In Another Lifetime… Country Blues & Retirement in the Quotidian World…

I own seven guitars, which to some may sound exorbitant but to most guitarists it’s not totally unreasonable. Of the seven, I only purchased two of them brand new… the other five were acquired on the used guitar market. Three of my used guitars are shown in the image directly above. There were other guitars too I owned in the past that I traded away for different guitars. Consequently, I have first hand knowledge of the cost of new guitars, savings made buying used guitars, and the financial losses associated with trading guitars. By the way, all of these aforementioned guitars that were bought or traded were premium, non-entry level, non-learner instruments.

Why purchase a used guitar? Well… because used guitars are like used cars… just like a new car loses value when it rolls off the lot, so does a new guitar and the value loss can be quite significant. There are exceptions to this rule. For example, collector level instruments like Keith Richards’ Telecaster, or Tony Rice’s pre-war Martin will hold value, if not increase in value over time. However, for the run of the mill premium guitar, expect a significant loss when walking out the door of the guitar shop.

On the other hand, great value can be acquired by purchasing a pre-owned or used instrument. Of the three guitars photographed above, I saved anywhere from 30 to 50 percent of the original cost, and they play as well as the day they were pulled off the wall hook and purchased new! Nevertheless, like buying a used car, I’ve learned that being able to critically assess a used guitar before purchase is a worthy skill to possess. Sadly for me, my used guitar assessment skills have been learned experientially not without some minor pain along the way.

All this begs the question: where is the best place to buy a used guitar? While there are probably multiple methods for acquiring a used guitar, I have direct experience with two common and reputable ways:

1. From a local guitar store.
2. Online with Reverb.

I’ve had a combination of good and mixed results with both of the aforementioned options and I will speak briefly to the various guitars that I purchased used and my results.

Guitars Purchased Used in Chronological Order:

I purchased a National Resonator Steel NRP from Reverb as my first recently acquired used guitar. An instrument of this type and caliber was not available in my home town so I went online.

As you might be aware, Reverb is an online national clearing house for used and new musical equipment. Similar to the way ABE Books works, vendors, retailers, and private sellers can use the Reverb portal to buy and sell instruments.

Reverb is an online disruptor, similar to Uber… it’s great for consumers but can create challenges for local guitar stores as buyers have more options… In fact, local Mom and Pop guitar stores are disappearing from the landscape and Reverb may be partially at fault. Fortunately, where I live we still have an excellent guitar shop and in fact, local shops like mine use Reverb too to sell instruments, so it is a knife that cuts in multiple directions.

What I like about Reverb is the potential for negotiation and there are built-in safeguards for both buyers and sellers. In the case of my purchase of the NRP, try as I might, the seller would not budge on his price, but it was more than 30% less than a new resonator and it was supposedly in excellent condition, so a I bought the thing because I really wanted a resonator.

The guitar arrived and it was in immaculate shape. Had it not been, through Reverb, I had the option to return it. My main quibble with this process is you do not get to play or hear the guitar before purchase, so there is a bit of blind faith. On the other hand, when you purchase a premium factory built guitar like a National, the odds are you will get a decent instrument and I did.

After playing the National Steel NRP, I decided that it would be a great experience to also play a wooden bodied National, so I started shopping around. I ended up looking in Reverb, of course, and then I also communicated with an eccentric collector who was thinking of selling one of his many. Fact is, National makes several wooden bodied resonators and I was unsure of what to get. In the end, I found an immaculate wood bodied National ResoRocket the Dream Guitars was selling via Reverb. Via my iPhone, I was able to negotiate a reasonable reduction from the listed price with the owner Paul Heumiller and closed the deal with a click, and earned another large cost savings of +30% relative to a new guitar.

The guitar arrived in near mint shape, looking brand spanking new and I was not surprised because the combination of purchasing from a dealer who sells premium guitars priced in the 10’s of thousands with Reverb’s protections is a winning combination.

My Taylor T5c is a great example of a used guitar purchased in my local shop. The guitar was about 10 years old and in very nice shape. I had a chance to play it several times before I decided to make an offer. In this case I knew exactly what the guitar would sound like.

For a 10 year old guitar, it was in very nice, not “mint” condition, but that should be expected. There was some hazing in the upper bout near the cutaway from where the previous owner tried to buff out, what I would guess, were pick marks. Taylor’s T5’s are not equipped with pick guards and the owner did not mount one after purchase. At my request, the store gave the guitar a more professional buffing and though there is still some minor hazing, it is very difficult to see. I do not like or need pick guards because I play strictly finger-style.

The five way pick-up selector was pretty grungy with embedded dust, but the store guys cleaned that too and also worked out some static crackling that occurred when the pre-amp volume knob was adjusted.

When it comes to purchasing a pre-owned instrument, I don’t think it is unreasonable to barter before closing the deal. In the case of the Taylor T5, the guitar store owner served as an intermediary because the guitar was being sold on consignment basis, which means he gets a slice of the pie. As a result of negotiation I was able to get the price reduced a bit by agreeing to pay for the guitar with crisp $100 bills… I kid you not… It was a little annoying but also kind of fun going to the bank down the street and picking up the wad of cash to close the deal.

Finally, it is important to note that despite due diligence in the store, a used guitar can possess hidden issues. In this case, when I got home I removed the truss rod cover to adjust the neck angle to suit my purposes and found that one of the screw holes for holding the cover onto the headstock was stripped, so that the screw just sat in the hole with no grip. That discovery was irritating, but not a deal breaker and though it is arguably minor, I point it out because there can be mysteriously hidden damages when buying a used instrument. We’ll see more of that in the following discussion.

The Taylor T3c just below was also purchased as used from my local guitar shop. The negotiations were complicated because I traded in a Gretsch guitar on the deal. That kind of arrangement would have been impossible on Reverb, so there are advantages to working locally.

Further, as with the aforementioned Taylor T5c, I was able to play the guitar at length and determine that it was a fit for my playing style, so I grabbed it. The guitar was about 4 years old and appeared immaculate, or so I thought.

In retrospect it would be ideal when purchasing a used guitar, for time to be taken to examine it centimeter by centimeter before closing the deal.

In my case, had I looked more closely I would have noticed a crack about 2 inches long located along the side at the lower bout where my picking arm would rest. When I got home and discovered the damage. The more I regarded the guitar’s damage, the more appalled I became because it looked like the binding was detaching from the body’s side which is pretty serious.

I brought the guitar back to the shop the next day deeply concerned, but they “pulled me off the ledge” by deftly repairing the crack with cyanoacrylate glue followed by buffing. It is barely visible now, but I know it’s there. Most of the time I can ignore it.

The Taylor T3c is one of my favorite guitars ever and I was not even aware that Taylor manufactured them, and had it not been for a used one hanging on a hook in my local store I probably would have never purchased one. Still, my experience with this acquisition suggests two things: 1) closely examine a used instrument before finalizing the deal, and 2) if you buy locally, it is likely the store will stand by the purchase and make things right, if necessary!

The last guitar I will use as an example for buying a pre-owned instrument is my most recently acquired Taylor Solidbody Custom Walnut. I decided that I wanted experience playing a sold body guitar and discovered that Taylor Corporation manufactured them for a few brief years beginning around 2007. I am very fond of Taylor necks compared to those on Fenders and Gibsons so I went hunting for one. Since there were none in my local shop, I went online with Reverb and found a handful of them for sale.

It is possible to ascertain the going value for a used guitar by studying the sale price listing for the various guitar models. Further, if you drill down on the Reverb site you can actually find what the specific guitars sold for over the past 6 months or so. With that data in hand I negotiated with a seller, who happened to live just a few hours away from me and we struck a deal, including a personal drop of in the small town of Lisbon, IA.

We met on the main street of diminutive Lisbon and the seller lifted the rear of his SUV and then opened the somewhat beaten-up guitar case. To my initial view, the guitar looked immaculate; however, I was to learn a couple of days later that I really did not possess the wherewithal to make a true assessment of a used guitar.

As I said above, a couple of days later, it was pointed out by the owner of my local guitar shop that the neck of my newly acquired Solid BodyTaylor was twisted and in time I figured out that it was largely unplayable. Rather than return the guitar back to the original owner, I decided to send it to the Taylor Corporation for repair. When they received it, they said the only solution was a neck replacement, which they did as a warrantee repair even though I was at least the third owner of the guitar. What a great company because they did not need to do this service for me. Perhaps, because I owned 6 Taylors (including one I gave my son) they threw me a bone!

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Well as you can see from the photos above, the neck replacement is far better than the original, but I was very lucky with this purchase to get it repaired to mint condition for the cost of shipping from Iowa to California and back. So in conclusion, caveat emptor, or let the buyer beware when entering into the used guitar market! Good luck out there!