What is it about guitar makes it immediately associated with hot chicks? Hey! Not that I’m complaining. Take a look at this smaller version of the free poster from The Tone Box (click on the picture to download the full picture – it’s 18mb – so it may take a bit):
It was this picture that made me ask the question above. I suppose manufacturers figure if they get us to sport wood for their female representatives, that image will make us sport wood for their products. Interesting. Interesting indeed! While I have an incredible appreciation for the female form, as a buyer of guitar gear, nice tits and a great ass will only serve to distract me. And if your gal is extra slutty (which does nothing for me at all), I won’t even bother looking at a manufacturer’s gear. It’s not that I’m a prude, but I’m really not swayed by that because even though I’m a red-blooded, American horn dog who loves the female form, I’m also a tone FREAK-I-ZOID, and in the end, I don’t want the distraction. Just f%&kin’ demonstrate how the mutha-f%^ka sounds!
I can just imagine a rather funny situation. Let’s say this kind of advertising actually works, and every guy who views the sexy ads has the same reaction to the gear. You could go down to Guitar Center or some other place and be able to tell whose seen the ads. They’d be the guys that are slightly bent over, faking that they’re doing the pee-pee dance, or unabashedly flaunting the bulge in their pants (or they could do the cucumber bit like the bassist in Spinal Tap).
But maybe some manufacturers have learned the lesson that no matter how many hot chicks you put on your ads, it’s how your gear sounds that matters, and heaven forbid! The sound and how it pleases people so much that they spread the word that is what actually sells your product. Off the top of my head, Goodsell Amps was notorious for using hot chicks in all their visuals, but perhaps even they learned the lesson. I remember the first time I went to their site after seeing a recommendation on The Gear Page. I happened to be at work when I clicked on the link, and had to close the page immediately because of the scantily clad chick sitting on a Goodsell amp.
When I got home, I opened up the page, but my first thought was, “What the F$&K does this have to do with the amps?” Like I said, I’m not a prude, but I couldn’t be the first one who asked the very same question. I actually found it kind of obnoxious. It reminded me of the old Comdex show in Las Vegas back in the 80’s when electronics manufacturers would hire scantily clad models (read: topless) to attract geeks to their booths. I went to the show a few times, and I can tell you from personal experience, I was a hell of a lot more interested in the round orbs of fleshy goodness than that actual goods. Such was my response when I first went to that site. However, if you go to the Goodsell amp site nowadays, you’ll see that it is just a plain old amp site now – no hot chicks on the home page. Maybe Goodsell figured that the expense of hot models didn’t bring in more sales. You think? 🙂
I’ve got some ideas on what actually works nowadays, but that’s a bit beyond the scope of this entry. I’ll maybe talk about my ideas in a future post.
I was talking to a friend one day who noted something that the great Carlos Santana once said: “I can pick up pretty much any guitar and sound like me.” It wasn’t said with any arrogance. It was just a matter of fact. That statement spurred the thought that maybe there was something to the statement: Your tone is in your fingers. I’ve leaned towards that line of thinking for a long time, and have gotten into numerous debates between those who say your tone is in your gear versus the fingers camp.
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