Post by petermac on Jul 23, 2016 7:17:29 GMT -5
Or do you just go into your local guitar shop, try what they have in stock, and pick the one you like best, or if none you like, try at later date to see if they do you like one.
I bought my Coastline S-12 new from Sweetwater, sight unseen and unplayed. I was about five months into playing guitar and frankly wouldn't have been able to tell a heckuva lot of difference if I had six 12-strings lined up to play beforehand. I liked my S6, so ordered the S-12 and love it. Period.
Since then, I've played dozens of guitars in shops over the course of a year before stumbling on the Cole Clark line. Never would have found them or considered them before I played one. Never would have bought one if I hadn't found a used one on sale.
As I said in another thread somewhere, "we all play used guitars" just like we all drive used cars. Part of what made my recent experience through Reverb more confident was buying from a dealer rather than an individual, and that dealer having a seven-day return policy (at my cost). That was a pretty good safety net.
As I get to know more about guitars in general, I realized there is a lot more to potentially "go wrong" or be aware of with a used acoustic than an electric (not that I'm in the market for an electric -- anybody want to buy my Epi LP?). I was close to buying a used Maritime MJ from Craigslist but the seller was 175 miles away and we couldn't arrange a meet-up. That was a couple weeks before I stumbled on the Cole Clark. Serendipity? Synchronicity? Who knows...
One thing I'd be increasingly concerned about with buying upper echelon name brands from Craigslist or Ebay would be counterfeits from China, some of which are pretty good quality while others just look good. (I have a pretty humorous story about a counterfeit hockey jersey that I'll tell some day...)
