Our Long National Nightmare Of Brass "Zero Frets" Is Over

A few weeks ago, Gibson introduced a limited run of guitars that reverted to "pre-2015 spec". At the time, I considered it the camel's nose in the tent. Now the whole camel is under canvas, so to speak, and the automotive industry would be wise to pay attention.

Gibson has announced that prices, as well as specifications, will return to 2012-2014 levels. So the 2015-model disaster is now at an end.

It sucks to be one of the people stuck with a 2015 Gibson, although given the 2014 backstock that was floating around for most of the year I assume that most of the buyers for the new-feature guitars wanted those features and were able to come to grips with the pricing. But what's really important is the speed of the turnaround. I can't think of anything to match it in the auto biz, except perhaps Ford's decision to produce the 1996 and 1997 F-150 in parallel just in case the new design failed. (Note that Ford had a similar plan for the 1986 Taurus that would have seen the Fairmont-based LTD produced in tandem throughout the model year, but that plan was killed --- and a good thing it was, because Taurus sales vastly exceeded expectations.)

You can point to Honda's one-year revamp of the 2012 Civic as an example of an automaker really having their act together, but it isn't like they just brought the old cars back. Doing that would have answered pretty much all the criticism, but changing tooling twice in the space of a year is a daunting task even for Honda.

BMW's recent decision to shitcan manual transmissions for their four-cylinder cars makes me think of the Gibson 2015 debacle. In both cases, the company thinks higher prices and more technology are requirements for doing business with the next generation of customers. Let's hope that BMW is willing to change its mind the same way Gibson was.