Article about the guitar industry.

[Larry Mal]

Enjoy!

[Whiny Minotaur]

“My dream had always been to build a major music lifestyle business, similar to what Nike is to sports, and grow beyond guitars" - Gibson CEO Henry Juszkiewicz

Jesus fucking Christ.

[Jaguar018]

If mom jeans can come back into style so can guitars.

Let's all just keep playing and making cool songs with whatever. I just want good music. I totally love some good guitar stuff in the mix, but it's all about the good sounds and melodies.

[Harmoncj]

I figure people are less likely to own more than one guitar and more likely to have a massive pedalboard.

[Larry Mal]

I was happy to read that article as well as Henry J's mea culpa. My belief and hope is that Gibson emerges as a smaller and leaner company, and continues their commitment to higher quality that they've been doing.

I've talked a little bit about this commitment to quality that I've been seeing, there's been some hardware changes that are not immediately apparent but show them leaning in that direction, and I recently got a 2014 J-45 and a 2017 J-35. Probably few would care about this, but in 2016 Gibson made a big thing about some improvements they made to their guitars, such as more rounded fingerboard edges and using a finer grit sandpaper on the finish to add lustre.

And what do you know, you can actually tell that. It's not a big deal by any stretch, who cares, my only point here is that Gibson has been working to improve the quality of their guitars somewhat behind the scenes, so it can be imagined that they have some idea of their reputation for putting out sloppy guitars (I've never really felt this) and are addressing that.

Or maybe not, I don't know, but my hope is that they get to continue on and it seems that they will.

They almost certainly will be continuing on without Henry J, so that can possibly lead to some good changes there. Time will tell.

Regarding the guitar industry as a whole, it was nice to see some thoughts that it's not all doom and gloom there. I've always been of the opinion that the guitar market contracting is just going to take a lot of the lesser brands out of the equation, and there will be the big names and small builders left. So, things like Guild will end their run, Jackson, so on. Hamer, Ovation, those brands that are already weak and "of their time" will probably be scuttled as the idea of what an electric guitar is narrows in the marketplace.

I could be wrong.

[Shadoweclipse13]

Pretty good article. I love reading about the divisions between genres of music and the importance of guitar. Nearly every time I see a video of a pop or rap star live, they always have a guitarist. Thinking that "guitar = rock" is so strange to me. It's clearly an important instrument for all genres of music, though it may not be "front-and-center" for all genres.

[mezcalhead]

I figure people are less likely to own more than one guitar and more likely to have a massive pedalboard.

Smaller cheaper things are easier to collect. One of my wife's friends has 2-3 suits and literally over 3000 designer ties; when I pointed out to him that he could have had another dozen suits and still more ties than he could possibly wear he just looked at me sideways.

[Whiny Minotaur]

Pretty good article. I love reading about the divisions between genres of music and the importance of guitar. Nearly every time I see a video of a pop or rap star live, they always have a guitarist. Thinking that "guitar = rock" is so strange to me. It's clearly an important instrument for all genres of music, though it may not be "front-and-center" for all genres.

That's because 'rock guitarists' can be some of the most insufferable bunch of idiots who have Republician views on music. Their ideas of interesting music consists of playing all over the track while being the loudest thing in the mix without any regards towards reason, logic or feeling. Have to compensate for their microscopic penises I guess.

[Shadoweclipse13]

I definitely agree. At least some of them are. There are songs where I really love that the guitar is super prominent, but I've gotten to the point that I prefer guitar as a accompaniment instrument. I imagine that years of loving and listening to orchestra will make you think that way. Haha.

[Whiny Minotaur]

I definitely agree. At least some of them are. There are songs where I really love that the guitar is super prominent, but I've gotten to the point that I prefer guitar as a accompaniment instrument. I imagine that years of loving and listening to orchestra will make you think that way. Haha.

Yeah, don't get me wrong, I still love rock music and I have a lot of respect for lots of rock musicians. But Jesus, rock fans and guitarists can be so goddamn insufferable. It's kind of funny because every other musician I met were open minded people who generally just like music, while almost all of the rock musicians I met had this weird tribalistic mentality and awfully myopic ideas on what music should be.

[Shadoweclipse13]

Me too. But as you're saying, there definitely can be a separation between personality and technical ability. I get along really well with the open-minded type musicians. The others, not so much.

[budda12ax7]

Pretty good article. I love reading about the divisions between genres of music and the importance of guitar. Nearly every time I see a video of a pop or rap star live, they always have a guitarist. Thinking that "guitar = rock" is so strange to me. It's clearly an important instrument for all genres of music, though it may not be "front-and-center" for all genres.

That's because 'rock guitarists' can be some of the most insufferable bunch of idiots who have Republician views on music. Their ideas of interesting music consists of playing all over the track while being the loudest thing in the mix without any regards towards reason, logic or feeling. Have to compensate for their microscopic penises I guess.

Whoa...just because somebody shreds doesn't mean they have a small penis and belong to the NRA-that is so dumb.

[mezcalhead]

Pretty good article. I love reading about the divisions between genres of music and the importance of guitar. Nearly every time I see a video of a pop or rap star live, they always have a guitarist. Thinking that "guitar = rock" is so strange to me. It's clearly an important instrument for all genres of music, though it may not be "front-and-center" for all genres.

If there's a mental straitjacket here, it's probably somewhere in the concept that guitars must lead to cowboy strumming or meedly-meedly lead lines .. "songs" built of "chords", somewhere upon which there is a "solo".

There's plenty of music in which most or even every sound you hear is made by guitars, and none of the above applies - Rhys Chatham, Fennesz, Young Gods, Geotic are just a few wildly differing examples. As always it's not the tool, it's how it's used.

[Whiny Minotaur]

Pretty good article. I love reading about the divisions between genres of music and the importance of guitar. Nearly every time I see a video of a pop or rap star live, they always have a guitarist. Thinking that "guitar = rock" is so strange to me. It's clearly an important instrument for all genres of music, though it may not be "front-and-center" for all genres.

That's because 'rock guitarists' can be some of the most insufferable bunch of idiots who have Republician views on music. Their ideas of interesting music consists of playing all over the track while being the loudest thing in the mix without any regards towards reason, logic or feeling. Have to compensate for their microscopic penises I guess.

Whoa...just because somebody shreds doesn't mean they have a small penis and belong to the NRA-that is so dumb.

I wasn’t trying to impy that shredders are bad people, just making a comment on the general guitar/rock culture.