wooly wrote:Even though I disagree with some of Mr. Hall's opinions and policies on guitars, he owns the company.
He can do what he wishes.
I do not understand the problem.
The "problem" is not with RIC, but relates entirely (IMO) to individuals with an axe to grind, or who have strong opinions with inadequate information.
Let's look at it this way, and perhaps we can bring a bit more focus to the ongoing situation:
RIC is a manufacturer. As such, their customers are their dealers. Although we may be passionate about the products to the point of obsession (and beyond!!!), they are manufacturing a commodity.
We are the end-users, and our relationship is technically and appropriately with the dealer. It is merely through good fortune that the CEO of the company maintains a relationship with the company's customer base. By keeping a certain amount of visibility to his customers, John inevitably becomes the lightning rod for public sentiment, from the guy who needs to find one screw and disagrees with RIC's minimum order policy (typical of manufacturers, incidentally), to real paranoid nut cases (names withheld) who need somebody to hate with their fried cockroaches and morning coffee. For the most part, John seems to regards this as part of the territory, and maintains a pretty good humor about the entire scenario.
IMO this all comes from the dual facts that RIC is a family-owned company, and the importance they place on tradition, not just in the products they make and how they make them (which may be "traditional", but is certainly not obsolete!), but in the way that FC dealt with his own dealers and customers in the years after he acquired the company from Adolph Rickenbacker. It was a world of mostly Mom-and Pop stores of various sizes back in the '50s and '60s, and a personal relationship with dealers was part and parcel of how business was done back then. I daresay that John has a generally larger "footprint" with his end-users than FC Hall did, although there are of course stories of how FC did go out of his way to help an end-user with a problem, and I think that this attitude carried over from father to son, and from what I've seen in my own acquaintance with Ben Hall, it's being carried to a third generation, too.
Just as John Hall can decide what to do with the company without having to get approval from a bunch of stockholders with their own agendas, he can also decide which end-users merit his attention and which are time-wasters, and he does not suffer fools lightly; again, this is his prerogative.
It seems that every single time I read a nasty comment about the company or its owners (and things occasionally get inappropriately personal--another sign of crazies with no real issue but lots of imagined issues), there is a person with what I call "attitude" behind the comment. There is one constant truth operating here: If you take your "I'm special, I deserve special treatment, 'cause I'm a CUSTOMER" attitude to RIC in the form of an email or a phone call, you won't get very far. They are a manufacturer, and a business, and don't take time to massage your ego.
This attitude towards egos, ironically damages the egos of those who seek the validation of (of all people!) the folks who made their guitar or bass. The result is a plain and simple grudge. When I first found myself in the looking-glass world of absorbing the Rickenbacker legend, just before buying my first new Rick back in '04, I read everything I could find on the web. I was struck by the personal nature of some negative comments and reviews, and of course, "grudge" came to mind. Now, whenever I see a grudge being aired, I tend to look at the person airing it, not the person (or, by extension, the company) who is the target. Invariably, the reaction to the issue is way out of proportion with the nature and scope of the injury. Bingo--attitude.
I read some interesting rants, I'll tell you, and most of them are still in evidence on places like Harmony Central. But there's a certain chemistry operating here--in a public (and, theoretically "impartial" forum like HC), the inmates tend to run the asylum by default. Happy customers are less likely to post than those with axes to grind, which will give more weight to complaints regardless of their validity. And, though with some companies it's "hip" to join the huge mass of customers who pass benediction and kudos to the company and its products, with other companies, it's regarded as "cool" among the Great Unwashed, to diss everything people can find, or in some cases, make up.
I new nothing about Ricks when I started on this quest back then, but nothing I read online gave me even the slightest pause in my decision to own one (or a few more than one, as it has turned out) of these wonderful instruments. And, to this day, I have no regrets. What I cannot understand is those who would engage in self-flagellation by continuing to own a guitar or bass that they plainly have no empathy with. There are hundreds of brands of instruments out there in the marketplace, that exist for no other purpose than to sell you a music-making machine; a stringed blank slate upon which you can impose your personality and join the masses who bend that machine to their will and style. God forbid that an instrument should roll out of the factory with mojo, tradition, and (American) history already in place, and a personality of its own, that might require an adjustment in attitude and widening of ones perspective in order to accommodate it and make the most of what it's got on offer.
As I've said before, I don't think that RIC could work as a startup today...the numbers don't add up without a huge price increase to service the debt the company would incur, just getting off the ground. So we are very, very lucky that they soldier on, filling the demands of a constant market with wonderful products. Were these instruments intended for "everyman", we'd be less intrigued and involved. As it is, the label of "snob" is often attached to a Rickenbacker owner by someone who "doesn't get it" for whatever reason. In the end, we are still real people with a real appreciation for the products manufactured in Santa Ana.
