What Gibson Buying Stanton Means

Gibson Guitar has announced in a press release that they’re acquiring the Stanton Group, which includes the well-known Stanton DJ brand, KRK monitors, and Cerwin-Vega loudspeakers. Gibson already has acquired Epiphone, Dobro, Kramer, Steinberger, Tobias, Echoplex, Electar, Flatiron, Slingerland, Valley Arts, Maestro, Oberheim, Baldwin, Sunshine Piano, Take Anywhere Technology, J&C Fischer, Chickering, Hamilton,  and Wurlitzer. So aside from Epiphone, when was the last time you hear anything from most of those products?

What's most interesting about the announcement is that Gibson calls this move is “part of its continued expansion as a lifestyle brand.” I guess my question is, "How does Stanton fit into that vision?" I understand that Gibson CEO Henry Juszkiewicz would like to be more like Apple, but buying a group that features DJ and speaker products isn't exactly a great start in that direction. Plus, with Gibson's track record of instantly burying a company as soon as they buy it, it seems like a moot point anyway.

It would be great if Gibson would just concentrate on the thing they do best, making guitars, but they're not doing so hot on that front either. The robot guitar, digital guitar and Firebird X all had the industry and players alike scratching their heads. One again, it seems like market share and acquisitions mean more to the Gibson powers-that-be than increasing efficiencies on its core product and making better instruments. As outlined in my article about Warner Music Group on my Music 3.0 blog today, music and big money usually don't mix. You have to make a profit to stay in business, but the turning point is when the business becomes more about money than music, and that leads to trouble.

So say goodbye to the Stanton Group - Stanton DJ, KRK and Cerwin-Vega. It's only a matter of time before they disappear.

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Feature Creep On A Guitar

Although I love vintage guitars and instruments as much as the next person, I also like to see new innovations as well, which is something that's been totally lacking for a number of years in the MI space. But then there's Gibson.

It's amazing how such a venerable guitar manufacturer and maker of such fine vintage instruments can get things so wrong on a consistent basis over the last decade or so. Let's start with the "digital guitar" which allowed each string to have it's own separate output. What's the purpose? Can anyone tell me? Can't for the life of me see how that could be useful.

Then there's the "robot guitar" that tunes itself. The only people that need this are beginners who don't know how to use a tuner, and they can't afford the $3,500 to $5,000 it takes to buy one.

Now comes another example of including features on an instrument that no player really needs with the new Firebird X. Not only is this one butt-ugly guitar (Gibson, how could you?), but it's filled with "features" that most players don't need. Like what, you might ask? How about all your stomp-box effects built into the guitar, for one. The thing is full of switches and sliders to control distortion, echo and modulation in an effort to get rid of all those pedals on the floor.

On the surface this might seem cool except for two problems. First, how do you switch these things in while your playing? That's what makes stomp-boxes so useful - you just use your foot to switch it in. The second thing is that the guitar is a maze. I'm pretty tech-oriented, but I couldn't figure the thing out to save my life in the brief time (about 15 minutes) that I spent with it. Granted, I didn't look at the manual, but why should you have to for a guitar?

Then you have the issue of a guitar that converts the analog output of the guitar to digital so it can process it, then converts it back to analog again. The last thing you need is two conversions in your signal path. There was a lot of great sounds back in the 50s, 60s and 70s that came just plugging a guitar directly into an amp with nothing in between. I can't image how converting the signal from analog to digital back to analog again can sound anything like what we'd consider close to a "good sound" today.

Finally, the thing costs $5,570 retail. You can buy a new reissue Firebird for about $1,600 and 10 great pedals and still come out way ahead.

The Firebird X is the type of thing that gives tech innovation a bad name in the MI world. I do like the fact that Gibson is at least trying to think somewhat outside the box, but guys, your engineer's need to a measure of constraint. Just give the people what they want - a reasonably priced guitar that plays well and sounds great. When you come up with some new digital add on that makes it sound even better and is transparent to the player, give us a call.

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Help support this blog. Any purchases made through our Amazon links help support this website with no cost to you.

You should follow me on Twitter for daily news and updates on production and the music business.

Don't forget to check out my Music 3.0 blog for tips and tricks on navigating social media and the new music business.