Hercules GS412B Plus Review: Excellent Crap for Keeping Expensive Crap Off the Floor

Buying an expensive guitar creates an interesting relationship with gravity.

You spend hundreds or thousands of dollars on a beautiful instrument, carefully inspect the finish for fingerprints, wipe it down after playing it, and generally treat it like an object worthy of preservation.

Then you lean it against an amplifier.

That’s when gravity begins filling out the paperwork.

If you actually play your guitars instead of keeping them permanently locked inside their cases, sooner or later you need a safe place to put one down.

For us, that’s the Hercules GS412B PLUS.

And if you’re regularly pulling an expensive Gibson off the stand, playing it, and putting it back, this is exactly the kind of crap worth spending money on.

Our guitars stay upright, securely held, easy to grab, and, importantly, we haven’t found the stand leaving marks all over them.

That’s enough for us.

💩 Our Rating: 1/4 Poops

Excellent crap.

A Guitar Stand Has One Job

This isn’t an appliance with 37 features and a Wi-Fi connection.

It’s a guitar stand.

Its primary job is very simple:

Don’t drop the fucking guitar.

Everything else is secondary.

This becomes considerably more important when the guitar hanging from it isn’t some $100 beater you bought because you wanted something to leave next to the couch.

Put a Gibson Les Paul on there and suddenly the engineering standards become:

“I sure hope somebody thought this through.”

Fortunately, Hercules did.

The GS412B PLUS uses the company’s Auto Grip System, or AGS. When you lower the guitar into the yoke, the instrument’s weight closes the retaining arms around the neck. Hercules says the system accommodates guitar necks from 40 to 52 mm, with included adapters for narrower-necked instruments down to 28 mm. [herculesstands.com]

It’s beautifully simple.

Put guitar in stand.

Stand grabs guitar.

Take guitar out.

Stand lets go.

No engineering degree required.

The Auto Grip System Is Why We Bought This Kind of Stand

There are plenty of cheap guitar stands that’ll hold a guitar just fine.

Probably.

And probably is one of those words that bothers me when we’re talking about an expensive instrument.

What I really like about the Hercules design is that the guitar isn’t merely hanging from an open hook and relying upon everybody in the room to behave themselves.

Once the instrument’s weight activates the mechanism, the AGS arms close around the neck. [herculesstands.com]

That gives me substantially more confidence when walking away from it.

No little strap to remember.

No manually closing latch.

No hoping the guitar doesn’t somehow work its way forward.

Put it in and gravity actually helps secure it.

For once, gravity is part of the solution instead of waiting nearby to destroy your Gibson.

If You Actually Play Your Gibson, You Need Somewhere to Put the Damn Thing

Yes, the safest place for an expensive guitar is probably inside its case.

There’s just one problem.

I bought my guitars to play them.

Taking a guitar out of a hard case every single time you want to noodle around for ten minutes adds just enough inconvenience that eventually you’re less likely to pick the thing up.

A stand changes that.

Walk over.

Grab guitar.

Play.

Put guitar back.

That might sound trivial, but having a guitar immediately accessible makes it considerably easier to actually use the expensive damn thing you spent all that money buying.

And that’s where I’ll happily spend more for a stand I’m comfortable trusting.

Just as Important: Don’t Screw Up the Finish

Holding the guitar securely is only half the job.

The stand also spends a tremendous amount of time touching your guitar.

That matters to me.

Hercules says the GS412B PLUS uses what it calls Specially Formulated Foam padding at its instrument contact points. [herculesstands.com]

In our experience, those padded contact areas have done exactly what we hoped: they support the instrument without us finding marks where the guitar rests against the stand.

And with an expensive guitar, that’s what I want.

I don’t need the stand to polish it.

I don’t need it to compliment the flame top.

Just hold the damn thing without damaging it.

So far, ours has done precisely that.

One Important Gibson Caveat

I would still be careful about making a blanket claim that any stand is universally safe for every nitrocellulose-finished guitar.

Our experience has been excellent and we haven’t had marking problems, but finish formulations, environmental conditions and prolonged contact can complicate that subject.

So with an expensive nitro-finished Gibson, I’d follow the guitar manufacturer’s finish-care recommendations rather than simply assuming that any padded stand material is guaranteed harmless forever.

That’s not me distrusting the Hercules.

That’s me distrusting chemistry around something that cost me a lot of money.

The Backrest Makes More Difference Than You’d Think

The GS412B PLUS also has an adjustable folding backrest, providing another support point behind the instrument. Hercules says it can be positioned at multiple angles and folded for transport. [herculesstands.com]

I like this design better than a stand that essentially says:

“Here, hang your expensive guitar from this pole and let’s see how tonight develops.”

The guitar feels supported.

It has a defined place to sit.

And when I put one away, I’m not delicately experimenting with balance until the instrument reaches some mysterious equilibrium.

That confidence matters more than it sounds like it should.

It’s Surprisingly Substantial Without Being Ridiculous

Hercules rates the stand for 33 pounds, while the stand itself weighs only about 3.7 pounds. Its height adjusts from approximately 33.6 to 42.3 inches. [herculesstands.com]

A normal guitar isn’t getting remotely close to that weight limit.

What I care about is the tripod footprint.

Once it’s opened up, it feels like a proper piece of equipment rather than something you’re nervously asking to babysit several thousand dollars.

There’s an inevitable tradeoff there.

A stand with a decent footprint takes up floor space.

Good.

It can have the floor space.

I’m not interested in saving eight inches of room badly enough to make an expensive guitar easier to knock over.

The Height Adjustment Doesn’t Require a Wrestling Match

Another nice touch is Hercules’ Instant Height Adjustment Clutch with Locking Pin. The stand height can be changed without fiddling around with the sort of cheap plastic thumbscrew that always feels about two adjustments away from stripping itself. [herculesstands.com]

Again, that’s not revolutionary.

It’s just good design.

And that’s basically the story of this entire stand.

Nothing about it causes you to gaze upon it and marvel at mankind’s technological progress.

Instead, every little piece seems designed around the dangerous concept of:

“What if we made a guitar stand that was really good at being a guitar stand?”

Apparently this remains legal.

Expensive Stand vs. Cheap Stand

This is the inevitable question.

Why spend more money on a Hercules when inexpensive guitar stands exist everywhere?

For your $150 garage guitar?

Maybe you don’t.

For something like a Gibson that you genuinely care about?

My thinking changes.

The price difference between a cheap stand and a good stand becomes pretty insignificant when compared with the value of what’s hanging from it.

It’s the same reason I don’t understand buying an expensive guitar and then protecting it with the cheapest accessories human civilization can manufacture.

You already bought the expensive crap.

Protect the expensive crap.

There’s Also Something to Be Said for Seeing Your Guitars

This isn’t really a feature Hercules can put on the box, but it’s one of the reasons I like owning good stands.

Guitars are beautiful.

A Gibson Les Paul sitting safely on a stand isn’t merely being stored.

It’s sitting there saying:

Play me, asshole.

And sometimes that little visual reminder is enough.

You walk past it.

Pick it up.

Play for twenty minutes.

That’s infinitely better than forgetting about it inside a black rectangular case in the corner.

For anyone who actually plays their instruments regularly, accessibility matters.

So, Should You Buy This Crap?

If you have a guitar that you actually care about and you regularly keep it outside the case, yes.

The Hercules GS412B PLUS solves one very simple problem extremely well.

It holds the guitar securely.

The Auto Grip System engages automatically.

The backrest provides additional support.

The contact points are padded.

It’s adjustable.

It’s stable.

And in our experience, our expensive crap stays exactly where we left it without getting beat to hell in the process. [herculesstands.com]

That’s really all I wanted.

I didn’t buy a guitar stand hoping it would change my life.

I bought one hoping it would prevent a considerably more expensive object from suddenly changing altitude.

So far, mission accomplished.

💩 Our Rating: 1/4 Poops

Excellent crap.

If you actually play your Gibson instead of keeping it permanently entombed in its case, the Hercules GS412B PLUS is the kind of accessory that’s easy to recommend.

It isn’t exciting.

It doesn’t make you play better.

It won’t improve your tone.

Nobody has ever walked into a Guitar Center and announced:

“Holy shit, did you see the sustain on that stand?”

It just keeps your guitar off the floor, doesn’t give gravity much opportunity to get creative, and makes the instrument easy to grab whenever you want to play it.

When the thing hanging from it is worth thousands of dollars, that’s plenty.

1/4 Poops. Excellent crap for keeping expensive crap from becoming broken crap.