To open a fully custom shop to satisfy some guys that spend more time in forums that they do playing does not really make much sense. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Silenced Fred Posted October 24, 2011 Share Posted October 24, 2011 Gibson is not about the little guy, but they don't claim to be and they don't need to be if there is not a profit in it. To satisfy a few clients and die in the process is not wise, To open a fully custom shop to satisfy some guys that spend more time in forums that they do playing does not really make much sense. are you daft in the head? have you read this at all? its not "i want this guitar so they should make it" its "lets make a decent guitar with consistent qc" this post has always been about qc, not custom guitars for wankers on a forum. thanks for your opinion Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Shnate McDuanus Posted October 24, 2011 Share Posted October 24, 2011 I too have experience issues with QC on new Gibsons. Going into a local Gibson dealer near my school, in any one instance I'll find anything from warped necks to jagged frets to peeled neck binding, even to minor issues like scraped finishes and chipped headstocks (the latter two of which are, more likely than anything else, the result of little kids fxcking around with them.) To be completely honest, though, my biggest issue with Gibson is that they simply don't provide what I want in a guitar at this point in my life. I love my SG, but if I were to suddenly lose my SG and I had to go out and buy a new guitar, I'd probably look at Ibanez, Jackson and Schecter before anything else. That's an issue of personal taste, though All I really want out of a guitar is a Dean Cadillac-style body (basically a Les Paul mixed with an Explorer, if you haven't had the pleasure of playing one,) with an Original Floyd Rose, two hot ceramic humbuckers, a thin neck (like Ibanez Wizard II thin) and a two-volume, master tone control scheme. Nobody makes a production-line guitar like this, so it looks like I'll have to go custom in order to get something of this nature. But I digress. Gibson is definitely suffering from QC issues these days. Frankly, every Ibanez and every Schecter I've pulled off the rack in the past two months has been a great player and has been nearly flawless, while the majority of Gibsons I've tried in the same time period have had some sort of flaw which made me not desire it. One of them had a bridge where the saddles were so jagged that the low strings broke when I was testing it out--which was embarrassing and painful for me and the store owners. Another one had fretwork that was so shoddy that almost every note on the high strings above the twelfth fret choked out. I've also noticed that a few of them just sounded dull and mushy through every amp I tried them through--and this was on nearly every setting I tried. Even "bad" brands like Dean and B.C. Rich seem to be outshining Gibson in terms of quality these days. I have faith in Gibson to pick up their game at some point--I just don't know when that point will be, or how long it will take to reach it. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Riffster Posted October 24, 2011 Share Posted October 24, 2011 are you daft in the head? have you read this at all? its not "i want this guitar so they should make it" its "lets make a decent guitar with consistent qc" this post has always been about qc, not custom guitars for wankers on a forum. thanks for your opinion My bad, I interpreted when they say "Gibson forgets about the little guy" I was linking that to special orders rather than quality. How does this sentence relate to quality? P.S. look at post # 25 on this thread. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Silenced Fred Posted October 24, 2011 Share Posted October 24, 2011 My bad, I interpreted when they say "Gibson forgets about the little guy" I was linking that to special orders rather than quality. How does this sentence relate to quality? when people say, if you want a guitar that doesn't have finish flaws, doesn't have frets that will cut up your hands, buy custom shop, that's pretty lame. When I say the little guy, I mean someone who has a thousand dollars to spend on a guitar and wants a Gibson, they end up buying a new SG only to have so much whacked out **** on it, its insane. Then to have people say on a forum "well, if you want quality, go custom shop" Like XDemon said, Schecters off the wall are stellar. I have not found one with the issues I have seen with Gibsons Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Thundergod Posted October 24, 2011 Share Posted October 24, 2011 I forgot to mention something... About the 300 buck vs 4000 buck guitar... you get the 300 dollar asian guitar and upgrade the pickups and pots and you get a pretty decent guitar to gig with that got out of the factory with no flaws. People tells you the guitar was junk and you had to upgrade the electronics and tuners for it to be good and that it ended up costing as much as, say, a better Fender, Ibanez or Jackson. So you go to forums and stuff, and ask friends and people who have said the above comment, and they get their custom shop Gibbies and the first thing they do is "upgrade pickups and electronics" and I gotta ask myself WTF? Before some of you guys say "you are just pissed 'cause you can only afford a 300 dollar guitar and some upgrades" it's not the case, I can afford prety much any guitar I want, and have some nice ones, sadly after having been a huge Gibson fan, my gibsons are not my favorite, after the hype died out I stopped playing them for lots of reasons, I wanted to buy new ones and even the custom shop models I tried (after R9 sugested they were the best) had flaws. I haven't got any 300 dollar guitars (aside from the melody maker that costed about that) but have read lots of stories and tried lots of modded cheap asian guitars owned by friends and clients and it's disapointing at best. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
milod Posted October 24, 2011 Share Posted October 24, 2011 I guess if there are problems with wood changing in the UK compared to where it was built in a site in the US, I'm not shocked, especially with a piece like a LP that has several types of wood joined. I'm just not sure what that problem might be. Is it improperly cured woods, or is it a matter of a very different climate situation? Or both of the above? I've noted before that complaints from the UK seem to be about changes in the wood. That's been the case since I've been on the forum. Ditto largely with TG in South America, again where there's a rather different climate. Blame the woods used as not properly cured or blame nature? I dunno. m Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Riffster Posted October 24, 2011 Share Posted October 24, 2011 So the question Thunder is why do you hang out in this forum if you don't like the brand? That to me seems like a huge waste of time, Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
zigzag Posted October 24, 2011 Share Posted October 24, 2011 The fret end thing is ridiculous... some of the custom shop models I tried had gaps between the fret end and the binding and the strings would get stuck in there, the guy at the store said lots of them come that way and the ones I played were actually the ones where it was less noticeable. This problem would also indicate that there are more serious issues with the neck, e.g. twisted neck. I had this issue with the first ES-335 I bought. I took it to a luthier I was working with, and he found three or four other issues with the same guitar, any one of them would have been reason enough to return it. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Thundergod Posted October 24, 2011 Share Posted October 24, 2011 when people say, if you want a guitar that doesn't have finish flaws, doesn't have frets that will cut up your hands, buy custom shop, that's pretty lame. Exactly! And it gets lamer when you decide to shop for custom shop instruments and they aren't perfect either. IMO, CQ should be 100% great regardless of what line you are buying from: CS, USA, Epiphone, Orville, whatever. Not trying to advertise any brand, but I have a small sub-dealership of Fender and when their guitars arive you can see why some cost less than others (finish, features, in the case of squier the cheaper models come with cheaper 1 ply pickguards and so on), you can use every one of them, none of them come with a broken neck because they aren't custom shop. It's like buying a car that doesn't start and doesn't have weels and taking it back to the store for the vendor to say "you should'a gone with the made in Germany BMW", it's stupid, and whoever falls for it is too. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
zigzag Posted October 24, 2011 Share Posted October 24, 2011 So the question Thunder is why do you hang out in this forum if you don't like the brand? Since TG isn't answering this question, I can (from my perspective). When I have gotten a decent guitar from Gibson, it is a fabulous instrument. Many of you guys are lucky that you haven't experienced QC issues, because not getting what you paid for is not only a huge letdown, but a tremendous waste of time. And I'm betting TG hangs out here for the same reasons anyone else does. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
stein Posted October 24, 2011 Share Posted October 24, 2011 I had an interesting experience yesterday playing my '61 L-7. I was playing acoustically along with my bud who was playing a flat top. Sure, the guitar was loud and sounded great, and played great too. But, I noticed the the finish around the binding was a little off on the top. Also, the headstock looked a little sloppy where the black was meeting the headstock binding. Of corse, it is an old guitar, and way past warrenty, but I couldn't help but wonder how much was age and what of these flaws if any it might have had when it was new. Did guitar players REALLY put up with this in the 60's? How did Gibson get such a reputation building stuff like this? I bought a new LP in 2008 (or 2007). It doesn't look quite so bad YET, but the finish is a little wavy on the back. Not sure if it was that way new, but I suppose that might be my fault for not looking and taking note. After spending 2k. I have come to the conclusion that although they may sound good, and play good, and feel good, and look good, they are probably only good for playing. Hopefully, they will get it right at some point. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Riffster Posted October 24, 2011 Share Posted October 24, 2011 Since TG isn't answering this question, I can (from my perspective). When I have gotten a decent guitar from Gibson, it is a fabulous instrument. Many of you guys are lucky that you haven't experienced QC issues, because not getting what you paid for is not only a huge letdown, but a tremendous waste of time. And I'm betting TG hangs out here for the same reasons anyone else does. I do have issues with Gibson's quality control, see post #25. I still like the brand though, I am not buying TGs hypothetical $300 flawless import guitar and upgrading, pickups, electronics, tuners and hardware and fret wire to end up with a guitar that is still made of subpar woods and does not sound good through my amp when cranked, I already have done this several times and in the end these guitars still show their limitations, but that's me. Just my opinion, nobody has to agree. I love my cheap guitars but I do like my American Fenders and Gibsons better, are they 10 times better? not at all but definitely better sounding and feeling and made for the long run. Thunder does not hang out in here for the same reasons I do I will tell you that. I hang aout here for the same reasons the guys that participated in the" Walk the walk and talk the talk..." thread. Buy hey, I already said what I need to say in this thread. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
stein Posted October 24, 2011 Share Posted October 24, 2011 Isnt that the reason people buy guitars? To play? Of corse, to play. But, I am just a little concerned that either Gibsons were never really as good as they were thought to be, or if the old way of determining how good a guitar is might be too good for Gibson to keep up with. Especially if they are all the same-if someone has the same guitar as me, then mine would be just as poorly made, or sound just as bad. (that last part was really a joke, you know this, right?) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
brundaddy Posted October 24, 2011 Share Posted October 24, 2011 I love Gibson guitars but now im slowly staying away from them, my loyalty is dying to them. Its like they dont care anymore and just ship out guitars without looking at them once. I'm sure you have all seen the complaints by everyone on this forum and other forums about new guitars from Gibby. That is why I would never buy a new Gibson. I prefer to let some dope pay the retarded 'brand new' price and work out the insane QC bugs, then I buy it used for a more honest price. Buying guitars this way, I have had no problems. Buying new music gear doesn't make sense to me. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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