Debating "imperfections"

[Nightrain04]

Interesting topic. I just took delivery of a 60s Bourbon Burst yesterday. A svelte 8 pounds, 12 oz. I have fine toothed combed it and played the shit out of it in the last 24 hours.

Did I receive a perfect guitar? Well, no. There are two little dark specs in the binding. Otherwise, the binding and nibs are pretty damn great. They could have scraped it better in one spot. It plays well, sounds very good despite me going into this almost sure the 61 pickups weren’t gonna be my thing.

I did not expect an absolutely perfect fit and finish guitar from a manufacturer that pumps out 350 guitars per day. Gibson could cut that number in half and do a much better job on the finest details, but that’s a proposition that doesn’t work for them or us financially. Frankly, I would not be interested in a 3,600 dollar USA Les Paul Standard. At 2,300, which is what I paid for it, it’s a damn sweet bargain. I can’t emphasize that enough. I’ll take a few minor cosmetic imperfections that have zero impact on my enjoyment of and appreciation for this guitar to keep this price point.

These recent original series guitars, feel wise, are creeping ever closer to historics. I’ve owned a good number of both breeds. This guitar is 95 percent of the way to my fantastic 2019 R8 V2 for about half the price, right out of the box with no mods. I’m no math whiz, but I like that equation. A lot.

Excellent comment!!

 

[Nightrain04]

Yeah, let me cut to the chase here because I can see a little lynch mob of seething yuppies has formed & they're having nervous breakdowns because I'm refusing to behave like one of their subordinates...

I'm not going to do what any of you tell me to do.

I'm not your secretary.

I'm not your servant.

I'm not here to impress you or earn your widdle emojis like they can be cashed in for money.

Let that sink in ;-)

You can create petty rumors about me. You can make up lil stories & accusations, you can type "belittling comments" & pat yourselves on the back for behaving like a clique of seething little girls before accusing me of being the "bad guy" for refusing to tolerate any of it.

I still won't budge.

I made myself clear in my previous thread. That's it.

I don't negotiate with terrorists.

God bless America

You the MAN!!!

 

[efstop]

You the MAN!!!

No, he's a troll. A man who's happy with his guitar and posts on a guitar forum is generally happy to post pics, or post a photo if he's looking for advise. A troll generally doesn't own what he's talking about, and makes endless excuses to not post a pic. We've seen it before.

 

[ehb]

My pinkie toe itches.

 

[AJK1]

Surely cosmetic flaws are a testament to the fact that they're handmade guitars & shouldn't this be a reassuring thing? I mean, if Les Paul's were 100% aesthetically perfect it'd raise questions & concerns? Like, make people suspect them of being made by machines instead of people?

Also, why should Gibson bother making Les Pauls cosmetically faultless when their nitro finishes have the breaking strain of a Kit Kat & "ageing" them is considered a cool thing to do anyway? lol

I think it's really weird that some guys will literally take a magnifying glass to their Les Pauls & suffer a crippling nervous breakdown the moment they discover evidence of it being a handmade guitar. I mean, what do you expect? You bought a handmade instrument with vintage specs ffs

Later the same guys will purr over a 50s era LP with rotting inlays, rusted hardware & a worn out body covered in blemishes & dings. I don't get it.

My 6 Jap Tokai’s are handfinished and they are flawless
And so is my Yamaha SA2200 for that matter

 

[Nintari]

Martin makes their guitars by hand--even more so, actually--and they don't suffer near the same amount of imperfections. Just because it's handmade, does not mean it has to be full of cosmetic flaws.

 

[CB91710]

Martin makes their guitars by hand--even more so, actually--and they don't suffer near the same amount of imperfections. Just because it's handmade, does not mean it has to be full of cosmetic flaws.

Yep.
Handmade may mean there is a certain lack of consistency when it comes to minute and unimportant details, but it does not mean that "flaws" will be present.
But considering OP is a troll.....

 

[Phillycheez402]

Yep.
Handmade may mean there is a certain lack of consistency when it comes to minute and unimportant details, but it does not mean that "flaws" will be present.
But considering OP is a troll.....

Who cares. I bought this used and didnt think twice

 

[mudface]

Who cares. I bought this used and didnt think twice

Why don’t you start a NGD thread and tell us about it.

 

[sonar1]

I LIKE my flaws!

I’m on several pages of the DSM-V myself!

 

[Kody]

One persons imperfection is another persons unacceptable flaw..I always get a kick out of the posts where someone posts a picture of a “scratch” that you can’t even see and they are all bent out of shape about it hahaha.

 

[nomadh]

Excellent comment, you make a lot of great points, thanks for posting it!!! I have the very same opinion but have been reluctant to voice it simply because I don't want to hurt peoples feelings. So many of these posters freaking out about things I can't even see in the pics they post make me want to tell them to just grow up and get over it. There is no such thing as a perfect guitar, car, or whatever.

I can understand wanting to have a flawless product when it is brand new and you just paid a lot of money for it, but be realistic, returning a guitar for tiny little things that can barely be seen with the naked eye is just crazy IMO. I've seen so many posts where a guy got a new guitar that is totally awesome in all respects but it has a tiny blemish in an obscure and unimportant place and they have a total meltdown and return the guitar. If it was me I would just play the damn thing, its gonna get scratched up anyway.

What I really wonder is, and this is for me as well as others, are we hearing with our eyes. I like my guitar to have a certain look. I like wood grain. I'm not buying a black, white or red guitar no matter how good but that said I wont buy the wood grain that isnt as good playing/sounding either. If it takes a year or 10. Once you get to a certain point though I go for playability and tone. I try really hard to not notice if one has slightly nicer grain or a finish imperfection. Really, am I supposed to pick a lesser guitar because a little bleed over on the binding?
The problem when you buy mail order and aren't comparing is now you have to compare the guitar to imaginary perfection. Perfect is always the enemy of good. It's also the enemy of very very very good.

 

[jk60LPTH]

Much like a fungus, he's growing on me.

There's a prescription creme for that.

 

[jk60LPTH]

I see your point but disagree. If QBoss does his farking job, there won't be many. Different industry and title but my response time to a Q of S issue was RFN and face to face. 100% of the time. Didn't take long and everybody was happy with it. They didn't have to sweep up somebody else's shit....

All it would take is the QBoss walking a guitar to the stage that dicked it, to the individual that dicked it and THEY would fix it or hit the damn door. There would also be a meeting with everybody past that point that accepted it.

Everybody in that place would have a unique stamp, retractable on ID neck lanyard.
Every guitar would have a card riding with it everywhere.
Every card would have process blocks.
Every process block would have an IN - ALL OK square individual must stamp, DONE with/individual's stamp, OUT - ALL OK with Stamp.
I would have a refusals rack in aisle with a button on end for a thirty second flashing light on pole. It ain't stamp worthy, put it on rack and hit button. QBoss takes rack back a process. Come to Jeebus time. If it is skill, fix it right then in person hands on teaching/observing untill person can do it correctly. NOT skill but attitude/etc., hit the door.

The preceding section promotes accountability by every individual. They would understand their stamp their ass. A good thing I would love if working there as I have no doubts about MY work ethics... It would be nice for EVERYONE to be accountable. Your stamp, your ass. NOT your stamp, you get to watch rectification.

QC can be fixed. You just have to have the nads to do the damn thang...

How much does the widget cost to manu?
How much is the widget going cost for warranty service due to a FU?
Is there any conceivable avenue for getting well on a returned FU'd widget? Hell No.

Consider: 12 guitars shit racked in one week. $2k net ave. $24,000 on that rack in one week. You damned right you could afford a QBoss with multiple QC troubleshooters to fix little skill training issues if one has to shadow a worker for multiple days, still worth it in long run... When those racks stay empty because of QC, the company is making bank.

You know, everything you say is true, and in a perfect world this is exactly what should happen. But when you work in a publicly- owned corporation things change. Decisions are often not made at the level where they should be make, but rather at a level of management where orders are given by people who are completely detached from the end product and who issue edicts with no foundation in reality, hell, they may never have even picked up a guitar much less know anything about it, the only metric which is important to them is the the stockholder's happiness with their investment returns, and they don't want to hear, 'Sir, we can't do what you ask and still maintain the same quality', all they want to hear is 'yes sit, we can do that', and if they don't hear that from lower level management, the next thing that manager will hear is 'you're fired'. Now I'm speaking about many companies in general, and I have no specific knowledge about what's going on at Gibson, but we all know they've been struggling for years financially, so this scenario is not one that should be dismissed as not being plausible. Also, the times we live in should be considered, and the impact they have on the workforce, i.e., older, more experienced workers being reluctant to return to work because of concern for getting COVID, or deciding to leave permanently because of fear of getting COVID, the possibility that some workers may have contracted that virus, need to replace those workers with ones who have need to be trained up, things that might actually increase the number of defects occurring. What do you do when the boss tells you he wants 1000 guitars off the line a week from a line that's been struggling to produce 500, what do you do? You do the best you can, the work suffers and the QC guy lets some stuff get a pass because 'someone will buy it' and you hope you keep your job when some guy in a suit in his ivory tower snaps his fingers and says 'just do it, I don't want any excuses'. Does this sound familiar?

 

[ehb]

QC can be fixed. You just have to have the nads to do the damn thang...

From my post, the clincher....

Gibson guitars never lost money up to and during the bankruptcy crap.... They made bank. It was all the other idiocy of HankieJ with all the companies he bought that killing Gib. If it was just guitars, they would have been fine.... Still churning out questionable quality on some.

If the numbers suffer a bit due to tightening up QC, I think it balances out rather quickly when you don't have to go red on an expensive return. There is just no way to get well on it. You lose on a return. Figuring man hours to even handle the return before addressing and repairing the issue, can be mind boggling... It is a loss no matter how it is handled. Best way is cut out returns by not letting them out the door and get the Buford % down as close to zero as you can....

If I have $2K in a product. It goes out faulty and gets returned, I am first of all going to eat $2K. To handle the return adds to the 2K. If repair involved pulling a board, it just jumped again. New board cost, fret cost, glue cost, binding cost, man-hour cost, repaint cost, detailing cost, inspection cost, shipping and receiving cost, accounting cost, etc. etc. etc. Somebody has to do the -rework.... ANY time and supplies are in addition to the original cost.....

Remember, it is not ALL the Gibs, it is the occasional HTF did this get by QC builds.... Change the system so that won't go further than one station before flagged....


I'd take the slight output drop over having to revisit barf jobs any day of the week.... Once it is learned and absorbed that anything other than zero defects are acceptable, it will improve....

Just gotta have the nads to do it......and back it up....

 

[AlbinB]

I suppose the idea behind using CBC machines is to promote consistency. You would also free up your staff to work on fine finishing tasks. Clearly from the comments listed there are no magic fixes with automation. Some manufacturers seem to have done a better job integrating automation and human skill sets than others. Try before you buy and have a return option if possible.

 

[Dark Horse]

I think it's all relative to the overall cost of the guitar. I am currently playing my LTD Viper 256 which cost me less than $400 AUD I can see some imperfections in it around the nut but given the price, I don't care.

A Gibson on the other hand given the price of even the cheapest one is still quite high, I would want it to be perfect. And if I ever decide to get a '59 VOS Reissue it better be pristine.

 

[Oddball667]

Nope... now you done gone too far.
PRS is like Crossfit.
How do you know when a guitarist has a PRS?
Don't worry, he'll tell you.
And it's the best goldurn guitar ever made on the whole wide world... even if it's an SE model!

.....have you ever met a gibson owner though?

 

[redcoats1976]

i had an SE model once and it was pretty damn good.didnt quite have the gibson sound though.my 2017 tribute GT is a real gibson.if i looked it over with a magnifying glass i could probably find some detail that was not perfect,but thats not what i use it for.

 

[Wise Guy]

.....have you ever met a gibson owner though?

It's very competitive between Gibson and PRS owners. LOL! I own both but do prefer my Gibsons. Could be placebo from my youth.