EBMM Dealers

[Sweat]

So kind of been thinking about this, Jeff's NGD post and his unique finds made me think how many places and dealers do I not know about to find new EBMM's ( not that I can buy many)

So who do you use/know for buying EBMM's from, very curious. We all know about the Guitar Centers/Musicians Friend/Sweetwater/ZZ Sounds/ Ebay/Reverb, I am more talking about small /medium shops or UTR places.

So here is mine, note I never use Ebay just wont do it no matter what and I do not have a high opinion of Reverb

So for me;

DuBaldo Music - thats a no brainer, Pete always has cool stuff and well for me is awesome

Willicutt Guitars - Decent shop has a good selection usually

EBMM Vault - only bought one , but cool stuff just cant get a break on them

So what shops can you formites contribute

 

[jmmp]

I concur with Dubaldo and the vault. I have purchased a number from Pete, including one I suspect is one of one or one of few, and am awaiting my vault purchase to ship out. I purchased an axe palace exclusive used from Reverb.
The perfect guitar used to be a favorite of mine, until they shut down.

 

[Sweat]

Wow forgot about the Perfect Guitar one of their guys used to be a member mainly on the bass side, did like that shop

Yea trying to not get this

 

[fbecir]

For Europeans, here is my incomplete list of shops with stock :

• Achat Music man pas cher - Gros stock - Star's Music
• Thomann Toutes les catégories
• Music Man Instruments | MUSIC STORE professional
• Music Man | Guitars and Basses | ProMusicTools

There are also some nice UK shops ... but with Brexit it is now a PITA for buying from the EU.

 

[DrKev]

There are also some nice UK shops ... but with Brexit it is now a PITA for buying from the EU.

And since 2021 all EU member stares are strictly enforcing collection of import duty and sales tax. Many people are not aware of this and are shocked to have to pay 25% extra (on total of guitar value PLUS shipping cost) to receive the instrument, even on used instruments.

In France, avoid Bax.fr. Absolutely awful customer service. 2+ weeks for a reply to every single email you send.

 

[jlf599]

DuBaldo Music - thats a no brainer, Pete always has cool stuff and well for me is awesome

Willicutt Guitars - Decent shop has a good selection usually

EBMM Vault - only bought one , but cool stuff just cant get a break on them

So what shops can you formites contribute

I live about 10 minutes from Wilcutt and would rather mail order from Pete or the Vault before buying there unless I just couldn't find it anywhere else. I think it's a feeling you can only really get if you actually go into the store.

 

[Sweat]

I live about 10 minutes from Wilcutt and would rather mail order from Pete or the Vault before buying there unless I just couldn't find it anywhere else. I think it's a feeling you can only really get if you actually go into the store.

I can dig that, I do prefer Pete or others but they have been good as an online store but do get the vibe they are not overly friendly and do nothing else special

 

[Sweat]

So any other hidden? jewels

 

[dibart77]

Not sure why you guys are against eBay and Reverb. I have bought literally more than 100 guitars there and I can only think of 1 or 2 issues in 15 years, which I ended up remedying because PayPal always sides with the buyer.

Although, usually, instead of doing the deal on eBay/Reverb, I try to find the seller and reach out directly so we can avoid fees and NY sales tax. On Reverb, if you tap to send a message to the seller, it tells you his actual name (so instead of "Bobby's Gear Disease" it'll say "Robert Smith"). I then use the full name and city to search and track them down on Facebook or elsewhere. I have done dozens of deals like that. You can tell by their feedback if they're legit or shady.

You're all excited about my good scores... most of them are on eBay or Reverb... No real secret tactic.

Of course, I have bought from legit dealers like Pete, Wilcutt, Sweetwater, and the big box guys. But if you want the good stuff you gotta find used!

 

[GWDavis28]

Not sure why you guys are against eBay and Reverb. I have bought literally more than 100 guitars there and I can only think of 1 or 2 issues in 15 years, which I ended up remedying because PayPal always sides with the buyer.

Although, usually, instead of doing the deal on eBay/Reverb, I try to find the seller and reach out directly do we can avoid fees and NY sales tax. On Reverb, if you tap to send a message to the seller, it tells you his actual name (so instead of "Bobby's Gear Disease" it'll say "Robert Smith"). I then use the full name and city to search and track them down on Facebook or elsewhere. I have done dozens of deals like that. You can tell by their feedback if they're legit or shady.

You're all excited about my good scores... most of them are on eBay or Reverb... No real secret tactic.

Of course, I have bought from legit dealers like Pete, Wilcutt, Sweetwater, and the big box guys. But if you want the good stuff you gotta find used!

Your my hero Jeff . You must have the best timing in the world Jeff. I find stuff, but being broke as heck doesn't help. Hence if I see something good I post it in the EvilBay/Craigslist thread.

Glenn |B)

 

[jlf599]

I mostly buy from Reverb and The Gear Page. Ebay got sketchy for awhile and I stopped buying there (quite a few years ago) and I just got out of the habit of even looking there.

But my searches must not be anywhere as good as yours, @dibart77 . You are truly the master of the find!

 

[racerx]

I mostly buy from Reverb and The Gear Page. Ebay got sketchy for awhile and I stopped buying there (quite a few years ago) and I just got out of the habit of even looking there.

But my searches must not be anywhere as good as yours, @dibart77 . You are truly the master of the find!

Just some generic tips in no particular order:

* Reverb probably has the most forgiving interface with their feed feature + daily email. Simply add in all the search terms and filtering parameters (I would recommend only using a price filter. Using other filters may erroneously filter out valid results where the seller accidentally miscategorized something -- i.e. a StingRay guitar as a 'Bass Guitar' instead of 'Electric Guitar'). I'm not familiar with eBay but I believe they have something similar.

* Go to GC and SW's used sections -- use the search feature for every instance of the greatest hits ("ebmm", "music man", "musicman", etc). After pulling up each search, sort by new descending, then add the resulting page to your bookmarks. This way you can quickly click on each bookmark link to find the newest results as often as you'd like to check. GC generally updates in batches nightly, SW is real time since it is user driven. You can repeat this process for any of your favorite retailers that have used sections.

* Craigslist and Facebook usually have aggregator search sites -- I have my own saved bookmarks for my local markets, but it looks like 'SearchTempest' is an aggregator site that will let you search the entire countries FB/CL listings.

* Forums -- here I usually keep an eye anytime the craigslist treasure or for sale threads have a new post. Otherwise if you use any other forums, add saved search bookmarks there too.

* OfferUp -- I have some saved searches here but it doesn't seem to have much activity for instruments.

* Lastly, manual searching for miscategorized stuff. Its rare but occasionally sellers/retailers might tag something as the wrong brand/model. This is useful as you might get a flat-out great price and/or the item might sit unusually long and the seller might be more amicable to take a favorable offer from you.

 

[jayjayjay]

There's Eddie's Guitars (Home - Eddie's Guitars) - that's where I bought my BFR Sabre. Great folks to work with.

 

[DrKev]

I've bought and sold a bunch of stuff on a French site, Zikinf, and French Audiofanzine, but I do use Reverb too. And I like it! If I really need to get every last penny put of a sale, I'll avoid Reverb because of the charges but when a pedal doesn't sell to the smaller local market it will always move on Reverb. Looking through the sold listings it's a great resource for pricing research. Josh Scott did a great video on how he sets up Reverb preferences to show gear he wants.

How To Find Rare and Vintage Pedals!

This weeks Monday Monolog is all about how I shop for vintage pedals. Join me as I show you the simple tools that have helped me find awesome pedals on www.r...

www.youtube.com

 

[Ted]

I don't like to slam dealers by name, but there's one dealer which is in my city and has been named in this thread (you could probably figure it out by my location) that I would probably never buy from based on previous experience.

Last year when I received my BFR Valentine from Reverb from a dealer on the west coast, I had that very weird issue where I found that there was a StingRay logo visible on the headstock underneath the Valentine logo. Not the dealer's fault, but I wanted to go to a local shop to make sure the guitar had the proper Valentine neck profile-- and not an actual StingRay neck on it. I reached out to this local shop via email and told them my situation and asked if they could make an appointment (they're appointment only) to look my guitar over and help me compare it to the Valentines they had in stock and see if my neck was correct... and they just flat out ignored me. Never gave me a reply. So fugg em.

My brother had emailed this shop a year before to make an offer on a Stratocaster he was interested in, and I guess they thought his offer was too low, so they ignored him too.

I get it that maybe they felt like since I wasn't looking to buy another Valentine from them in that moment-- I just needed their help with something-- they didn't smell an imminent sale so they ignored me. It pissed me off though and made me not want to ever do business with them. So six months later I was in another much smaller local shop and happened to find a used mint Trans Buttermilk Valentine and snapped it up on the spot. I can't help but think had this other shop been nicer to me, perhaps I'd have bought my second EBMM guitar in their shop at some point.

I don't know what it is with guitar shops in general and surly attitudes, but I find surliness creeping in from some employees, even in shops I like.

I've never been one to buy many used guitars but now I totally agree with dibart77 about buying used. I got such a good deal on my Buttermilk Valentine and it's flawless and has not a scratch on it. I would totally buy more used EBMM guitars any day.

 

[Vito Porkleone]

Customer service is a dying concept - and not just in guitar shops. When you find it, support it, and make sure they know you appreciate it. Then recommend them to others. The merchants that don't stress it will die off soon enough.

 

[Ted]

I will add this--and I don't mind attacking this other dealer by name-- because I hate some of their business practices and will only buy from them as a last resort-- but I am absolutely sick of Sweetwater and the monopoly-like hold that they are gaining in the industry.

Everybody loves Sweetwater-- and I admit that I like getting a little bag of Bit-O-Honey and Smarties, etc. Their selection is great. They ship fast. They sometimes have good deals, etc. But what I absolutely CANNOT stand about them is their weird stalker-like data mining sh!t that they do. It's creepy. They think it's high-tech. No it's f*cking creepy, aggressive and offputting, to put it as mildly as I can...

I can't tell you how many times my brother and I have searched a product online and had this experience with Sweetwater: For example we were interested in the Yamaha Revstar guitars. We looked at them online, watched Youtube vids, read reviews, talked about them near our smartphones etc. I"m pretty good with my online privacy and cleaning out "cookies" as I browse. etc. Of course I now constantly see ads all the time for stuff that I've searched before and it rankles me and I don't think citizens should to live this way, with this constant mercantile rape of privacy.

But Sweetwater takes it to another level. They will have their rep give you that awkward phone call to "see if they can help you with anything" and recently the guy called my brother and just straight up asked if he was interested in buying... oh I don't know... a Yamaha Revstar? That is not good customer service. It's stalking and it makes me think uncivil thoughts.

 

[Mixolydian82]

EM Shorts in Wichita, KS is a very good dealer to work with. I'm trying to convince them to increase their stock, but they often will offer very good deals and have excellent customer service.

 

[jlf599]

I can't tell you how many times my brother and I have searched a product online and had this experience with Sweetwater: For example we were interested in the Yamaha Revstar guitars. We looked at them online, watched Youtube vids, read reviews, talked about them near our smartphones etc. I"m pretty good with my online privacy and cleaning out "cookies" as I browse. etc. Of course I now constantly see ads all the time for stuff that I've searched before and it rankles me and I don't think citizens should to live this way, with this constant mercantile rape of privacy.

But Sweetwater takes it to another level. They will have their rep give you that awkward phone call to "see if they can help you with anything" and recently the guy called my brother and just straight up asked if he was interested in buying... oh I don't know... a Yamaha Revstar? That is not good customer service. It's stalking and it makes me think uncivil thoughts.

To be fair, I think that's really Google, social media sites, and some of the tracking networks like AdClick and such. They collect the data and sell it. Sweetwater isn't doing that sort of data collection, I expect. (Though they apparently buy it...though I'm not sure I blame them for that.)

The only way to really avoid it is using a whole bunch of tools and plugins to avoid tracking -- DuckDuckGo instead of Google, Brave instead of Chrome or Firefox, a good VPN, plugins that block known trackers, etc. It's really not easy to avoid all of the tracking out there, but you can avoid a lot of it with a bit of effort.

(Not a security/privacy guy, but a lifelong unix/IT guy.)

J

 

[racerx]

To be fair, I think that's really Google, social media sites, and some of the tracking networks like AdClick and such. They collect the data and sell it. Sweetwater isn't doing that sort of data collection, I expect. (Though they apparently buy it...though I'm not sure I blame them for that.)

The only way to really avoid it is using a whole bunch of tools and plugins to avoid tracking -- DuckDuckGo instead of Google, Brave instead of Chrome or Firefox, a good VPN, plugins that block known trackers, etc. It's really not easy to avoid all of the tracking out there, but you can avoid a lot of it with a bit of effort.

(Not a security/privacy guy, but a lifelong unix/IT guy.)

J

As someone in the data space, SW uses the same vendor I do for analytics and can attest they are doing analysis and machine learning on their customer base and site traffic. For browsers, I’d recommend using Firefox with uBlock origin. Brave is just another chrome fork.