Gibson vs Fender - Loud and Clear | 2

Business Wars

Audible

History, David Brown, Business, Management

4.6 • 13.5K Ratings

🗓️ 24 June 2019

⏱️ 32 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

It's 1950, and Fender's first solid-body guitar, the Esquire, is the laughingstock of the music industry. To guitar makers used to elegantly made hollow-body guitars, Fender's thin, simple plank of solid wood is a joke. But its bright, powerful sound and lack of feedback make it a hit with guitar players.

Gibson's ambitious young president, Ted McCarty, knows his company has to counter with a solid-body electric guitar of its own. To market the instrument, Gibson will turn to the most famous electric guitarist in the world, a man who happens to be an old friend of Leo Fender's — Les Paul.

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Transcript

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0:00.0	Hey, prime members, you can listen to business wars, add free on Amazon music.
0:04.6	Download the app today.
0:05.6	Kalamazoo Michigan, February, 1948.
0:18.7	At the Gibson Guitar Manufacturing Plant, a 38-year-old consultant named Ted McCarty takes a tour
0:24.6	of the factory floor with a shop forment.
0:27.4	McCarty is a veteran of the instrument business.
0:30.4	That's why Gibson's owner, M.H. Berlin, tapped him as the best person to help solve a mystery.
0:36.5	Why is Gibson considered the best guitar maker of the business?
0:40.7	Losing $100,000 every month.
0:44.7	That's the equivalent of more than a million in today's dollars.
0:48.6	As McCarty walks through the large plant, his high forehead is furrowed in a scowl.
0:54.6	He doesn't like what he sees.
0:56.5	They pass dozens of empty workstations.
1:00.3	Would you say this plant is operating in about what?
1:03.6	Half capacity?
1:04.6	Oh, it's probably not even that much.
1:07.3	Why is that?
1:08.3	The war.
1:09.3	A lot of our best machine has got drafted and never came back.
1:12.8	Plus, a lot of the plant was converted to support the war effort, you know, and it hasn't
1:17.1	been easy to convert back.
1:19.2	The war ended three years ago.
	...

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