Gibson is being sued by Tronical for $50million over e-tuner technology
Uh oh, even more potential debt coming Gibson's way!
Tronical, the company that invented the robotic tuners Gibson uses in its guitars, has announced that it is taking the US guitar company to court and suing them for £50 million.
Tronical issues
Gibson uses automatic tuners on its electric guitars under the Min-ETune and G-Force brands. Tronical is the developed the technology back in 2005 and licensed the design to Gibson.
The background here is that Henry Juszkiewicz wanted to innovate the Gibson guitar brand – in the vein of Apple computers, perhaps – leading to some controversial decisions about what the company thought guitarists needed. Whether it was his personal decision or not, the technology ended up on Gibson guitars like the Les Paul and the SG. Unfortunately, was that not many players wanted them in the first place and either avoided the guitars that came with them as standard or just removed them and fitted regular tuners instead.
Based in Hamburg, Germany, Tronical has now announced that is suing Gibson for $50 million and that the action has been pending before the Hamburg State Court since December 2017.
They haven’t discussed the case with the press yet at the time of writing, so we still do not know any of the details of the case, so stay posted for updates.
2015 – 2018 bad years?
It looks like 2018 will be a tough year for Gibson and may well go down in history as a very memorable year for the brand, in a similar way to 2015, which was also a particularly poor year for the guitar company. Some players also complained that the system never worked as well as it should have and so the reputation of the brand took a serious nosedive that year. I myself tried out a 2015 Gibson guitar loaded with the tuning system and will admit the guitar did not stay in my possession for very long, as I thought it wasn’t great and so I’m speaking from personal experience here.
I will let you all know more details of what happens, once the information becomes available.
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2 responses to “Gibson is being sued by Tronical for $50million over e-tuner technology”
As reported in the US, roughly half the amount being sued for is licensing fees owed Tronical. and half is for breach of contract. Gibson under Henry J has a consistent pattern of shady business practices, walking away from deals, and screwing over business partners.
This might be Gibson walking away from it’s contractual responsibility, but, something tells me they would have a decent counter suit after the glitchy technology made their userbase shun the guitars that had it.
Gibson could sue for everything they have licensed, that’s helped to further destroy what little reputation for quality they have left.
LOL