Yeah...some of us seem to be talking about Gibson-the-guitars, and some about Gibson-the-company under earlier management...or Gibson-the-company under present management.
All those layers and facets provide fodder for commentary and personal opinion, one way or the other.
No one has mentioned Gibson-the-historical-heritage. (Though Heritage brand guitars certainly refer to it.) I'm talking about a long history of innovation and leadership in stringed-instrument production going back to 1894 (if we're talking about when Orville started making instruments) or 1902 (when the company was officially founded). The list of the company's developments over the years is pretty much a recipe for The Standard across a range of instruments: mandolins, banjos, archtop guitars, solidbody set-neck guitars, and semi-hollow thinline electrics.
There really wasn't a jazz guitar before Gibson, and any company making f-hole archtops to this day owes a debt. We can say the same thing about cutaway archtops (Switchmaster, 295, 175), the Les Paul, the set-neck mahogany slab, and the 335 and its derivatives: all now not just Gibson products, but recognizable types and formulas for electric guitar.
Not to mention a slew of hardware inventions and improvements, now industry standards: pehaps not the first electric guitar pickup, but arguably the first great ones. The Charlie Christian, the P-90, and the classic humbucker (notwithstanding that Seth Lover and Ray Butts got there about the same time). Bridges and tailpieces. The list goes on.
And the people! Orville himself, for getting it going (though he didn't stay at the helm for long). Lloyd Loar. Ted McCarty. Seth Lover. Guys whose design, engineering, industrial, and business skills created instruments which shaped and sometimes defined whole genres of music which have in turn shaped us.
And through long periods of that run, there was a company culture and business ethic to provide real baked-in quality, finished to a handsome (if rarely overdone) degree - especially in the mechanical basics - and sold for a fair price for the quality at hand. Nice as the nicest Gibson products have been, there could still be something a little Oldsmobile about them: they were supremely playable, reliable, durable, serviceable, and looked every bit as good as they had to in order to serve the purpose of making music.
But the company rarely went all Cadillac, with ornamentation and ostentation of cosmetics which added nothing to playability or sound. There's something very midwestern about that: honest value in an honest product, and not much money spent on (or charged for) purely aesthetic properties. As instruments, they were - from the 20s through the 60s at least, and for periods of time since then - as good as anyone needed, and it was hard to find anything technically or musically better.
That Gibson - the heir to that legacy, holding so many family jewels whose names are common shorthand for guitarists (when someone calls any guitar a Les Paul, Special, Junior, SG, 175, 375, Explorer, V, etc...we know exactly what they're talking about whether the guitar in question is Gibson-branded or not) - that Gibson is to me a national treasure, a good part of the foundation under the "popular" music of the 20th century (still reverberating today), and something I very much value and treasure.
My first stringed musical instrument was a Gibson TB-2 tenor banjo (not the top of the line), early 20s. Belonged to my grandfather, who'd played it in a "string band" combo with his sisters, and pulled it out from under his bed and gave it to me when I was Beatle-and-guitar obsessed, so I could prove to my parents I'd stick to it and should be allowed to get a guitar. That was circa 1965-66; I still have the banjo. It's been tuned to pitch in its case through those decades, and needed a new head in the 70s and a couple tension rods in the early 90s. Its action is ridiculously low.
My first "good" electric (after a Japanese 60s special and a Wurlitzer!) was a basket-case Melody Maker whose owner had stripped the finish, hogged out the Honduran mahogany body with an entrenching tool (it being the late 60s, obviously to put in a humbucker), then left it under his bed when a low draft number sent him to Vietnam. He didn't come back; his parents eventually sold it to a music store, which sold it in 1975 to a poor broke college kid (me) for 35.00, in pieces. I had a buddy make a pickguard, sourced a used humbucker and sprang for a DiMarzio Fat Strat (anyone remember those?) and a Leo Quan Badass. Put it together and played the bejeebus out of it. It's still together (having been through a couple different pickguard/pickup schemes), and it plays like Miracle Butter.
My next good electric was (and remains) a 70s-era 335-TD with coil tap and trapeze tailpiece. Guy showed it to me on the sidewalk outside a music store where he was taking it to trade for an acoustic. I'd never in my life wanted a 335, but I knew it was a good guitar - and more valuable than the Alvarez acoustic he said he'd trade me for it. I felt bad about that, so I gave my Alvarez 12-string too. I've never missed either of those, and the 335 was my main ride for lots of gigs. I don't have a more beat-up case. It's still here, wearing the too-short Bigsby I put on it from the parts shelf at the music store, not knowing it was the wrong one. The Bigsby works fine, the guitar plays like more Miracle Butter, with sci-fi action, and I can't remember ever having cranked the truss rod. And that's one of the supposedly bad Norlin-era guitars.
This isn't to talk about every Gibson I've ever owned but to observe that it's hard to imagine higher-quality, better-constructed, better-performing instruments. I just think what treasures these guitars are, and what a legacy this company represents. To me, that Gibson - perhaps idealized - matters, and it's why it matters to me how the Gibson story evolves.
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Which is why it was hard to see the custodians of that legacy in the Henry J period abuse and pee all over it. I get that the Baldwin era was a long somewhat meandering drift, and that HJ brought the company back from the brink in the 80s when he acquired it. I appreciate that. I'd hate not to have Gibson in our musical culture. But, progressively over time, the decisions became seemingly more craven, more misguided, more erratic, ultimately crazier. And still there were lots of dedicated people at Gibson, both in management and on the workshop floor, who got what they were doing, cared about it, did all they could to preserve and extend what was good about the brand.
It's just that there was enough cynical lifestyle-marketing poison in the system to make a mess of product decisions (some real head-scratchers), innovations and advancements that weren't, sliding QC, sometimes predatory and occasionally delusional pricing (especially on Really Dumb Things) ... no need to drag all that out again.
I just remember my visit to the Memphis factory for a tour, and the stiff, sharp-fretted, bad-action, dusty condition of the guitars in the gift shop showroom - and the gum-chewing, phone-chatting obliviousness of the spokesmodel installed as an attraction behind the counter. (I enjoyed the tour itself; it certainly seemed a lot people were doing what it takes to build guitars.)
What I thought was needed when HenryJ shuffled off the scene was a return to basics: the classic and iconic models on which the reputation was built, made well (but not over-done) and fairly priced for today's market. (I guess it's worth tossing in that everything HJ & Co were screwing up at Gibson, management at Epiphone was getting right - to the point that, were I shopping for a Gibson now...I'd be shopping for an Epiphone.)
So far the Curleigh regime gets mixed votes from me. I believe product selection now represents more of the basics I'd go to Gibson for, and understand QC has improved considerably. But the Bulldoze-Our-Reputation stunt came under Curleigh management...so I don't know.
It's been years since I had much experience with contemporary new Gibson product, so I can't speak to that. I read both good and bad, and understand there were Golden Eras even during the reign of Henry, when you could more or less be assured of getting a good guitar for your money (though no one suggests Gibson QC has ever approached PRS standards).
From a practical standpoint, it doesn't matter to me: I'm not in the market for any Gibson product (after I got a dandy Bozeman J-45 slope-shoulder acoustic a few years ago). My 335 is all the 335 I'll ever need, my '74 LP Deluxe is quietly appreciating in its case (while never being my first thought when I want to play something Lestery), and my Faded P90 Special (after a complete fret dressing) is a screamin' bloody hoot. Fortunately, I don't have a passion (or skill) for high-end jazz boxes. (If I did, can't a feller get a decent vintage one for little more than a modern Gibson version, if they happen to be making one at the moment?) I feel like I have all my Gibson bases covered - some of them by actual Gibsons!
But I do wish generations of players through the 80s and to the present had a Gibson company like the one I knew and admired during my formative years as a player - great guitars, clear descendants of the archetypal originals, fair pricing for the value at hand, and consistent quality.
Hmm. Sounds like a recipe for a going operation, doesn't it?
