Guitar Center originally announced back in April they’re moving beyond retail and into instrument manufacturing with plans to launch its own in-house guitar brand. Of course, that idea doesn’t come without its own fun little snags.
Guitar Center CEO Gabe Dalporto introduced the project through social media, calling it an attempt to rethink guitar design after decades of relatively incremental changes. According to Dalporto, the goal is to build a guitar “from the ground up” while publicly sharing concepts, gathering feedback, and iterating directly with musicians through online discussions.
“We are about to do something insane,” said Dalporto at the time via TikTok. “We are going to build a revolutionary guitar and guitar brand from the ground up. Guitars haven’t changed that much in the last 50 years, and we’re about to change that.
“We have something that nobody else has: a relationship with you. Our customers are incredible musicians. And we’re going to work with you in public, out loud, and share our designs, take your feedback, iterate, and make the best guitar that has ever been made.”
To support the effort, Guitar Center launched the r/GuitarLab subreddit, where topics like pickup configurations, vibrato systems, and other hardware decisions are already being discussed. So basically Guitar Center is crowdsourcing their ideas, which isn’t the worst idea – though they’ve certainly covered their own asses.
According to a legal statement, submitting your ideas also means forfeiting your ownership of the idea. In full, the statement reads: “By submitting your idea, design, suggestion or feedback (collectively, “Idea”), you affirm that your Idea is your original creation, and that any Idea submitted by you is wholly original and owned by you, and cleared for use by Guitar Center, Inc. (“Guitar Center”) without the need for additional licensing,” it reads.
“By submitting your Idea, you assign, transfer, give and relinquish to Guitar Center all right, title and interest in and to the Idea or any material based upon or derived therefrom for no consideration. Guitar Center may use and exploit, without any payment or attribution obligation of any kind, any Idea you provide to Guitar Center.
“You waive any moral and similar rights you may have in such Idea. If requested by Guitar Center, you agree to execute and deliver all documents needed to confirm the assignment and transfer of your Idea to Guitar Center.”
Naturally that pissed some people off, to which Dalporto is basically saying “don’t do it if you don’t want to.” And he’s right! While I personally feel that maybe big corporations should be coming up with their own ideas, it’s also nice that they’re listening to their future fanbase (albeit with a little bit of a lopsided deal). But yeah, if you’re not into it, then just… don’t participate.
“Please, if you don’t want to contribute to this product, then don’t participate,” said Dalporto in a followup. “Nobody is forcing anyone to contribute anything, and we very transparently posted that anything they contribute is voluntary, and we may actually listen to them and use their suggestion.
“Beyond that, would you rather we didn’t listen to customers? That we just hide in our offices and listen to some corporate shirts pontificate on pickup choices and make uninformed decisions in the pursuit of mediocrity?”
There’s currently no concrete timeline of when Guitar Center plans on launching their line.
