When I first started writing this article, I thought I was going to be rehashing some old material about Gibson (under owner Henry Juszkiewicz) and one particular completely crappy business practice: "The Bumblebee Capacitors".

But while doing research for that article (the bumblebee capacitors debacle is still a pretty interesting and an instructive case study), I was lead to a whole lot of other things: namely the information that is now this article. Most notably that there was a whole chain of events, playing out across several years, under Juszkiewicz's leadership that caused the failure of Gibson, and the forced sale that threw "Henry J" out, and that brought in new investors and new company leadership. Early last month, it had been a year since Gibson went through that ownership and leadership change.

Henry Juszkiewicz acquired Gibson in 1986 for $5m. 5 Million Dollars. That's it. Now, 1986 is quite a bit different from 2019 in terms of how much inflation has devalued the dollar, but $5 million still seems a pittance given the storied Gibson name...

It's been a while since we've posted here. Unfortunately, the sad truth of the matter is that we've gotten involved in a community radio project. The hope of which is to give ourselves a radio presence locally here in Long Beach, California, and also with the audio stream that will be flowing online from the station. Unfortunately, there's been some legal developments, which naturally are taking our time instead of working on actually building new content and building the business here for Thermionic Studios.

So we occasionally look to keep our eye out for things that take us back to "The Halcyon Days".

This "Golden Age" includes gear for musicians that used to be available but no longer is. We look for things in the past that musicians claimed to give them great tone.

So Pat Furlan has a really great Youtube channel showing him repairing and modifying lower-power (and a few higher power) tube amps. This particular amp is a GREAT sounding Gibson GA-5T, also known as the "Skylark". Watch a very competent tech describe his troubleshooting and fixing of a tube amp:

Whether on purpose, or just by dint of fate and coincidence, you've probably heard of the Donovan song "Hurdy Gurdy Man", but you probably never learned what a Hurdy Gurdy is.

Check out this Turkish electric Hurdy Gurdy awesomeness:

If this isn't one of the coolest things you've seen in a while, please feel free to use the contact form to complain to me. :)