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From Gibson: Great Gibson electric guitars have long been a means of fighting the establishment, so when the powers that be confiscated stocks of tonewoods from the Gibson factory in Nashville—only to return them once there was a resolution and the investigation ended—it was an event worth celebrating. Introducing the Hector Heathcote Government Series II […]
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A reader points out a recent story in the Washington Post: Why my guitar gently weeps: The slow, secret death of the six-string electric. And why you should care. Written by Geoff Edgers, it’s a good piece that touches on some subjects and people I’ve written about over the years, with special focus on the […]
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From the world of the WhiteManistan Blues Band. Real sweat worn 2003 Gibson Melody Maker, P-90, red, one volume knob, one tone, and a big noise in twang town.
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Today, a short return to a common subject here, the bifurcation of “American” goods, following the rise of inequality, a study in contrast. The video is of major US guitar and western guitar brands being made in China. You can ascertain the different brands by headstocks. But it’s an omnibus factory that does work for […]
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Readers know I like Gibson guitars. They may have read when I tried to do the company a favor by successfully pressing the Washington Post and others to drop website ads selling Chinese counterfeits of the iconic brand. But it’s been increasingly hard to not be turned off by Gibson. And this is all due […]
Some on the right have tried to link the US government’s raids on Gibson Guitars to a sinister Democratic/Obama administration plan to destroy jobs. Gibson’s CEO, Henry Juszkiewicz, has hitched his horse to the hare-brained conspiracy thinking for the sake of publicity. From Fox News: They are among the most sought-after musical instruments in the […]
Over the Labor Day weekend, Guitar Centers nationwide had a sale. Naturally, DD went to the store in Pasadena. What was being sold, tried out and handled — I was there on Saturday and Monday — were guitars, all made in China. They were the only ones the customers, middle class youngsters, could afford. The […]
Yesterday I wrote about Chinese ads selling counterfeit American electric guitars to YouTube. From the the frontpage of the Washington Post website the previous week, to a smaller picture ad spun out by Google Adsense/AdWwords and tied to guitar star demonstration videos. In yesterday’s case it was sales pitching for fake Paul Reed Smiths. Google […]
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After DD screwed up the plan for selling counterfeit guitars through the Washington Post ad feed last week — and I did screw it up a bit — Google property has now been enlisted. The same Chinese-made “brand” guitar selling site now hitches to Google AdSense on YouTube, where they’re attached to guitar store demos. […]
UPDATED Perhaps unsurprisingly to readers, the Washington Post (as of now) did not respond to a DD query on the banner ad it ran which pointed to sales for counterfeit US guitars made in China, trafficked on the Gibson brand name. However, today the ad changed: Larger image here. Contrast with ad banner image running […]
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