GT: Winter NAMM Awards - What Were They Thinking?

By Jim Basara
Welcome to the fifth installment in my NAMM awards series. Today’s award category is “What Were They Thinking?” These are products that make you scratch your head and wonder what the heck the product manager was thinking when they made the go-forward decision on the product.

With 1500+ vendors, candidates for this award were not difficult to find.  There were definitely a ton of whacky products. So, I tweaked the criteria to include the fact that it had to be a serious vendor, thinking they really were putting out a real product. That gives all the small vendors a pass, and I give them all credit for trying to come up with innovative ideas to try to break into the music business. The big guys aren’t struggling to try to find an “in”, so they really ought to know better. But, frequently they don’t.

First up is Gibson’s forthcoming Keifer Sutherland ES-336, part of their “Inspired By” series. It’s actually called a KS-336, but I refuse to use that nomenclature. If I had an award for the company displaying the most blatant “forget everything except making money strategy”, this guitar would be a multiple award winner.  Let me say that I am a huge Keifer Sutherland fan. I can’t think of a single movie of his that I didn’t enjoy, and I am a huge 24 fan as well. I realize that Keifer is a guitar addict and I know that he loves guitars and guitar music. All of that is great. But his own 336 model? Are you joking? With all of the great talented musicians out there doing really unique and creative things on Gibson guitars, I find it hard to believe that Keifer’s name was next on the list. It might even be a great guitar, but it is clearly an attempt to leverage Keifer’s current success into big Gibson dollars. What’s next, a Harry Potter inspired guitar? What about Kevin Bacon? At least he has a band.

Next up is the Ibanez Jem 20th Anniversary edition, shown here to the right and below. Are you kidding me? A polymer Jem, with lights in it, to celebrate the anniversary? Normally, for an anniversary edition, a company would craft an impeccable instrument made of high quality tone woods and electronics that epitomize the instrument’s tone and demonstrate the craftsmanship of the luthiers. Ibanez certainly decided to take a different tact on this one, choosing instead to use molded polymer instead of highly crafted wood. Are they trying to tell us that the Jem wasn’t constructed to produce good tone in the first place, and it doesn’t matter what the guitar is made of? The folks at Ibanez really should call Paul Reed Smith or Fender for advice the next time they feel the need to produce an anniversary edition.

Comments

[Nick]

Couldn't agree with you more Jim. It is such a shame b/c there are so many pro (Gibson) players who deserve a guitar named after them - how about Otis Rush? Rich Robinson? just to name two quickly..

This should be a regular feature on the site!

[william cook]

i dare a guitar company to give me a free good guitar i will give you so much free publicity what more free add than that i played the guitar when i broke my hand even with a cast on it give a poor regular guy like me a break gibson fender anyone you got the balls to give a regular player not some rich star a nice guitar to be played not to put in a vault i need a damn guitar and you will get so much free publicity you will be flooded with calls come on my birthday is may 18 anything you can spare i am a regular guy not some rock star who never uses your product prs ibanez gibson fender esp please thank you stay in school don't do drugs

[Chris Gordon]

With your Ibanez comments I think you are right on the money but didn't realise it. In actual fact it's true that the Jem never sounded good in the first place so it doesn't matter what it's made of.

With Gibson on the other hand I agree with you. I don't think there is anything inspirational about KS period, let alone guitar wise. I am suprised they didn't make it with '24' frets ;)

[austyn]

fuck u i dont care what you say jems are fn awsome so that is bull shit other authors deserve that ....... vai fucking deserves this shit so fuck you