[Kenmac]

I was looking through my 24 hours paper today on the way to work and I came across an advertisement for a store that I've seen advertising before numerous times in the past, a store called "Millennium 3000" and usually they sell electronics like MP3 players, Xboxes, etc. but this time there was something that really caught my eye. For Fathers Day they're selling electric guitars and not just any electric guitar but as it says in the ad "Gibson Baldwin". Now as you may or may not know the Gibson guitar company did buy the Baldwin Piano and Organ company several years ago so you're actually getting a Gibson when you buy one of these guitars.

In the pictures you can see the two guitars they're selling are an SG and a Les Paul and the price is not just reasonable but unbelievable. Only $149.99 for either model. With GST and PST that comes to $169.48 so for under $200.00 you're getting either a Gibson Les Paul or a Gibson SG! Now granted, chances are these guitars are probably made of plywood or some other cheap brand of wood but the way I look at it is these guitars would be great project guitars. Even if you were to replace the hardware and the pickups it would still be a lot cheaper than a Gibson, or even an Epiphone, that you'd buy in a traditional music store. If I hadn't recently bought a Tokai I'd be taking a hard look at one of these. I'm thinking they must be decent quality if they're going to be given to Dad for Fathers Day. I'm sure they wouldn't want Mom and/or the kids to give Dad a crappy guitar! :smile: I'm attaching the ad so you can check it out yourself. I tried to keep the quality as high as I could without the filesize being too large.

BTW please take note of when the stores are open. If anybody gets one of these guitars let us know, take some pictures and tell us if you're going to turn it into a project guitar. BTW, I have no affiliation with this store, I was just very surprised to see this ad in the paper. Notice the guitars are the same price as the Casio digital camera? :wink: Here's the ad:

 

[Maxer]

Gotta be Chinese knock-offs. Cheap ones, at that. The market is being swiftly flooded with them and it's tough to keep up with all of the fraudulent use of legit company names. Beware. It wouldn't just be the hardware that sucks, I'm guessing; the wood is probably scary too.

Good luck with that.

 

[GuitaristZ]

electronics stores = chinese owned


chinese owned electronics stores + guitars = ripoff probably


lol, might make a nice wall decoration though...I would just buy an agile lol

 

[Jeff Flowerday]

Woah! Check out those 360 prices! Nice!

 

[Rumble_b]

Might go check that out tomorrow. Probably crap guitars though.

 

[GuitaristZ]

Advertising it as "Professional Electric Guitar" just makes it sound cheap to me lol

 

[SinCron]

OMFG GUITER HERO! LOL. Wow, they so cant spell.

 

[gtrguy]

GONE

 

[Rumble_b]

Hmm plywood, might not bother driving down.

The one on the bestbuy site looks pretty cool.

 

[Kenmac]

Yeah that's what I figured but as I said, I recently bought a Tokai and there's no way I'm going to be buying another guitar for a while now. Maybe just for a laugh I'll check one out tomorrow.

Gotta be Chinese knock-offs. Cheap ones, at that. The market is being swiftly flooded with them and it's tough to keep up with all of the fraudulent use of legit company names. Beware. It wouldn't just be the hardware that sucks, I'm guessing; the wood is probably scary too.

Good luck with that.

 

[Kenmac]

Yeah from what I've heard about Agiles they seem like a good deal for the money. I'm not sure about these ones though.

electronics stores = chinese owned


chinese owned electronics stores + guitars = ripoff probably


lol, might make a nice wall decoration though...I would just buy an agile lol

 

[Kenmac]

edited.....

 

[Kenmac]

I figured it had to be cheaply made for that price. :smile: I'll still check it out anyway. You never know when you may come across a decent one.

It's chinese made bolt-on stuff that Gibson sells through big box chains:

http://learn2play.com/Products/GBME/Signature/Products/

http://www.bestbuy.com/site/olspage.jsp?skuId=7934676&type=product&productCategoryId=cat03108&id=1151657218267

http://auctions.overstock.com/item/39859831




gtrguy

 

[sartana]

Apparently Bad

I read a bit on another forum and they didn't sound too good at all, not even close to a Fullerton or Agile .....buyer beware, I could be wrong,,,,,its just what I read:wave:

 

[Robert1950]

No, they are not knockoffs. See this Gibson Website:

http://www.gibson.com/Products/GBME/

 

[violation]

Woah! Check out those 360 prices! Nice!

Regular prices are going down soon anyway, Core is going to be $299 instead of it's usual $399, Premium will go down as well. Sony said they're cutting PS3 prices down too so they can actually compete with the other consoles.

I sold mine just in time, got $250 for the Core package last week.

 

[dwagar]

Gibson opened a factory in China a couple of years ago to make these.

IIRC they are for the beginner market, someone that wants something that looks like a LP or SG for low $. I think the Gibson name is only giving it the body shape, don't expect any kind of quality for that kind of $.

Kenmac, even though I've never seen one of these, I would guess you are further ahead with your Tokai.

 

[Kenmac]

Yeah that's exactly what I was thinking as well dwagar. I dropped by the Millennium 3000 store on Kennedy Road in Scarborough earlier today and the first thing I noticed when I walked in, was that almost *everything* was in boxes! DVD players/recorders, VCRs, TVs, etc. except for the Ipods which were in a case behind the counter. I was hoping they'd have one of the guitars set up, even it was through some kind of cheapo amp, but no such luck. All the guitars were in boxes and there was a sign beside them which read "Do not remove from box" so right away I knew these were cheap beginner guitars. You could see the headstock down to the first fret and the body up to about the 19th fret as they had plastic cutouts in the boxes and heightwise they stacked the boxes with about 8 guitars each.

They're actually pretty nice looking but if you can't try them out, that just doesn't seem right to me. BTW when you look at the ad you'll see they show the SG model being a red colour but there were no red SGs there. They were black, at least the first two I looked at were. Since I couldn't try them out I lifted the boxes just to check the weight and the LP was definitely *not* the weight of a standard LP. It was very light and so was the SG but that's a good thing in a way because a beginning guitarist wouldn't want to be weighed down. I guess they use less dense wood also to keep the costs down. Overall I wasn't very impressed at all. BTW if anybody does happen to buy one of these for a project guitar let us know about it.

Gibson opened a factory in China a couple of years ago to make these.

IIRC they are for the beginner market, someone that wants something that looks like a LP or SG for low $. I think the Gibson name is only giving it the body shape, don't expect any kind of quality for that kind of $.

Kenmac, even though I've never seen one of these, I would guess you are further ahead with your Tokai.

 

[Kenmac]

See my response to dwagar. I wasn't very impressed.

I read a bit on another forum and they didn't sound too good at all, not even close to a Fullerton or Agile .....buyer beware, I could be wrong,,,,,its just what I read:wave:

 

[Robert1950]

Can't be as bad as the low priced crap that came out in the mid 60s.