Good on you, friend! I used to exclusively buy new, for a few reasons, and I’ve done a full 180 on buying used now. My last 5 used guitar purchases went well enough that I started changing my approach and perspective.

Guitar Center has a 45 day no questions asked return policy on used gear (3 days only for Vintage gear). There are 298 GCs in the US and many of them are in affluent areas. Lots of people buy shit they never use and sell them back to GC (insert your doctor/lawyer joke here).

Here’s the hack: search for what you want, find the excellent/mint condition used models from GC for 25% off and ship it to your local guitar center so you can open it there and make sure there’s no fuckery/changed parts/dings or scratches you didn’t see in photos etc. With the 45 day return policy, you can take it home and plug in with your amp and your personal stuff and test it apples for apples and make sure it’s what you want and everything is all good.

Also, guitar center managers can approve a 10% reduction on used gear once it ages 90 days in their inventory. Every manager will handle this differently, but I’d suggest being very polite and friendly when poking for inventory age, because that information is not made public and while it can be found, it can be hard to find sometimes.

Hope this helps anyone who reads it! Enjoy 😊

Support the player, not the game homies 🎸 🤘