Gibson Guitar Is a Remarkably Unpopular Company

dougk said:
This is bad reasoning. Engines are made by manufacturers to fit their specific size, weight, space, mounting requirements.

The guitar industry instead adopted basically 4 standard pickup types, HB, P90 (soapbar), Strat and Tele. There are literally hundreds of thousands of choices for each style that save for soldering, drop in with 1 screw driver. It's more along the lines of the auto industry adopting gas pedal on the right, brakes in the middle, clutch on the left.
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And all of those were designed by Fender to go in Fender guitars and by Gibson to go in their guitars. While Fender has used humbuckers (though their own original, the Wide Range, is not compatible with other humbuckers) and P90s and Gibson has made some attempts at strats, they mostly stick to their own designs, as does Ric, Gretsch, etc.
I get your point about standardization and am not disagreeing with you. Some type of common, reliable quick connect is a cool idea. It's done with output jacks...
But manufacturers love proprietary shit. Anything they can use to claim "nobody else has this great gizmo" is a godsend to any brand manager, marketing manager or product manager in industry. They live and breathe that stuff. Most of the people in these corporate roles would sooner open a vein than to offer something that's not "better" than the competitor's offering. Making it compatible admits defeat to these idiots' way of thinking.
Again, I'm not defending it, but I think we all know the corporate yes-man middle manager. I've been one before (never fucking again) and that's how these horrible decisions get made and perpetuated.
 
Elias Graves said:
Why would they intentionally make it easier for you to install a competitor's product when you make one, too?
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Because you’re still paying for their pickups when you purchase the guitar. And because not soldering costs less than paying people to sit around waiting for pots and trem claws to heat up.
 
jp_nyc said:
Because you’re still paying for their pickups when you purchase the guitar. And because not soldering costs less than paying people to sit around waiting for pots and trem claws to heat up.
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Well, as soon as anyone figures out how to cure corporatitis, they'll be very well liked.
Except maybe comedians. They'd lose a lot of good material if corporations made logical decisions.
 
Elias Graves said:
But not everyone wants that. Some want Custom Built By The Hands Of Elves carved from a single piece of jet black ebony.
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Elves yeah, but female entwood please. Finished with dragon secrete rubbed in with the nipples of buxom virgins. Magnets forged in Mount Doom.

And it shouldn't cost more than $500.
 
Glad to see gawker's standard of journalism is as high as ever. I don't really have a strong opinion about Gibson one way or the other when it comes down to it as they aren't on my radar but that article was seriously weak. We're beating the dead GC horse with a Les Paul these days (and past several years)
 
Elias Graves said:
Does Ford offer a quick connect motor so you can drop in a Chevy engine?
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No, but you can drop a Dart or DSI short block in no problems since they're designed to Ford specs.

That analogy is a lot closer to the aftermarket pickup market than trying to drop a Chevy motor in a Ford, which would be more akin to trying to shove a Tele bridge pickup in a Les Paul.
 
dougk said:
Honestly, a slightly different approach to this and it'd be a pickup swappers dream come true. They should have used screw terminals so that you could simply install any brand pickups with hand tools.
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Those look like pretty standard header connectors, but hard to tell for sure from that photo. If so, crimping the pickup wires and installing on a new header connector is probably simpler than soldering to a pot terminal lug. I honestly don't see this being that hard to swap pickups. :shrug:

I'd be a little more concerned with the pwb traces cracking over time/use.
 
Lerxst said:
Glad to see gawker's standard of journalism is as high as ever. I don't really have a strong opinion about Gibson one way or the other when it comes down to it as they aren't on my radar but that article was seriously weak. We're beating the dead GC horse with a Les Paul these days (and past several years)
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Gawker isn't a newspaper, they're an opinion and gossip blog.
 
GDSmithTX said:
Gawker isn't a newspaper, they're an opinion and gossip blog.
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Yes....regardless, I still believe that even in their case there should be some effort expended to craft something beyond that flimsy post and provide some context
 
Lerxst said:
Yes....regardless, I still believe that even in their case there should be some effort expended to craft something beyond that flimsy post and provide some context
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I'd rather let you all speculate and fume.
 
You guys think I'm a dick sometimes around here...

I'm a nice guy here.

Facebook, not so much...

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Chad said:
I actually like that. You can get the connectors from Mouser for next to nothing and it would make pickup swapping a breeze.
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I was actually coming to post that Gibson should just sell the connectors. Maybe I’ll figure out the part number, buy 10,000 from Shenzen for $100, and sell them to blues lawyers for $25 per set.
 
mikesr1963 said:
Sorry, but I like this because it looks super easy to rewire for crying out loud.
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But that huge vintage spec cork sniffer crowd Gibson cultivated probably think there's an audible difference between a PCB and hand soldered point to point wiring. Which goes back to Henry J. and his refusal to choose between vintage marketing bullshit and technobabble marketing bullshit.
 
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