Fairfax County General :
Fairfax Underground
Welcome to Fairfax Underground, a project site designed to improve communication among residents of Fairfax County, VA. Feel free to post anything Northern Virginia residents would find interesting.
Unfortunately, Guitar Center has taken over as the "Toy 'R' Us" of music stores, and their brand new instruments out of Mexico are an insult. However, I have seen some decent axes up on their wall that people have sold them. But like I said, whatever you do, do not buy their brand new stock. Go somewhere else for brand new equipment (that acoustic room of theirs does have some promise, however).
For the past couple of years I have just checked into Craigslist to see what people are selling. You can haggle with people and there's no BS store markup for the used gear.
Also, you need to be very careful buying on craigslist. I bought what I considered to be a good deal on a guitar, until the neck sheared off while I was playing it and it gave me a shock so bad I almost got electrocuted, and had to go to the hospital. Alot of junk equipment out there.
Some guy I used to like but don't anymore bought a sweet looking guitar off Craigslist. Then he found out that the frets were made out of nickel (I think?), and the strings were causing indents in the frets. It was $100, and reinforced what my father always used to tell me, "You get what you pay for."
MrMephisto Wrote:
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> Some guy I used to like but don't anymore bought a
> sweet looking guitar off Craigslist. Then he
> found out that the frets were made out of nickel
> (I think?), and the strings were causing indents
> in the frets. It was $100, and reinforced what my
> father always used to tell me, "You get what you
> pay for."
And also reinforces why my father always told me, which is "research before you get what you paid for." Nowadays if someone posts the model of an instrument it is very easy to hit up Musician's Fiend (no typo lol) or other places to find reviews and specs. Someone would have posted a review saying "teh frets suck" and you would have known what you were getting.
And anyone with experience buying equipment knows you buy on looks in junior high school, and buy on performance when you get serious.
I buy guitars like that with the intention of refurbing them with better everything (which is a trivial matter when you know what to do). If that's your game I say go ahead and buy on looks if the price is low.
The problem with Craigslist is that you can't try out and compare a bunch of different pieces before you buy. I think Craigslist works better for amps than for a guitar or bass. You can buy an amp on specs and reviews, but with an instrument it's largely about the feel of the thing.
Space Ghost Wrote:
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> The problem with Craigslist is that you can't try
> out and compare a bunch of different pieces before
> you buy.
You can always go to GC and try out different models to get a feel of how pricier new stuff is, then keep an eye out on craigslist for people selling the same thing used. There are going to be pros and cons to both approaches, I usually hit up craiglist when I have a specific thing in mind I want.