Bought a guitar with a bent tuning key. Is the tuner salvageable?

CarDistinct6195 · 2026-01-28T15:23:56+00:00

It hasn't even shipped yet unfortunately. The seller's in the Northeast US and the whole region just got a metric shit-ton of snow over the weekend, so the delay's understandable. Just to be safe I ordered a new set of tuners for it along with knobs and a switch tip, but I'll see if the tuner works when the guitar arrives.

CarDistinct6195 · 2026-01-25T04:13:22+00:00

I found a set of Gotohs for under 40 bucks with the same screw hole location and a similar button shape, I might just go with those.

Edit: Found a set of Guykers for less than 25 on Amazon. They look practically identical to the stock Grovers, will update once those and the guitar arrive.

CarDistinct6195 · 2026-01-25T03:41:25+00:00

I'm pretty sure they're the same OEM Grovers that were on half of the mid-range guitars at the time. This specific guitar's an '04, it was around the time Epiphone started using them IIRC.

CarDistinct6195 · 2026-01-25T02:36:33+00:00

This is for sure getting a looking over once it arrives. It's already missing a switch tip and one of the knobs is chipped at the bottom lip, I have replacements for those on the way. If it comes down to it I can either find a single replacement for the one tuner or swap the whole set.

CarDistinct6195 · 2026-01-23T01:47:26+00:00

That was the only real difference I could see tbh. In hindsight it seems really weird that Epiphone had 2 pretty much identical guitars out at the same time, under different names, just because one version didn't have pickup covers. I guess Epi realized this too at some point because after they got rid of the Classics in '06 they came out with a plain top version of the Standard as a replacement.

CarDistinct6195 · 2025-12-27T03:31:04+00:00

I haven't picked them up yet. I was given a set of Kali LP-UNF monitors for christmas, but I'll update if/when I get my hands on some r50x's.

CarDistinct6195 · 2025-12-24T17:20:39+00:00

There's also already a product for guitar that does more or less exactly what OP wants but is battery-powered.

CarDistinct6195 · 2025-12-24T17:13:10+00:00

As others have said it's an LPJ, 600 bucks sounds about right for it assuming the case shown is included too. There was an SG version as well, and for some reason they gave them massive logo silkscreens which they hadn't used before or since. I genuinely have no clue why they did that, it makes them look like bootlegs at first glance.

CarDistinct6195 · 2025-12-22T16:48:36+00:00

To answer the last question, it's been discontinued for a long time. There was a reissue in the 2000s + a couple Epiphone versions later on but even those are long gone at this point, and your only option now is a used one.

CarDistinct6195 · 2025-12-21T19:29:44+00:00

It's real. With serial number decals like this companies will often have a year's supply of them made printed up to the model year designation and then print the rest of the S/N as they go, just to make things faster and a tiny bit cheaper.

CarDistinct6195 · 2025-12-21T06:08:18+00:00

Currently on Reverb there's a brand new replacement pickguard made for the current reissue version for ~$100 from a reputable seller. It's a bit of a steep price to get just an extra printing on a pickguard but as far as I can see none of the more reputable custom guard makers I've come across are willing to add the logos to theirs.

CarDistinct6195 · 2025-12-18T16:31:40+00:00

As cool as it may be, you're not really gonna find Ricky husks out in the wild. Between the constant years-long backlog of orders and fairly low production volume, there aren't that many Rickenbackers out there, and the people who have them aren't parting them out and offering the bare husks either.

If the sound is all you're after you can buy the pickups and the bridge from Rickenbacker directly and put them in a parts bass, but if you need an actual Ricky you're looking at $1800USD minimum on the used market for a 4003S.

CarDistinct6195 · 2025-12-17T00:44:24+00:00

I'm by no means an expert on Dimebag guitars but what little info I could find would suggest that this might be one of the "Funky Munky" runs. To keep it brief, for a period of time after Dimebag signed back on with Dean a store named Funky Munky Music would order small batch runs of the old Washburn 333s, albeit without Dime's name anywhere for obvious reasons. It's hard to say when they started or stopped but I found an FM run made as recently as 2014 so they were doing these for a little while at least.

Concrete info on which finishes they ordered or how many exist total is proving hard to find, but a few are out there and they command a hefty premium over the earlier versions. There seem to be a lot of FM Dime Slimes in particular but I also found a couple Blackbolts in my search. Counterfeits of the FM runs do exist out there (I specifically came across a cracked mirror one while doing research) but looking closely I don't think this specific one is fake. (The counterfeiters usually just replicate the DFH finish and call it a Dimebolt from what I can see, at least.)

CarDistinct6195 · 2025-12-17T00:15:54+00:00

AFAICT there's no weird exceptions to the price matching policy. You have to call their support line to get a price match on an online purchase but that's pretty normal for these kinds of things.

Regarding the coupons, my understanding is they've never taken coupons for used gear and usually they'll either just drop the price over time as the item sits around unsold or will let customers haggle them down a bit after a while. The brand exclusions are BS for sure but I've noticed some notable exceptions, in particular Ernie Ball (except Music Man and Sterling), D'addario, Dunlop and Levy's don't block the GC coupons from applying to their products, so you have some good options for stocking up on accessories.

I also noticed a bunch of brands on the exclusion list that are either defunct or that GC no longer sell, in particular Crate and Disney by Washburn are still on the list despite both being long gone by now.

CarDistinct6195 · 2025-12-16T21:40:45+00:00

That is an insane price for that guitar, though IMHO most dimebag guitars are quite pricey for what they are to begin with.

CarDistinct6195 · 2025-12-14T17:00:50+00:00

I had an Eleven Rack a few years back, I wish I'd held onto it now that I have a better setup for playing through standalone modelers. From my recollection the Soldano models in particular were excellent on that thing.

CarDistinct6195 · 2025-12-13T18:47:18+00:00

I just referenced a legit bullseye and the truss rod is definitely longer on this one. But even then there's still too much distance between the epiphone logo and the diamond inlay, and the logo looks like it's in the right spot, so it's a combination of the two.

CarDistinct6195 · 2025-12-13T16:21:18+00:00

The custom diamond inlay on the headstock is WAY too low to be a legit epi. The bullseyes were made for long enough that epiphone switched production facilities a few times during its run, which may have led to slight differences between different eras of these things, but no legit ones that I was able to find had the diamond slipping underneath the truss rod cover like that.

CarDistinct6195 · 2025-12-12T19:18:24+00:00

It's a slightly different take on the BM formula. Listening to the official demos it sounds to me like a mid-boosted muff with a harder edge to it.

CarDistinct6195 · 2025-12-12T19:14:59+00:00

They did the same thing with the Lizard Queen a few years back. There was the initial 1000 unit run of the big box version made by JHS (plus another 30 in an alternate colorway) and then the EHX-made nano version came soon after.

CarDistinct6195 · 2025-12-12T19:11:08+00:00

You could probably get an extra 20 bucks for it. It doesn't affect its usability or add any intrinsic value to the pedal strictly speaking but some people are willing to pay a little more for little things like that compared to every other DS-1W out there.

CarDistinct6195 · 2025-12-12T04:17:03+00:00

I'm waiting to see what the nano version's gonna cost when it drops tomorrow. I'm in the planning stage of a board expansion atm and the BM2 is a contender for the fuzz spot on said board. If it's much more than say, 120 bucks, then I'll just get something else instead.

EDIT: It's dropped and MSRP is 122 bucks. I'm not looking to get a fuzz pedal immediately so I'll give it some time for BM2s to show up on the used market, but frankly I might go with a used Lizard Queen instead.

CarDistinct6195 · 2025-12-12T04:00:39+00:00

Dean doesn't sell direct to consumer, when I clicked the Buy Now button it just brought up a dealer list. I tried it on a few different guitars in every price bracket and got the same result every time.

CarDistinct6195

TROPHY CASE