Indeed Gibson are setting up there own distribution.
It is easy to knock Gibson for QC issues, however they are trying to hand build guitars in the US where they need to pay decent wages, health care insurance and obey relatively strict environmental and safety laws, whilst competing on price with the Far East where wages are very low, and health and safety and environmental laws are lax to say the least. Even with CNC mechanisation (which Gibson don't use, or at least didn't when I went to there factory a a couple of years ago) guitar building is very labour intensive so if you are trying to compete on price with the Far East corners probably are being cut on the cheaper guitars. When it comes to the more expensive guitars there is definitely a massive increase in quality (as there should be).
My guess is that back in the day the distributor/dealers in the UK used to set up and fret dress all the guitars they got so the average playability of a new guitar might well have been better than it is now. Unfortunately this added value is not perceived by most customers who tend to go for the cheapest available source — a problem compounded by the internet. I've heard all the guys I know working in music shops say they regularly have customers come in a say "I can get this for X on the internet so I only want to pay X for this" despite having spent 2 hours trying the guitar out and asking loads of questions. Believe me the margins are new Gibsons are now very low, with many internet retailers selling guitars for not much more than trade + VAT. Ensentially these guys are selling boxes not guitars, and probably couldn't even change the strings on one!!
Guitars invariabley need setting up after shipping. Hopefully Gibson will address this issue with their new distribution and we can look forward to Gibson playing better "out of the box"
