hundreds of Gibsons Vs. Excavator

^are you Russian?


The article that errrrl posted says -

" isolated batch of Firebird X models built in 2009-2011 which were unsalvageable and damaged with unsafe components."

Which, I get - but what the hell does 'damaged with unsafe components' mean? Weird wild schtuff.

In Gibson's defense they have donated over $30M in instruments to helped the impovershed get into music and they are donating a guitar a day for 1,000 days. I'm not a Gibson defender necessarily. The company does nothing for me. I do respect the Les Paul though and I could see myself owning a Firebird or Flying V someday :dunno:

I just didn't want people to walk away thinking Gibson is bunch of tools - like I was thinking before I realized what all of this was about. The youtube link alone with no real explanation leaves a lot to be desired.

Juggernaut":7a8bxdmh said:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9AHhKRqdtGs&fbclid=IwAR1rSKtcA_Iyd9hPKy3oasphk0zVtacJlOluO9pcEMyi7Kac_r4yepQYJkU


sorry couldn't figure out how to embed it
Click to expand...
Take the YT code and put it inside this:
?wmode=opaque" width="560" height="315" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen="true">
 
I like that the new Gibson CEO is cleaning house on a bunch of stuff, good or bad. Like any business, I'm sure they are finding things that were just swept under the rug, ignored, etc. when the last group had the baton.

It still amazes me how bad stuff got with Gibson. I'm not just talking quality control stuff either. Just an overall clueless feel with the models that were coming out and almost this attitude like the name alone would carry them thru anything that came their way. The leadership was so far removed from reality.
 
agreed on new CEO...and I wish them all the luck in the world


Edit: Now I'm really second guessing this. This was done under the new CEO. Now if they removed all the batteries and circuit boards and metals before throwing in the landfill I will retract.
 
OK. You can see it here...




I still really don't get it. So metals and electronics can't be recycled? At least this YT shares an interview with the guy that took the video. Sounds like for insurance purposes they had to prove they were destroyed. Interviewee is saying there was a big battery in there and that it ran on Windows 98. That explains it.


They get into this recycling thing more after 10 min - nothing was removed.
 
It's always hard to know exactly what is going on with a situation without knowing all of the details. With a business, there could be all of these reasons they did this that doesn't make sense to anyone outside of the company. I agree that this could have been a great chance to donate a bunch of guitars or even sell "builder" guitars, etc. Maybe they signed a deal with someone and that shape has to be destroyed because the other company is taking on that shape? Maybe there is a binding legal document, etc.

I have seen stuff like this happen in my job. People will get really frustrated about something but there will be legal reasons or something you can't divulge because you signed something or because it will cause damage to the company, etc. This will be interesting though to see what happens.
 
romanianreaper":2r1efdym said:
It's always hard to know exactly what is going on with a situation without knowing all of the details. With a business, there could be all of these reasons they did this that doesn't make sense to anyone outside of the company. I agree that this could have been a great chance to donate a bunch of guitars or even sell "builder" guitars, etc. Maybe they signed a deal with someone and that shape has to be destroyed because the other company is taking on that shape? Maybe there is a binding legal document, etc.

I have seen stuff like this happen in my job. People will get really frustrated about something but there will be legal reasons or something you can't divulge because you signed something or because it will cause damage to the company, etc. This will be interesting though to see what happens.
Click to expand...

Agreed. Throwing precious metals/metal in general/ printed circuit boards/ copper, into a landfill is grossly irresponsible. Pretty sure they destroyed the instruments on purpose to show 'someone' that they were gone gone and were not going to be resold whatsoever.

The interviewee is an x-employee (the guy on the phone) who worked at Gibson for many years and he said some interesting things. He said that if you disagreed with management back then you would get fired. If there was a minor blemish on a $4,000 guitar they would throw it away vs re purposing it. That a corporate guy at the excavator incident told people to tape it. But now the videos are being pulled down.

Now - if the batteries, for example, had problems with leaking or overheating etc - I could understand. But not saving pickups, tuners, bridges, electronics etc doesn't.

That and it probably took a while to lay out 400 some odd guitars like they did, hire the excavator, and then clean all of that up. Assuming that they did.

Seems mindless.
 
There are so many angles.

I don't know who thought that was good publicity ?.

Those guitars didn't use very many common parts than other gibsons IIRC.

Legal aspects? A write off? Unsafe products/components? We will likely never know. I am not overly resentful for that.

TBH I understand not selling seconds if you are a premium brand. Would BMW put out cars that had flaws on the interior and an oil leak? IDK.

I wouldn't have publicized it though.
 
This is common practice in many manufacturing businesses. Look at how many cars are destroyed annually. New clothing that is burned and on and on. There are reasons it is done as crappy as it is.

So maybe 500 destroyed. The cost to go through every one before re purposing would have been too much. I can see their reasons. There is a much longer column of why destroy versus why not. As posted, they already donate a lot of instruments as is.

Gibson is on the mend these last few years, after that asshole Henry and Co. almost destroyed them. The damage done, as the video guy said, is tremendous .

I can attest the newer Gibsons are very good. I would consider 2018-2019 good Gibson years. Lets hope it continues and they become solvent again. It's not going to happen overnight. If they need to destroy a few crappy Firebirds so be it. The guys that posted the videos have financial, etc. motivation to do so.
 
Gibsons guitars to do what they want to. Lots of speculation here, but obviously there was a problem with them because Gibson would rather sell them than pay to destroy the lot. As for recycling, they're already out a ton of money, recycling them would have been really labor intensive. Gibson was simply cutting they're losses. Also, if they were getting reimbursed by some kind of insurance policy, i'm certain hey would have had to be destroyed. There, more speculation by me.
 
I get that it is common in the manufacturing world.
I didn't come here to beat up on Gibson.
Pretty sure it was done for insurance reasons.
Pretty sure it was for a write off.
I gathered that from listening to the interview with the guy that filmed it.
I get that it would be labor intensive to remove metals.
That labor should have been built into the write off.
I didn't research where this happened but in many places it would be illegal to dump lead, copper, zinc, gold etc and nickel cadmium or lithium ion batteries (for example).

Yep - Tennessee and California. Tennessee has a process for metals like this. I'm assuming California does too. Maybe they followed the proper procedures :dunno: Because it wasn't stated in the interview or by Gibson themselves we don't know what happened to the material.

To repeat, Gibson said:
" isolated batch of Firebird X models built in 2009-2011 which were unsalvageable and damaged with unsafe components."

isolated batch

unsafe components
 
311splawndude":2btxx551 said:
I get that it is common in the manufacturing world.
I didn't come here to beat up on Gibson.
Pretty sure it was done for insurance reasons.
Pretty sure it was for a write off.
I gathered that from listening to the interview with the guy that filmed it.
I get that it would be labor intensive to remove metals.
That labor should have been built into the write off.
I didn't research where this happened but in many places it would be illegal to dump lead, copper, zinc, gold etc and nickel cadmium or lithium ion batteries (for example).

Yep - Tennessee and California. Tennessee has a process for metals like this. I'm assuming California does too. Maybe they followed the proper procedures :dunno: Because it wasn't stated in the interview or by Gibson themselves we don't know what happened to the material.

To repeat, Gibson said:
" isolated batch of Firebird X models built in 2009-2011 which were unsalvageable and damaged with unsafe components."

isolated batch

unsafe components
Click to expand...

Oh yeah man, I don't think anyone took it that way. Even if we love a certain company, always important to do a "checks and balances" on them.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top