Guitar forum liberals hate Henry Juszkiewicz just like they hate Donald Trump. It’s Henry derangement syndrome out the wazoo.
Henry swooped in and revived the company from its doldrums back in the late 1980s. He turned it around. I guess he couldn’t sustain it, though. Now it will probably be bought out by one of the big musical instrument corporations.
Gibson has always been in a precarious spot because their guitars are essentially hand made with lots of artisanal skill and labor involved. That’s been their main virtue to me but it puts them at a serious competitive disadvantage.
My prediction is that whoever takes over Gibson will radically modernize the production of the mid and low level guitars, and preserve the hand production only in a very expensive upper tier line.
Henry was sort of headed in that direction but I don’t think he had the heart to truly do it. He loved the company’s history and traditions too much. He was softhearted towards it. It’s going to take someone with more of a bottom line focus to do the radical overhauling.
Hopefully not the same sort of fiasco cbs did with Fender.
Henry J. is not without his faults. He forced a bunch of crap nobody wanted like his robo-tuners fiasco and then forced dealers to stock the shelves with them. He pulled authorized distributions away from a lot of mom and pop stores, essentially putting them out of business, for not playing ball. Prime example; Center City Music in San Diego had a thriving business selling nothing but Historic-collection Les Pauls, and for prices significantly less than GC/MF/SA. The owner didn't want to hang a bunch of robo-tuner garbage on his walls so Henry pulled his license. This means no more warranties.
Henry J. did a lot of great things for Gibson. Gibson Guitars today are putting out the best instruments they've ever made (if you're willing to pay Custom Shop prices for them). A problem however is, Gibson players don't want much innovation. They want the classic guitars that were made during the Ted McCarty era. They don't want robo-tuners. They want sunburst Les Paul Standards, black Les Paul Customs, and wine red 335s and SGs. They want them made to McCarty-era specs and sold at inflation-rated prices.
And there's fewer and fewer of this demographic each year.