henryej's posterous

I have been totally immersed in several large projects at Gibson.  It has given me very little time to devote to my internet communications.

First, this is the time of year when we do budgets for our entire enterprise.  This year we are taking a giant step to a much more sophisticated budgeting system.  This involves working with virtually our entire management staff to reach new levels of planning.  Two weeks ago we had every Global Executive at a meeting in Nashville where we spent 6 back to back 12 hours days discussing, planning and improving our team.

We continue to grow our team with really exceptional new members.   Our factories have been hiring since August and we continue to increase employment on a world-wide basis.

The Firebird X project, has also taken a great deal of my time.  Not only am I actively involved in project management, but I am overseeing product quality testing and validation.  With the number of innovative technologies involved in this product, that is no trivial task.

Gibson is making major strides in virtually every area of our enterprise, and we are pumped.  Hopefully, the enormous demands on my time will slack off a bit and allow me more time to communicate.

There has been an enormous amount of work being done by our hard working development team.  While it was possible to release a version of the Firebird X, we all decided that we would not release this product until the designs and manufacturing process met an exceptional quality bar.  We all feel this product has our names on it, and we do not want release anything but a truly exceptional product.

This means we have to review and optimize dozens of details in terms of both hardware and software.  There is still a good chance we can complete a very limited run of this product before the end of the year (500 or less pieces).  Check our web site for the dealers that will be able to offer the first run of these beautiful instruments.  The total number of units to be produced will still be limited to 1800 pieces total, 900 of each color.

This product is being subject to test specifications no guitar has ever been subjected to.  We test every single component in the system multiple times.  There is a test for electromagnetic emissions; a vibration and shock test to 10G's, a full frequency scan for each pick up, etc.  There is a specialized highly trained team which builds and tests each unit in a clean room environment separate from the rest of production.

I have been playing prototypes, as have a group of professionals, and it is really an exceptional experience.  The ability to access dozens of different voices in seconds is amazing and inspires you to push your creative envelope.  It is easy to fine tune and get just the right sound.  The visual feedback with the pedal LED screens and the additional foot operated controls make on the fly changes a pure pleasure.  Then, there is the fact that the guitar can tune very rapidly to standard or other tunings.  It is really amazing, and makes going back to a guitar without these features very difficult.

This is truly the most sophisticated guitar money can buy by far.  More to come...