Guitars and eBay Part I

It seems as though getting the lowest price on a lot of things means going through eBay to get it. [the crowd groans] When I decided to get my new learning guitar, I perused through the guitar listings on eBay. I loved looking at guitars there because you can see all the brands and you can sort them by price. Local guitar shops just can’t match the selection that eBay has (or rather, correctly, the selection that eBay generates from all the individual sellers selling on eBay.)

In addition, I also referred to Harmony Central’s guitar review section. Honest reviews from real users, check it out. I decided to get a Jay Turser guitar based on the overall positive (but not necessarily stellar) reviews on the guitars that were in my price range. Jay Turser seemed to sell a great product that gave the big name guitar makers a run for their money. And when I say price range I really mean root-cellar-basement price. I didn’t want to spend much money. I’ve been here before, telling my wife I’d want to learn to play guitar only to have the guitar collecting dust in a few scant months. I’d have to prove myself and it couldn’t be on a guitar that cost a lot of money.

For $109.99 I got a neat moss-green color Jay Turser JT300 Stratocaster-copy guitar delivered to my door from an eBay seller with a very high positive rating. Locally speaking, the guitar shops had absolute no name “student” guitars starting at $160. It took about a week for it to arrive, but I was quite happy with it – initially. I took it to the local shop to get set up (after pseudo-thrashing on it for a week or so) only to be told that the truss rod was frozen and couldn’t be adjusted, ever. Thankfully, Jay Turser has a lifetime warranty against this. Long story short, it took about 7 weeks for a replacement guitar to show up at my home. I slapped a black pickguard to replace the factory white one and it looks pretty sweet now.

In retrospect, I regret going through eBay to buy this first guitar. For the amount of money and time I could have just coughed up $200 and had a decent first guitar that would have come completely set up with no headaches. But I do like the JT300, and I’m keeping it. I’ve already since added a new axe to my fledgling collection, a gorgeous Jay Turser 200D Les Paul copy. More on that one later.