Category Archive 'Gibson Guitars'

30 Jan 2014

Gibson Guitars Makes a New Model

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In a famous case of overreaching, federal agents twice raided the renowned Gibson guitar company of Nashville, TN, for supposed violations of laws of Madagascar and of India. Madagascar and India had actually approved the export of the wood in question, but the feds were operating on the basis of their own interpretation of those foreign laws.

Curiously enough, the Martin guitar company, which uses exactly the same woods, but which donated money to democrat candidates was never bothered. Gibson’s CEO Henry Juszkiewicz was in the habit of making donations to Republican campaigns.

Daily Caller story

Though firmly asserting its innocence, the Gibson company ultimately concluded that it could not afford to spend millions of dollars fighting the case and settled, paying a $300,000 fine and contributing $50,000 to the National Fish and Wildlife Foundation “to promote the conservation of protected tree species.”

The feds sanctimoniously kept the Madagascar ebony in question, contending that Madagascar officials were “defrauded” by a local exporter about the nature of the product. But Gibson did get back all the seized Indian rosewood.

Gibson is commemorating its own persecution by producing a special “Government Series II Les Paul” model celebrating the return of its materials, complete with “fingerboards… made from solid rosewood returned to Gibson by the US government.”

Nat Harden, at Ricochet, reports:

This week Gibson has announced the “Government Series” of guitars, to celebrate the end of its tussle with the eager enforcers of the U.S. Customs Department.

It’s a series of guitars made, purportedly, with the very same wood that was seized by the United States government, which was later returned at the end of the fiasco.

Ladies and gentlemen, Here’s a photo of the Gibson Les Paul Government Series II. The body is painted in a custom color the company has named “Government Tan”–suitably drab–a nod to the joyless reality of living under the heavy thumb of stifling bureaucracy.

Read the whole thing.


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