Gibson Firebird X and SG

Have some credibility issues with the "source" in the linked article.

"The company’s culture dictated any instruments with even the smallest defect were not to be shared with the world"........

Has this dude never been to a Gibson dealer in the last ten years? Hell they had "defects" on their own website.

Quality hasn't been Job 1 (or, seemingly even 100) in Nashville for year's... Perhaps this article was intended for non Guitarist's?
 
I assume they are not setup to make re-puposing the mahogany(?), body's work from an economics standpoint....but damn what a waste. How hard would it be to part them out? Say these don't meet our standard's... but any luthier who makes a donation of $25 (charity of choice...ideally reforestation)) and pays for shipping, can have a Mahogany slab(s) that can still be fashioned into a working instrument, while at the same time, keeping alive the very craft that made them in the first place. Horrible waste of resources for what gain?
 
First you state that you got a good deal on the SG and the you go on about what's wrong with it.
You shouldn't have bought it in the first place.
People should stay away from Gibson as far as possible.
There are plenty of good alternatives out there.
But I guess having that logo on the guitar is way more important than owning a quality guitar.
I've always gassed for a LP but if I'm ever going to get one, it's definitely not going to be a Gibson.
Probably a Heritage.
 
I assume they are not setup to make re-puposing the mahogany(?), body's work from an economics standpoint....but damn what a waste. How hard would it be to part them out? Say these don't meet our standard's... but any luthier who makes a donation of $25 (charity of choice...ideally reforestation)) and pays for shipping, can have a Mahogany slab(s) that can still be fashioned into a working instrument, while at the same time, keeping alive the very craft that made them in the first place. Horrible waste of resources for what gain?

I reckon for Gibson it was probably too much trouble to make it worth the effort to cannibalize them for parts. As in costing more then the potential gains. I reckon that places like Guitar Fetish would love to scrounge these for parts though. And if they had sent them to China to be cannibalized for parts it could easily have been done there. I've seen vids of Chinese workers scrounging the craziest things for usable parts. But then again China also has a reputation for scamming. You sent them there to be cannibalized a fair number of them will probably end up on Ali express.

I'm not sure the body is still usable. The odd shape aside, a lot of it has been hollowed out to make room for electronics. Those things have more electronics in them then a Borg drone. I suspect that the only guitar you could build out of these would be a Steinberger.
 
I played all Firebird X's that were at the Gibson booth when it was introduced at Frankfurt Messe a good 10 years ago. Everyone of them was awful, the worst piece of junk I've ever had in my hands.
But thrash them??
 
Donate. To. Schools.

How was nobody at Gibson smart enough to think of this????!!!!

With all the awful publicity they are making for themselves, this would have been a great way to turn it around.
 
With all the awful publicity they are making for themselves...

And all I see at the moment on the internet/facebook is about Gibson. If they had done the right thing and given them to a school or non profit, prob. wouldn't have gotten more than a tweet. But to unnecessarily have a huge construction machine run them over, on video, on youtube...

Whole thing is about publicity, nothing else.
 
Even if those guitars had a massive design flaw that made them unplayable, it makes no sense to not scavenge the tuners/pickups/knobs, etc off of them.
 
Even if those guitars had a massive design flaw that made them unplayable, it makes no sense to not scavenge the tuners/pickups/knobs, etc off of them.
I very much agree.

I will share though, back in the 2007 (I think) when they reissued the Gibson RD in Silverburst, I ordered one with a Musician's Friend 20% coupon.
Played well with a set up, I really liked it, so I bought a second one on Zzounds. When I got the second one, I had it set up and the luthier called me to tell me that he could not get the guitar out of backbow. The cause - the frets slots were not cut wide enough so when the frets were inserted the pushed the neck into backbow. You simply could not set it up to be playable.
So I returned it to Zzounds and they sent me another one. I got it....brought it to the luthier...same exact issue. This luthier had worked on a ton of my guitars (including my 70s Gibson RDs), and he knows what he was doing.
I called Zzounds, sent it back and asked that they have someone put a straight edge on the fret board to see for themselves. I also wanted them to put a straight edge on the fret boards of any others they had in stock, so they could find me one that was playable.
They called me back and said - well, we check yours (and some others) and we'd like to sell you something other than that guitar.
Which means - they were all junk.
The first one I got from Musician's Friend was 'ok', but I sold it a couple years later anyway.

Moral - to fix those RDs, they would have had to de-fret...widen the slots...re-fret. Probably too much work, and would mean a loss for them.
I'm guessing those guitars in the video were a similar story (just my guess). But no reason you couldn't salvage parts or donate them (if they were close to playable for a beginner).
 
And all I see at the moment on the internet/facebook is about Gibson. If they had done the right thing and given them to a school or non profit, prob. wouldn't have gotten more than a tweet. But to unnecessarily have a huge construction machine run them over, on video, on youtube...

Whole thing is about publicity, nothing else.

Except this video was not posted by Gibson. It was posted by one of the guys who works the demolition crew at the old Gibson plant.

And bad publicity can be terrible if it cements into the public's mind that you're a bunch a scumbags with terrible quality controls.

Even if those guitars had a massive design flaw that made them unplayable, it makes no sense to not scavenge the tuners/pickups/knobs, etc off of them.

I reckon that for Gibson itself it cost too much to put some workers on it to scavenge those parts off. I don't if they could have sold them to something like Guitar Fetish, who likes to scavenge the rejects bins of guitar manufacturers. Although methinks the tuners would have been useless anyway as they are robot tuners. And you can't even pay people money these days to accept those.
 
Why bother to lay them all out so neatly, and have a wrecker drive over them? Why not just bash em w/ sledgehammers or toss em into an industrial debris crusher?
 
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Why bother to lay them all out so neatly, and have a wrecker drive over them? Why not just bash em w/ sledgehammers or toss em into an industrial debris crusher?

Maybe these guys who did this wanted to have some fun? Because while wrecking things is fun, carefully choreographed mayhem is even more fun. Why do some people spend weeks on end lining up dominoes only to tip them over and see them all fall down?

Again, this video was posted by one of the guys working the demolition crew at the old Gibson plant. There are other videos on his channel where they smash more stuff, including other guitars by hand inside the old plant. There was stuff being left behind. This might not even be a Gibson action at all. Could be that Gibson abandoned those guitars at the plant and asked the demolition team to take care of them. Upon which they came up with their version of tipping over the dominoes, only with a giant wrecker.
 
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