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Looper's Delight
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I found a much better interview with Henry in the World Traveler magazine which is the airline magazine for Northwest Airlines. What Henry realizes he has is market share. Everybody knows the "Gibson" name. He says "80% of the consumer market recognizes the Gibson name." That's why he's going to start making everything he can with that name on it. Merchandising and cafes are the key to his new found fortunes. The Japanese will line up for jammies and shot glasses with the Gibson name on it, or "lifestyle marketing" in his terms. He cites Caterpillar shoes, the Hardrock Cafe, and the Nascar Cafe as his inspiration. In this article he claims that the site in Memphis is going focus on becoming a "custom" Les Paul plant and also a "Hard Rock Cafe" style bar with guitars all over the walls. They will also have live music. Now, I'll be the first to buy the "I got looped at the Gibson Cafe with my Echoplex" T-shirt, but I think it's a shame that he thinks that re-focusing an instrument manufacturer to consumer products is a positive thing for the business. It's not that I want to bite the hand that feeds me, but I think many of us saw the quality of many Gibson products (Tobias, Steinberger, Slingerland) suffer over the years. I hope they find time to keep their quality in check and put some profits back into R&D. -----Original Message----- From: Kim Flint [mailto:kflint@chromatic.com] Sent: Monday, December 28, 1998 4:38 PM To: Loopers-Delight@annihilist.com Subject: some interesting interviews Happened across this Bob Moog interview, it's pretty good. thought some of you might be interested: http://www.zzounds.com/discover.music?page=moog1&a=hcmoog also, this interview with Henry Juszkiewicz, Gibson CEO, where he discusses various rumors surrounding Gibson that have appeared on the list here: http://www.mmrmagazine.com/feature/dec98/gibson.htm Note he mentions the Oberheim name now just being used for an italian company. As I understand it, that only includes the Viscount keyboard products that Gibson/Oberheim has been selling for the past few years. It doesn't include other OB stuff like the Echoplex or matrix-1000, OBMX, etc. The Echoplex is getting moved to another Gibson division, Electar, which also includes Trace-Elliot and Maestro. I'm guessing they'll be calling it the "Electar Echoplex Digital Pro" or something like that, but it's the same thing as it was from Oberheim. Most likely this will confuse the hell out of people for a while, but anyway, now you know. kim _________________________________________________________ Kim Flint, MTS kflint@chromatic.com ATI Research 408-752-9284 http://www.chromatic.com