A 'monitor' is a a commonly used and understood international term for a specific kind of specialist reference speaker used in the recording, mixing, and mastering of music....
In the context of this thread, it'd be a bit dopey to confuse it with the old Monitor Audio brand of domestic hi fi speakers, monitor screens, or even monitor lizards... Plugging a large carnivorous lizard into the end of the audio chain could result in nipped fingers.. or worse...
Btw.. the 2015 retail price for those fancy tat Gibson speakers actually seems to have been over a thousand quid, the equivalent of a lower priced entry level Les Paul guitar...
Any surprises Gibson are failing so badly under current ownership...??? It's certainly not a brand for hard working blue collar weekend warrior guitar players...
This review of the speakers is a neat summing up of the mishandled exploitation of the Gibson trade mark..
"....Gibson and parent company CMI were bought by an Ecuadorean company and placed under the Norlin banner. By 1984, Gibson?s headquarters had moved from Kalamazoo, Michigan, to Nashville, Tennessee, and Norlin were failing fast. In 1986 the current owners, Henry Juszkiewicz and Dave Berryman, stepped in to rebuild Gibson?s fortunes. Nowadays, Gibson are but one of over 100 well-known musical instrument, pro-audio and consumer electronics brands that operate under the umbrella of Gibson Brands, as that agglomerate moves on its journey to become ?the largest music and sound technology company in the world?......
...Having given up on the guide?s weird marketing speak (and the spurious claim therein that Les Paul held the patent for the eight-track tape recorder), I went in search of hard information on the Gibson Brands web site and came across one of the most uninformative presentations of technical specification that I have ever encountered. .....
.....I must admit that I found the Gibson Les Paul 6 monitors to be more than a little confusing. Gibson Brands have, under their umbrella, companies and brands with decades of pro-audio experience, any of which, at the very least, should have been able to write a quick-start guide and a set of specifications to pro-audio standards.
Gibson Brands also seem to me to have missed the fact that, these days, the performance levels of small studio monitors have risen as prices have headed downwards. In particular, onboard DSP and digital amplification have so affected the performance/price ratio that certain of the major monitor manufacturers may be in danger of cannibalising the sales of some of their own higher-priced products with their new, lower-priced models. As a reference monitor the LP6 will, I fear, struggle against other studio monitors with similar pricing, and will also have real trouble with those at more aggressive price points.
However, looking at the golden boxes and the black velvet bags that they arrived in, maybe I?ve entirely misunderstood the LP6. Perhaps what we?ve actually got here is a lifestyle loudspeaker targeted at a specific guitar-owning customer demographic ? in which case I think that it has fulfilled its brief.
As I said, I?m confused by the Les Paul 6 Reference Monitor. You?ll have to take a listen and decide for yourself."