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Post by speakertom on May 2, 2018 7:44:08 GMT -5
The news just mentioned that Gibson has filed for Chapter 11 protection. They plan to continue to make guitars while they try to recover. Shure has also said they will no longer make phono cartridges after this summer.
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mark
Junior Member
Posts: 79
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Post by mark on May 2, 2018 12:51:51 GMT -5
The news just mentioned that Gibson has filed for Chapter 11 protection. They plan to continue to make guitars while they try to recover. Shure has also said they will no longer make phono cartridges after this summer. Back in the day, Shure was a top maker of phono cartridges! I wonder what happened? I guess they didn't somehow get swept up in the vinyl revival! |
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Post by speakertom on May 2, 2018 13:33:56 GMT -5
Actually they continued to make cartridges for quite some time and although the Ultra 500 was discontinued a long time ago (I have one and an extra stylus) they continued to make the M97XE which was very similar. That one is still available. I think the decision is based on financial considerations. That market was probably too small for a company their size.
I was at a Chicago Section of the AES meeting a long time ago and the person who was in charge of all Shure cartridges did a presentation on the history and development of all their cartridges. It was fascinating, especially the lengths they went to on the development of the ULtra 500. For example there was only one company in the whole world that could make the beryllium cantilever to their specifications.
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Post by Chris on May 2, 2018 17:27:36 GMT -5
The Gibson bankruptcy has been an open secret in the guitar industry for some time. The guitar trade has been trending down due to kids making music on computers rather than bothering to learn to play the guitar. Also Gibson has been mismanaged and made poor decisions. Likely some private equity will buy the company because the brand name is too valuable. Maybe a Chinese company?
According to Steve Guttenberg, the Audiophiliac, demand for Shure cartridges has been consistent. The issue for them was finding suppliers to meet their standards.
The Shure M97E cartridge is very good cartridge that can be greatly improved by using a stylus made by JICO.
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Post by ejr1953 on Jul 4, 2018 9:54:19 GMT -5
If you've ever worked for a company taken over by private equity (and I have), they typically pull as much cash out of the business as they can, and load it up with debt. In my experience they also do major downsizing of the staff, especially those who are "highly compensated", and aim to "flip" the company in a few years, making a quick profit with this strategy.
This is what Cerberus Capital did with their acquisition of Chrysler, pulled billions in cash out of the company.
I don't know if that was the entire story for the Gibson bankruptcy, as they also got into a whole slew of other businesses, aside from their musical instruments and pro audio, placing further demands on their balance sheet.
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