One man's trash is another man's treasure...

I love blems. Blems are just cause for discount negotiations.

 

I play my basses, I don’t model them.

What year is that black Guild on the wall?

 

I’ve done that with so many. One I’ve kept is an “offset neck” Alvarez Dana bass that I got for $50, a few years ago.

 

Whoa. What’s is like to play that?

 

Very nice. The neck just sits angled up there all the time. Great action, great sound, and you don’t get tired holding it. I try a lot of guitars and basses that I sell within a year. (It had a few scratches.) This one is a “keeper”.

 

Got a good deal on a Rainsong acoustic guitar and an Ibanez 6 string bass because someone didn’t know how to do a set up and the respective owners thought something was wrong with them. Not sure if that counts as a “flaw.”

In defense of the Rainsong owner the truss rod does work backward of the way you’d typically expect.

 

I picked up my Rickenbacker 4003s from Sweetwater at a substantial discount. It has a ding on the edge of the body near the jack plate, otherwise it's perfect. The ding doesn't bother me in the least. I think I ended up paying $1000 for it .

 

Blems are to basses what pimples are to humans.

 

Well... only in the sense that it's a white (actually, Lexus Pearl White), left handed '06 Carvin LB-20. Cost the original owner almost $1600 (I have the build sheet), but I got it, apparently never played, 5 years later for $360 off eBay. I was the only bidder. Plays beautifully; I've no idea why he got rid of it...

 

My Aerodyne has one small chip on the back of the upper horn. I touched it with a black marker, and until this thread, I had completely forgotten it was there.
Of course, when I bought it, I asked for a discount because of that one flaw.

 

Wow - I remember when these were first advertised years ago, but I never saw one in person.
Interesting how Ibanez and a few other companies picked up on a similar “ergonomic” theme again over the past few years.

 

This one's a little dinged-up, I'm going for 20% off!

 

Yes i bought my first "Sting bass" for a big markdown because it had fallen off of the guitar rack and it had a punched in strap button on the bottom and a chip in the head stock finish. I sort of fixed both but you can't see them from 10 feet away, at least I can't.
Bring on the dings! They are the start of a relic finish for less!

 

My American Standard P had a ding where someone had slightly damaged the finish plugging it in. They gave me two sets of strings as compensation. I didn't mind because it stopped me worrying about doing the first damage. Cleaned it up with some nail polish.

 

I've only ever bought one bass guitar new, and it was flawless until I started gigging with it. Blems don't bug me, treating an instrument like it's made of crystal does.

 

Everybody in our family from the dogs to the kids to all the instruments have blems, wouldn't change a single one for anything! Glory to the blems.
And I still play this one all the time...

'59 Precision by filmtex posted Apr 11, 2016 at 8:15 PM