A former music store employee talks about Gibson quality...

[Dave W]

But it's what Herr Wilfer of Warwick told me too. Manufactured to different specifications and based on different raw materials, but only three major sites. Frankly, I doubt that there are more than three string winding machine makers in the world and if they all use the same type of machines, then questions of geography are largely redundant. I certainly don't believe that most string makers have their own manufacturing plants.

He's totally and completely wrong. He couldn't be more wrong. String winding machinery can be easily bought and even some small stringmakers wind their own in-house. Just in the US, and just off the top of my head, there's LaBella, D'addario, Martin (Darco), American Winding (Dean Markley), Ernie Ball, SIT, GHS, DR, D'aquisto, Arkay, Curt Mangan and Dunlop, and AFAIK still Vinci and Fodera. There's Fender and Real de los Reyes (Jimmy Wess) in Mexico. That's not counting Europe and Asia. I suspect there are now dozens of string factories in Korea and China.

But then Herr Wilfer of Warwick doesn't manufacture his own strings in-house so he has a reason to perpetuate the myth.

[Dave W]

I gave up photography as a hobby years ago because every dick salesman thought he was Ansel Adams and never wanted to help, just tried to make you feel like a schmuck.  What a bunch of asses they were.  I quit going to the local GC cuz everytime you asked on of the 18 year old "salesmen" to get a bass off the wall, he'd take it down, slap and pound it for 10 minutes before you could get your hands on it.  Then, if you asked any questions about it, he had no idea.  They don't do that at the HOG! 

That doesn't surprise me about camera salesmen.

I used to just be amused at the idiot guitar store salesmen who had to slap the bass before handing it to you. But a couple of years ago I actually had a couple of incidents that made me mad enough to leave the store and call management. A-hole got mad because I didn't want to try out the bass through the Markbass amps and told him I preferred to use the G-K on their floor. He took another bass and deliberately tried to drown out my playing by slapping at high volume through a Markbass. I put down the bass and walked out of the store. Came back a couple of weeks later, plugged it in myself, the same moron came into the bass room and did the same thing again. This was an employee, not a random obnoxious customer. He's no longer employed there.

[gweimer]

Every music store "expert" seems to know some secret that's flat out untrue, like who really makes what. Amazing how many of them will come up the old wives' tale that there are only three string manufacturers in the whole world.  Yeah, right, buddy, try stocking enough strings instead of trying to BS your customers.

25 years ago, that may have been partially true, but a LOT has changed since then.  Even Dean Markley's were originally made by GHS.  Now, they have their own plant.  I think both are still in Battle Creek, MI.

[eb2]

Who is making those Everly strings?  Good enough strings, I think.  And sad to say, when I want acoustic strings, I go to Target and get their Chinese things.  Cheap and decent.

Oh, well.  I read this and was whisked back to every small to medium guitar shop I went into as a kid.  Some Einstein always knew the dirty secrets, and like this guy with his 55 Les Paul (ahem) it always veered off into the black helicopter talk.  I hear about polyurethane, and Les Pauls with secret maple necks and sandwich bodies, blah blah, and it is like being a teenager again.  Plus what kind of Mom and Pop wholesales 50 to 100 Les Pauls?  Whatever.  Did you ever try to tell a guy that his 50s Les Paul was a 71?  No matter what you show him, you're always wrong.  At any rate, it was entertaining, broadly correct on QC, weight, tone issues, and bizzarro on facts.  It is fun to see a veiled reference to Jimmy Crespo though.

[Dave W]

25 years ago, that may have been partially true, but a LOT has changed since then.  Even Dean Markley's were originally made by GHS.  Now, they have their own plant.  I think both are still in Battle Creek, MI.

There are more companies winding their own now than 25 years ago, but even then there were a lot more than three companies. At least 8 of the companies I mentioned above were winding their own back then, and that's not counting Rotosound, Pyramid et al.

Dean Markley owns American Winding. It's in a small town near Kalamazoo. It began as Sterlingworth Music in the 70s, the man who started it was a president of Gibson under Norlin and left to start the string company. That company has always done private label manufacturing. Who knows, maybe they even make Warwick black labels.

[gweimer]

When I toured the GHS plant in Battle Creek in the late '70s, they were turning out Dean Markley's.  We didn't get a full list, but they told us they were making about a half dozen other brands.   It was actually really cool watching how they made the strings.  We were nothing but a bar band, and they gave us a nice little tour over the course of an hour or so.   That's when I learned that GHS guaranteed the core of their strings.  Any string that I broke was sent to them, and I usually got at least half of them back free.  Of course, there was also the guy hawking their seconds to the bands that came through.  I think I got a dozen sets of GHS Brite Flats once for about $60.

[Dave W]

Right, I don't think Dean Markley bought Sterlingworth until years after that, maybe late 80s. And Ernie Ball originally had strings made by others, I don't think they made their own until about 15 years ago.

[uwe]

Dave is just a hired gun of the stringmaker mafia. Perpetuating the myth that they are all made somewhere else. What an economic waste that would be. You want to have those machines running 24 hours seven days a week so they amortize quickly and you can buy a nice fancy new one in a few years.

[Dave W]

Don't run afoul of the stringmaker mafia. Their operatives probably know how to use the garotte.

[OldManC]

 That's when I learned that GHS guaranteed the core of their strings.  Any string that I broke was sent to them, and I usually got at least half of them back free. 

Holy crap! I wish I knew this 20 years ago. I went through a LOT of Bass Boomers back in the day. I broke a string every other show!

[uwe]

I didn't think the interview - and I could only read it now - was that bad at all. Some stuff opinionated, some stuff folklorish and some stuff confirmed my own experiences with Gibson basses of which I own a few. While you might not agree with everything, the guy seems to me to know what he's talking about. That heavier woods enhance treble and bass, but not mids, is my own experience as well. I share his view on Gibson's fretjob qualities, almost any new Gibson bass I've bought in recent years has turned into a porcupine as the wood dries out in long German winters with fretends sticking out of the wood on either side. That shouldn't happen with mahogany really and I even have new maple basses from other brands that don't have that effect. And the guy's ultimate recommendation that you should choose a guitar blindfolded to concentrate on its sound and playability to the exclusion of anything else is puristic, but I kind of like the way he thinks. His oberservation that Gibson sells guitars foremost via looks, while less than profound, has some truth to it too - of course they know that a larger and larger quantity of their sold instruments is not regularly played much less gigged. It is part of their vision to become a lifestyle rather than instrument brand. Nothing wrong with that, but nothing wrong with observing it as a fact either.

Finally. the nitro vs. poly discussion rang familiar, I know guys who sell Gibsons here in Germany who make the same claim that only the Custom Shop stuff is really nitro and that reference to the other regular line finish as nitro is stretching things quite a bit.

Uwe

[Dave W]

Finally. the nitro vs. poly discussion rang familiar, I know guys who sell Gibsons here in Germany who make the same claim that only the Custom Shop stuff is really nitro and that reference to the other regular line finish as nitro is stretching things quite a bit.

They don't know what the hell they're talking about. Seriously.

[pamlicojack]

Holy crap! I wish I knew this 20 years ago. I went through a LOT of Bass Boomers back in the day. I broke a string every other show!

Wow.  I've been playing for 25 years and have NEVER broken a string.  (And I play with a pick these days)