I'm happy both Gibson AND Fender exist. And I find nothing wrong with Fender's alleged marketing of bribing and forcing people into playing their product. Gibson has done the same and only recently tried it with Metallica who told them to f*** off for being difficult and thus stuck with ESP. Not that I believe anything with Metallica to be undifficult.
Gibson sells basses 1 to 10 at the very most and treats bassists accordingly or worse. And that has tradition. In comparison to Leo Fender's brilliant from-the-scratch-up 1951 invention of a new instrument set to change the face of pop and rock forever, the EB-1 was an awkward little fellow, too safe, an afterthought, a little self-conscious and nothing you would call a "große Wurf" by any stretch of the imagination. Fender is together with Warwick the large brand that caters most to bassists so their commercial lead is deserved. And the product is overall good - some trussrods they only export to Germany excepted! That they produce two models in endless variations is not so much their as the market's choice. Past efforts of Fender to come up with something new were left commercially unrewarded, so you can't blame them.
Still, three new basses this season (five if the rumored Flying V bass and Explorer really show up) is exceptional considering that 12 months ago Gibson was rumored to be approaching Chapter 11. With their Firebird X experiment and three new basses for that laughably small minority of people who give a rat's mahogany ass about Gibson basses the company can't certainly be in the claws of its creditors anymore. Henry J. had the nerve to see it through (whether the company was just overleveraged and fell into the post-Lehman rut of many "innocent manufacturers" that any credit just dried up or whether some or most of the Gibson money had indeed gone into the wrong financial instruments I don't know). You might not like Henry J. and he has his share of daft decisions, but he now has a track record of running and expanding a company for 25 years - that attests considerable more business acumen than Leo F. who was a great engineer and inventor, but a lousy business man (perhaps not entirely fair as Henry studied business and Leo didn't).
After Gibson's last 2006 offensive of basses (SG, Studio TBs, Mon(k)ey basses and Continental V) only yielded one consistent seller with the SG, another bass offensive just 5 years later and fresh out of an economic downturn that had the company teetering on the brink of insolvency - plus a nasty flood and that wood investigation - ain't too bad in my book.
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