If he had taken a Gibson to smash there is little doubt that it would have been much easier given the fragile nature of them especially in the neck area.Henry J. it seems knows no boundaries when it comes to making a fool of himself,all one has to do is look at the large number of boondoggles he has OKed in the past few years.

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'65 Strat,65 Mustang,65 Jaguar,4 more Strats,3 vintage Vox guitars,5 Vox amps,'69 Bassman with a '68 2-15 Bassman cab,36 guitars total-15asst'd amps total,2 vintage '60s Hammond organs & a myriad of effects-with a few rare vintage ones.

edit: sorry I didn't see there already was a Firebird X bashing thread here. I'll post there

Ah yes, the infamous Firebird X unveiling from last Thursday. This has been spreading like wildfire on every guitar forum.

What a crappy overpriced dud the Firebird X is going to be. MSRP of $5000 for an ugly guitar with built in effects. There is nothing revolutionary about that, guitars with built-in effects have been around since the 60's and they ALWAYS fail to sell well. Gibson's marketing and R&D are not guitar players.

Check out Henry's lame attempt at being Steve Jobs and get a hoot out of the negative comments on the Gibson website. The negative comments have been getting posted faster than Gibson can delete them. http://www.gibson.com/en-us/Lifestyle/F ... ment-1028/

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Obligatory gear list: Fender, Rickenbacker, Gibson, Gretsch, Vox, Martin, and more Fender.

'Tropolis

I can't find a posting of Henry's response to the backlash. Can you link directly or quote it please?

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Nice montages, Nevin!

-Nutter

So this guy is comparing his creativity to that of Les Paul? Wow someone must have knocked him on the head with that guitar. Most all of us are aware that the electric guitar was only ONE of Les Paul's Inventions. Without the inventions of Les Paul The Instrument world and the recording world would be very different today. All this guy has done is take an ugly guitar and make it obscene. I don't have to touch it (I wouldn't with a ten foot pole) to know I don't like it. I like to PLAY guitar, That means tuning it, playing it, setting up my own effects, (when needed) I don't want a robot guitar of any sort. What an Egomaniac this guy is to think that he is even in the same league as Les Paul. To mention his name in the same room as this Guitar is Slanderous.

Heres some comments from the Gibsonites... many are quite humorous http://forum.gibson.com/index.php?/topic/57476-henrys-big-announcement/

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Hey, Boy Blue is back!

Oh, All is well, He's doing it for the kids, I figured that thing hooked up to Guitar Hero.

I don't like it, so I don't buy it. Only way any manufacturer understands.



-Nutter

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I started out with nothing, and still have most of it.

Shows how little the guy cares about his customer base doesn't it.

Thanks 'Tropolis


What he doesn't mention is that Les Paul was a player before anything, not a businessman. He did innovate the guitar playing experience, as did Leo Fender.
Neither would have gotten anywhere without Paul Bigsby.
What both Fender and Paul did was innovate a product, make it appealing to the majority of the consumer base. The Tele was a good shot in the right direction. Without wishing to offend Tele owners, the Strat was the perfection of that in a lot of ways. The same could be said of the Les Paul and the SG. The SG was a attempt to make a Les Paul that didn't weigh a tonne. A stripped down giggable instrument that does the job perfectly but doesn't break the back or the bank.
Both had the good sense to keep effects outboard or on the amp. Is anyone going to try and seriously argue the point that Les Paul never toyed with the idea of onboard effects? As for Leo, I think the Jazzmaster is a good indication that he considered it but good sense took over.
Even Fender, despite not being a player had the humility to ask gigging players in his locale (not national names, movie stars or accountants) what they wanted out of his product.
A stark difference to what we see here. A firm on the verge of dismissing their wonderfull heriatage in favour of the view of a bunch of clueless IT consultants.
Y'know Fender makes some grim decisions on it's choice of endorsees. But atleast anyone with half a brain can see what they go for. Maximum exposure, before anything else. You can't argue with it, it's good business sense.
They don't rehash failed ideas from other companies and try to claim them as their own.

I'd have to argue his point that the LP didn't sell till the 59. If so why release such outlandish designs as the Vee and Explorer in 58? Was the whole of the electric guitar playing consumer base made up of Fender players? No it wasn't.


Let em stick to what their doing. Nonsense instruments for Visa card rockstars and signature guitars for movie stars.

That Henry bloke is a arsehole. Thats all there is to it. He's rescued that company, done good by it, now he's destroying it again before he retires. Utter pratt. I can't help but think he has a grudge against the guitar playing community because he never got anywhere by playing.

You don't need to play a guitar to know it's rubbish. Any kid with three years playing experience knows when a guitar is a dud. They hide a bad product behind glitter.

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If Funk & Wagnall's dictionary ever needed a more contemporary illustration to help visualize the phrase "butt ugly", they couldn't want for a better example than a photo of that hideous monstrosity.

I couldn't care less if they were giving them away......there's no way I'd ever spend a dime on it or waste a moment of my remaining-but-dwindling time on this rock on a "test drive".



Arjay

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"Here's why reliability is job one: A great sounding amp that breaks down goes from being a favorite piece of gear to a useless piece of crap in less time than it takes to read this sentence." -- BRUCE ZINKY

I saw a review of those tuners used on the Robot guitar. It was years ago before I realized guitar mags were a ripp off.
Anyhow, notice how nothing ever gets a bad review in a guitar mag? They don't want to denounce the product of a company that has just paid for a double page ad.
Well them tuners were about the worst review I can remember. Something along the lines of too expensive and cumbersome to be practical. 2 outta 5 stars.
They were something silly like £400 a set.

Suppose their handy for the terminaly lazy or the tone deaf.

Why don't gibson just concentrate on what they do best. People are always going to want 335's, LP's, SG's and acoustics. I can't believe how short the 50's tribute series was. They ought to be driving that nail home and selling 2000 of them a day.

Henry says he doesn't know how everyone can hate that guitar. Well in that statement he's given the board of directors all the reason they need to sack him.

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Someone did get to interview him, by email or something. He didn't answer half the questions. Half of the questions he did answer it seemed he was trying to divert the interview.

Nevin a part of how magazines work is that they will only review your product if you pay for XXX number of months advertizing. A friend of mine makes Falconry leather items (hoods and suchlike). Her work is exempliary, it really is. She's made me belts and guitarstraps in the past. Nothing fancy, just a good strong strip of dead cow that lasts forever. She confirmed all my suspisions.
They really do provide no service at all. They simply get you to pay to look at adverts they charge someone else for including in their rag.
I think you've a better chance of getting a accurate picture of the performance of new gear by reading the astrology page in the national enquirer or some gutter rag.

Here's the other silly titbit.
Why do you find adverts in the back of guitar magazines that read 'Guitarist wants to form band, needs bassist and drummer'.
Surely even the most dense, utterly neanderthal guitarist knows you're better off putting that advert in bassist and drummer magazines.

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That guy is more of an arrogant fool than I first thought,he sent me the other way forever with his assinine remarks comparing his guitar smashing to what Townshend and Hendrix once did.
and yes,that guitar is uglier than a mud fence.

The way I see it is that Gibson are just reaping the rewards of how they've always been. Not that it's neccessarily a bad thing, just the way they are trying to steer away from it now is doing them no favours.

They've always promoted themselves as being the premier instrument maker. Whether that is true or not is not being debated. Personaly I think their ideas are needlessly stupid and have always been. Most love what they do well. They've spent decades perpetuating this reputation that their guitars are made with some kind of magic that the mere mortal just cannot perform.

This has led to them only being able to produce electric instruments styled on the few electric instruments they built between 52 and 68. Any variation on those stylings is not really accepted by the typical Gibson fan.

The direct opposite of that is Fender who built a instrument the average Joe could work on, fix and modify. Modify they did. Sixty years later they have a much broader accepted catalogue incorporating ideas they've seen implemented into guitars from their customer base. Which is more likely to accept implementation of technology. I don't remember this backlash over the VG or the Variax.

Look at all the LP models over the last few years. Not just the abhorrently bad ones. The Gothic, RawPower, that Floyd Rose thing. Non of them were a huge hit. Ok some people like and love em. But their a lot less accepted than similar stylings on a strat or tele.

It's just a shame that Clown Henry can't see that (wouldn't it be great if someone changed the name on his office door to 'Boffo'). Gibson limited their options years ago. I agree they could do with expanding acceptable lines a bit. I'd love nothing more to tell the truth. I'm a firm believer in competition being essential to keep the market healthy.
This aint the way to do it and a schoolkid would know it.

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