Good.
I'm a total sucker for American musical products (Warwick basses notwithstanding) but Gibson are a disgrace, consistently ranked as one of the worst companies to work for in America
(as told by the employees themselves). Given that Juszkiewicz has a 14% approval rating from his own staff and the pervading sentiment is that he's completely out of touch with reality, it doesn't surprise me in the least that they've probably been importing illegally logged wood knowingly, given that their quality control has taken a nosedive in the last 10 years (seriously, a
new Studio Les Paul with a giant ring of dried glue around the headstock? For a £950 instrument? Are you fucking having a laugh, Gibson? How stupid do you believe your customers are?) Well, pretty stupid actually, since their customer service would probably be considered a crime in some countries (compare this to, say, Genz-Benz' customer service... I called up asking for some info about extension cables, and it turned out I was speaking to Jeff Genzler himself, who then proceeded to invite me to Scottsdale 'to catch some rays, man'. Cool guy.)
Every single company they take over gets run into the ground (my favourite example: Trace Elliot, after which everyone there jumped ship and formed Ashdown), and the management truly does not give the tiniest fuck about destroying the reputation and name of some of the greatest musical instrument companies in the world. All they are concerned with is milking the buying public of every last cent with overpriced, outdated products (well, it's been almost 50 years... shall we fix that heatstock weakness issue on the Les Paul? Nah, fuckit, people will still buy it anyway... let's add a new colour scheme and charge an extra $600 for it instead! Those idiots will buy anything!)
The reason they still have anything of a reputation at all is the fact that people are still willing to drop top dollar for their signature products, sadly believing that they are buying something top of the range. Also, their Epiphone division is actually pretty well-run and very profitable, and in an uncharacteristic flash of wisdom, essentially left to do their own thing by the central management. And they have quality control that works. And they actually make amplifiers which weren't designed by an OCD sociopath (6V6GT tubes in a preamp!? What kind of sick fuck would come up with that??) And they add more weight to the argument that Koreans can actually make better instruments than Americans.
Compare them with Fender, Eden Electronics, Gallien-Krueger, Peavey or basically any other major US instrument/amp manufacturer and you'll see what I mean. Even the borderline psychotic anarcho-nihilists at Rickenbacker have a philosophy and ethos, misguided as it might be, that they stick to and they put out consistently high-quality products. They even realised that the 4001 had some pretty serious neck issues that wouldn't take the strain of heavier strings and consequentially released the 4002 - a pretty stark contrast to the whole LP headstock thing.
What has Gibson done to innovate in the last 20 years? A self-tuning guitar! Whoopdy-fucking-do! And we'll market it by telling everyone
'You've been playing out of tune all this time! You're all tone deaf morons!' Oh wait, Fender beat us to that by about five years before we came along with our fucked-up, overcomplicated attempt. Hmm... well nobody wants to buy it because it costs more than a decent used car, so here's a great idea: let's make a Firebird and fill it with a ton of useless crap nobody needs or uses! But forget about any warranty covering any of that fancy high-tech stuff, because, well, fuck you. (And as you can see by the comments on Gibson's own website, it's not exactly...
going down well.)
I really do like Gibson instruments - the ones made before the whole buyout fiasco. Harry uses a 1979 LP Studio for all rhythm work on our albums and it's pretty sick sounding - just holding it you can feel that newer instruments are simply not nearly in the same category. Case in point: I tested out an Epiphone Les Paul Studio Goth guitar that was actually better sounding and better built than a Gibson Les Paul Standard. The frets weren't even properly sanded down... I brought this up with the guy at the store and he was like 'yeah... they're not what they once were' in a slightly embarrassed way.
But given the direction the company's been taking, I feel this is some pretty long-overdue justice finally being served. Maybe Juszkiewicz will finally get the fuck out of a job that he clearly does not belong in, and someone will now take over who actually wants to honour the history of the Gibson name.
The length of this rant in and of itself should give away just how much I care about the history of the company, and just how much I hate what they've become.
and if they were, there probably weren't the laws in place. 
these are what I call briefs