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When new becomes used!
- Thread starter rockscott
- Start date
My local mom and pop music store has a lot guitars and basses in the same situation. Don’t really understand it. Most “with the times” music stores will sell old inventory online at a discount just to open up room in the store for new inventory. What’s even worse is when when stores try to sell old basses and new higher prices. For example a Mexican standard never cost as much as the newer player series. But I have seen older Mexican standard fenders priced like new player series even though the day the stores got those standards they didn’t cost that much.
I was visiting relatives in Pennsylvania in late 2009. Missed my basses, so I went to a local music store to mess around for awhile. Spotted a Daphne Blue Highway 1 Jazz and was playing it for about 15 minutes. It was "new" but it was a 2003!! They were trying to sell it for $750.00.
When I got back to Memphis I kept thinking about it and called the store one day to see what their best price would be. He talked to the manager and came back and said they'd sell it for $650.00. I told him, "That's still too high for a 6 year old bass". He said, "It's not 6 years old! It's about 3 years old."
I told him to check the S/N, it's a 2003. He put me on hold and went to check it out. Ended up selling it to me for $500.00. So it DOES pay to haggle a bit...
When I got back to Memphis I kept thinking about it and called the store one day to see what their best price would be. He talked to the manager and came back and said they'd sell it for $650.00. I told him, "That's still too high for a 6 year old bass". He said, "It's not 6 years old! It's about 3 years old."
I told him to check the S/N, it's a 2003. He put me on hold and went to check it out. Ended up selling it to me for $500.00. So it DOES pay to haggle a bit...
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it should come with a full warranty; talk to breedlove. if it does, offer 10% less based on condition - you could try 15% and see what they say. if it doesn't, tell them the name of the breedlove rep who told you it doesn't include a warranty, offer at least 20% less and see what they say.
If they were smart, they'd advertise it as relic'd and raise the price another hundred. somebody'd pay it.
Back in the day (circa 1983) our drummer fell in love with a set of sonor rosewood drums he saw in a downtown scituate ma music store. He sold his ludwig drum set (big mistake) and purchased the sonors. Soon after he was breaking drum heads left and right. Long story short, the drumset sat on display in the store front window, all day long direct in sunlight for a year! The drum cylinders warped and caused the heads to constantly break! He eventually got his money back but it was a long haul through court!
Yea, thats a demo model at that point. Id ask for 20-30% off plus fresh strings and setup.
I used to work in a/v and it was the same situation. We could look in the computer and see what our margin was on a pair of speakers, as well as how many of that model we had sold during its stay. If a pair were $1000, but our cost was $350 and we moved 12 pairs in the time that we had the demos out... We'd gladly mark them down to $400 just to move them.
But keep in mind that with GC, they operate differently because of their internal numbers. So it might be easier to have them take only 5-10% off the guitar but then toss you 50% on a quality cable, leather strap, humidity pack, strings etc.
Here's some fun math as well...
5 years on the wall is 1,825 days
even if a customer only tried it out 50% of days, thats 912.5 days that it was played.
and even if only one customer per day tried it out... and if only for 10 minutes...
Thats 152 hours of play.
If its reasonable for the average owner to play an hour a day, 5 days per week... this translates to 30 weeks of ownership.... which is well outside of the return policy by GC standards and considered used.
Not to mention that this instrument could've been sold and returned multiple times during that duration. If you're wondering how they offer such a great return policy, its because they turn around and sell the returns as new.
Now to be fair, I worked the door at GC for a while and sure, there were some instruments that people rarely played. But there were also some that were played by 4 or 5 people just during my shift. And yea, some were played for 2 minutes but some were played for an hour.
On the other side, I have some basses that I play for 10hrs/week on average but there are others that I dont play much at all. I've got a 2 year old acoustic that has less than 20hrs of use on it.
So give that some thought when considering if an instrument is new or used, and where the line is.
I used to work in a/v and it was the same situation. We could look in the computer and see what our margin was on a pair of speakers, as well as how many of that model we had sold during its stay. If a pair were $1000, but our cost was $350 and we moved 12 pairs in the time that we had the demos out... We'd gladly mark them down to $400 just to move them.
But keep in mind that with GC, they operate differently because of their internal numbers. So it might be easier to have them take only 5-10% off the guitar but then toss you 50% on a quality cable, leather strap, humidity pack, strings etc.
Here's some fun math as well...
5 years on the wall is 1,825 days
even if a customer only tried it out 50% of days, thats 912.5 days that it was played.
and even if only one customer per day tried it out... and if only for 10 minutes...
Thats 152 hours of play.
If its reasonable for the average owner to play an hour a day, 5 days per week... this translates to 30 weeks of ownership.... which is well outside of the return policy by GC standards and considered used.
Not to mention that this instrument could've been sold and returned multiple times during that duration. If you're wondering how they offer such a great return policy, its because they turn around and sell the returns as new.
Now to be fair, I worked the door at GC for a while and sure, there were some instruments that people rarely played. But there were also some that were played by 4 or 5 people just during my shift. And yea, some were played for 2 minutes but some were played for an hour.
On the other side, I have some basses that I play for 10hrs/week on average but there are others that I dont play much at all. I've got a 2 year old acoustic that has less than 20hrs of use on it.
So give that some thought when considering if an instrument is new or used, and where the line is.
You forgot chain it up to a pickup truck and drag it around the parking lot once or twice.
I have always asked for a discount on any new retail item over $50 at GC and i usually get 10% just for asking. I’ve negotiated larger discounts and i’ve been turned down outright on occasion but you will never get a discount if you don’t ask.
If it hangs on the wall it should be considered a Demo and discounted. I've bought new from GC before and asked for new in the box. If they couldn't provide a new one or accept a discount I would ask for the manager. If he couldn't discount it I'd let them know that I'd order it new from Sam Ash. This threat worked a lot of times because Sam Ash was 2 blocks away.
It never hurts to ask; sometimes it works out if it's an item they just want to get rid of, but people also need to bear in mind that stores make a lot of money on demos by having them stay on the floor. If you are selling 10 new instruments at higher profit margins because people came in and played the demo, that demo model staying on the floor is worth a lot more to them than the sticker price. So it's not always going to be easy to talk the store into selling the demo when it's essentially money in their pocket to leave it where it is. Do ask, but don't be surprised if the answer is no. There's a good reason they won't want to sell it at that moment.
It's funny; back in the day everything hanging on a wall in a music store was essentially considered "new" stock and the store expected customers would bond with an exact instrument and purchase it based on the fact that it was that particular instrument they liked. Stores would always haggle, but nowadays with production instruments being what they are it's much more likely they'll offer new in a box at whatever their "best" retail price is, which is usually 20% above their wholesale cost. There are rarely any actual deals, it's all based on cost and everyone nowadays pays the same for stock because the box retailers are so consolidated and buying in bulk. But if an item happens to be something they are having trouble moving, you might get lucky.
It's funny; back in the day everything hanging on a wall in a music store was essentially considered "new" stock and the store expected customers would bond with an exact instrument and purchase it based on the fact that it was that particular instrument they liked. Stores would always haggle, but nowadays with production instruments being what they are it's much more likely they'll offer new in a box at whatever their "best" retail price is, which is usually 20% above their wholesale cost. There are rarely any actual deals, it's all based on cost and everyone nowadays pays the same for stock because the box retailers are so consolidated and buying in bulk. But if an item happens to be something they are having trouble moving, you might get lucky.
You forgot chain it up to a pickup truck and drag it around the parking lot once or twice.
Truly authentic road worn bass. However, I heard the ones that use the concrete method have a more solid tone than the ones using the black-top method.
Supposedly, the ones using the Belgium block method are extremely rare.
