The Loneliest Liberal: Electric fans

By James Knudsen

If you’re a fan of electric guitars, the preceding several weeks have seemed like the grown-ups fighting at the dinner table. A little background: in mid-June, Gibson, the legendary, iconic, revered, guitar maker, released a video titled “Play Authentic.” The video admonished guitar makers who make guitars that resemble, emulate, or otherwise copy the legendary shapes for which Gibson is known. Many guitar players felt this was a shot aimed at them as well, and the fallout on YouTube and other social media sites was swift, fierce, and unfavorable toward Gibson.

Dean copy of Gibson Flying V

    And in this connected world, the outrage was global. Gibson pulled the video a few days later. Then it was announced that they were suing Dean Guitars for copyright infringement and a host of other charges. A few weeks later, Dean Guitars announced that it was suing Gibson on the grounds that Gibson had been intimidating dealers who sold both Dean and Gibson guitars.
    Guitar enthusiasts are raising questions on all fronts. Why are guitar companies doing this? What’s the point? Do they really need to do this? If you are really interested, type “play authentic” into the search bar on YouTube and, to get the full picture, watch videos on the subject for the next several years. That would explain now, but not then – as in before we arrived at now. As in, what did Gibson, the company that made the guitars that helped create some of the most important music in pop culture, do that caused it to lose market share and ultimately declare bankruptcy in May of 2018?

1959 Cadillac

We have to start somewhere, and 1959 seems as good a place as anywhere. In 1959, the United States was coming out of a recession, gasoline was $0.25/gallon, and you could buy a house for $12,000. One of the most memorable cars of that era was the 1959 Cadillac. It marked the zenith of the tail-fin craze. (American car designs would become more rational during the Kennedy era.) Gibson was making what many believe to be the finest electric guitar ever crafted – the ’59 Les Paul. If you’d like to buy one, pop on over to reverb.com and pick one out. They accept credit cards, but you will need a credit limit of around $200k.

1959 Les Paul on reverb.com, $340k

Or you can buy a really nice ’59 Cadillac for $50k or a brand new Gibson ’59 Les Paul re-issue for $6499.
    As a teenager, I remember Gibson guitars in the local music store. Then as now, the price of a new Gibson was out of reach for a teenager. Gibsons weren’t just financially out of reach: at the music store in Tulare, Gibson guitars were in a glass case suspended from the ceiling, out of reach. Owning a Gibson, like owning a Cadillac, was aspirational. Something to work towards. A family was seen to have made it when a new Cadillac appeared in the driveway. And a guitarist was considered a serious player if he had a Gibson (or a Fender), and the requisite chops to make proper use of it.
    Alternatives were few, but as with automobiles, that began to change in the seventies, and by the 1980’s manufacturers of cars and guitars from Japan had achieved parity and in some cases superiority. Acura first appeared in 1986. Nine years earlier, the Japanese guitar maker Ibanez had teamed with guitarist George Benson to create the first of many signature models bearing his name. Many more artists from numerous musical genres would add their names to the list of Ibanez endorsers. Guitarists and car buyers of the 1980’s now had options. Today, the options seem endless.

New Ibanez Les Paul
copy, $350 new

     Now as then, manufacturers facing competition have confronted it in many ways, but in the United States, we like the legal route. For car companies it meant seeking protection in the form of tariffs. The tariffs were imposed and Detroit raised the prices on its cars because – well, because they could. Improvements in design and quality would have to wait. Gibson began suing companies back in the 1970’s. There is actually a genre of instruments known as “lawsuit era guitars,” which were built in Japan in the 1970’s and ‘80’s. American guitar companies eventually responded to this competition by having guitars built in Japan and sold under a different name, but sometimes the same name. This practice continues to this day. Some “experts” will insist that no guitar made in Japan or anywhere else can compare to one built – nay, crafted – in the United States. Still others, with equal knowledge regarding guitars, will differ.

My $140 Aria

    Here’s my take. A few years ago, I bought a used guitar from an online retailer. With shipping, it cost less than $140. I’d estimate its vintage to be from the mid to late eighties. Not long after bringing it home, I showed it to a friend who has played and recorded professionally and he agreed with my assessment. It goes something like this. When this guitar and thousands of others like it were first sold, our opinion and the opinion of many was that it was “good, for a Japanese guitar.” Similar remarks would have been heard on car lots across America, beneath signs identifying dealerships selling Pontiac, Oldsmobile, Plymouth, or AMC – all now defunct brands.

Broken headstock

Is Gibson headed the way of the dodo? Probably not, but it is doing some of the same things others have done, with the end result being that they ceased to exist. It is alienating an entire generation of consumers. Many young guitar players learn their blues licks, jazz scales, and metal riffs on guitars from Asia that are of near or equal quality – but less fragile (Gibson necks are notorious for snapping off at the headstock) and at a fraction of the cost. These points are of no concern to those at the top of KKR, the private equity firm that owns Gibson. I found the proof on the KKR website, in its description of the Gibson company. It is quintessential corporate speak:

Gibson Guitar is a leading guitar manufacturer and worldwide distributor of premium musical instruments and professional audio equipment. Gibson owns and manufactures leading product lines including the iconic Les Paul guitar.

Just try and make that work in a rock ’n roll song.

Copyright © 2019 by James Knudsen