It’s been a pretty open secret that Gibson has been a hot mess internally for quite a while. At one point the CEO said he saw them more as a lifestyle brand than a guitar brand, like how Harley Davidson tries to position itself in motorcycles (I don’t know anything about motorcycles so maybe I’m wrong but that was the comparison going around).

The best thing that Gibson has done recently has been to unify the Epiphone (their budget brand) line up with their lineup, and Epiphone’s quality has been a lot better since then in my experience. Now you can buy a relatively cheap Epiphone, slap some good aftermarket pickups in it, and have a really great Gibson-style guitar for a lot less than a Gibson.

Yup there's another example of what I think of as the "hedge fund" approach. Sweetwater started as a neighborhood music store, now its owned by a hedge fund, guys who may not even like music. Bob Moog and Roger Linn loved music and it showed in their product. But just like these other examples this isn't the end of the Moog sound, especially since they also now own all the moog software synthesis products you can expect moog to land into the akai mpc line.

Well that's saying something when the games industry is more sane.