Footage of Gibson destroying hundreds of its Firebird X guitars by being lined up and run over by a heavy construction vehicle popped up online, receiving mostly negative remarks from the guitar community.
Former Gibson employee named BJ Wilkes, who shared the footage of the incident, said during an interview with The Guitologist that the video was shot during the “post-Henry” era, when the company’s new investors “were trying to clean up the mess before the end of the fiscal year, adding that “Gibson literally could not sell these guitars and they were on the books.”
Gibson has issued the following statement in response: “The Firebird X destruction video that surfaced months ago was an isolated batch of Firebird X models built-in 2009-2011 which were unsalvageable and damaged with unsafe components. This isolated group of Firebird X models were unable to be donated for any purpose and were destroyed accordingly.”
You can watch the footage below:
