I have been watching for one of these for a couple of years and whenever I find them on CraigsList, they are clear across the country and seller refuses to ship or take PayPal - or it's been sold before I could snatch it up - so I've missed out on all the deals.
This one came up on eBay - and the seller said "Mint Condition" and the seller had good feedback - but the seller had never sold a musical instrument before and couldn't answer anything at all other than "it looks like new". So this was a bit of a gamble - no idea if truss rod works, if neck is straight, if pickups work, if it weighs 10-12lbs etc.
I always wonder about TB/eBay/CL etiquette - I mean I was pretty sure there would be other TB members interested in it and I wondered about how to post that I was bidding on it in case someone else here was bidding so we didn't bid each other up. But then I figured I'd just be alerting everyone that it was there and invite even more bidders -- so I just kept quiet. (any advice about that sort of thing?)
Anyway only one other bidder (from here on TB, of course) and fortunately he didn't bid too much higher than opening bid (which was fairly high already) - so I ended up as high bidder - and worried what I would actually receive. And if the seller would package it correctly (he didn't respond to any of my emails requesting/suggesting specific packing).
To my delight
it arrived with about three layers of cardboard box around two layers of bubblewrap around the hard case with bubblewrap around the bass inside. It was really well packed and the cardboard box it came in showed no signs of damage at all. And when I got through all those layers of packing - I couldn't believe how minty fresh this was. It looked like it had never been out of the case - and the case looked like it had never been out of the closet in 32 years. Still had all the little tools and owner's manual and even the little tool to adjust the tension on the tuning machines (very rare to get one of those). And a brand new leather strap.
Neck is perfect, sound is awesome. I had to clean the toggle switch contacts and that's all it needed.
This one came up on eBay - and the seller said "Mint Condition" and the seller had good feedback - but the seller had never sold a musical instrument before and couldn't answer anything at all other than "it looks like new". So this was a bit of a gamble - no idea if truss rod works, if neck is straight, if pickups work, if it weighs 10-12lbs etc.
I always wonder about TB/eBay/CL etiquette - I mean I was pretty sure there would be other TB members interested in it and I wondered about how to post that I was bidding on it in case someone else here was bidding so we didn't bid each other up. But then I figured I'd just be alerting everyone that it was there and invite even more bidders -- so I just kept quiet. (any advice about that sort of thing?)
Anyway only one other bidder (from here on TB, of course) and fortunately he didn't bid too much higher than opening bid (which was fairly high already) - so I ended up as high bidder - and worried what I would actually receive. And if the seller would package it correctly (he didn't respond to any of my emails requesting/suggesting specific packing).
To my delight
it arrived with about three layers of cardboard box around two layers of bubblewrap around the hard case with bubblewrap around the bass inside. It was really well packed and the cardboard box it came in showed no signs of damage at all. And when I got through all those layers of packing - I couldn't believe how minty fresh this was. It looked like it had never been out of the case - and the case looked like it had never been out of the closet in 32 years. Still had all the little tools and owner's manual and even the little tool to adjust the tension on the tuning machines (very rare to get one of those). And a brand new leather strap.Neck is perfect, sound is awesome. I had to clean the toggle switch contacts and that's all it needed.
