ISSAQUAH, Wash. – Costco Wholesale recently unveiled the eight-foot-long, 48-string Kirkland Signature Super Widebody electric guitar, sources both confused and impressed report.
“At Costco, we pride ourselves on offering our members significant cost savings over standard-size purchases,” stated senior VP of Communications Patricia Reddingridge while delicately placing her half-eaten $1.50 hot dog on a napkin. “With the new Kirkland Signature Super Widebody economy-sized guitar, you’ll never run out of strings at an inconvenient time. Buying that old standard guitar is like picking up a puny quart-sized bottle of vodka or one roll of toilet paper. Sure, you could, but you’re simply wasting your money.”
Members appeared excited about the massive rig, which comes with a 10-foot amp requiring a forklift for safe transport to the buyer’s vehicle.
“Oh yeah, this’ll be sweet,” said Jordan Statsky, 25-year-old guitarist for indie band The Ordinary Dividends, who was using his mother’s Costco Executive membership to fill his cart with beef jerky and Nerds Gummy Clusters. “We’ll have to tie it to the top of the van when we tour, and maybe get one of those highway escort vehicles, but if my mom finds a coupon in The Costco Connection for this bad boy, it’ll totally be worth it. Even though I guess we’ll have to rewrite all our songs to get rid of barre chords. Dude, I can’t even wrap my arm around the fretboard. It says you need two people and an industrial wrench for the tuning pegs. But I won’t have to buy new strings, like, ever again!”
According to musical gear industry analyst Frank Aureli, Ph.D, economic challenges for today’s struggling bands have opened the door to creative — if questionable — solutions.
“Back when bands relied on album sales and profitable tours, they could swing a decent mid-level Strat, with no financial strain” recalled Aureli. “Now, we see a lot of guitarists playing whatever moldy knock-offs they find on Craigslist. Some are even resorting to gear theft to supply their bands. And others will probably shell out for this downright Brobdingagian Kirkland Signature axe, which cannot be slung around a performer’s neck without breaking several bones. During testing, once we found enough people to play an actual chord, the tone was surprisingly exquisite. Costco is likely white-labeling high-quality components from the Fender factory and melting them together. Pretty sad.”
At press time, Costco’s product development team had released early prototypes for a Kirkland Signature 1,000-key economy-sized piano.