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Originally Posted by kkfan
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12-31-2015 09:24 PM
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Originally Posted by kkfan
DITTO. I am newer than most ...kinda. Well, I have done several stints here before, some going back a few years. The Yahoo group was cool back when and I had some buddies there, but it withered away.
This place has friendly helpful people. Real jazz guitar players and some more players in making. Cool folks though. There is some jazz baggage and some sarcastic quips (from me and a few others at times) but no disrespect or troll attitudes (mosty. ha!). Lot's of valuable sharing. Weeeee.
I've been happy to contribute when I can, and learn when I can.
Thanks everyone....
Doc
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Originally Posted by Jazz_175
Used Gibson Custom Shop Lee Ritenour L5 Electric Guitar Antique Sunburst | eBay
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Yes, for a while recently on Reverb.com that Music Zoo Rit L-5 was 15% off with a promotion code, making it under $6K.
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I bet that TMZ would be willing to sell the L5 Lee Ritenour for under $6000 when approached directly.
Ebay takes a 10% cut. Paypal takes about 3%. By buying directly, TMZ realises the same amount from the sale. It is listed on its own website anyway so there is nothing unprincipled about it.
Used Gibson Custom Shop Lee Ritenour L5 Electric Guitar Antique Sunburst | The Music Zoo
Like Vinny's 2014 Super 400CESN I bet that there is very little of it that is "used" except for the price.Last edited by Jabberwocky; 01-02-2016 at 10:10 AM.
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Originally Posted by Jabberwocky
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Wish I was on the other coast! TMZ has a guitar I'd like to check out too!
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Originally Posted by kid335
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I am getting ready to pull the trigger again at TMZ. Better hurry up and snatch up that Rit L5 before I do. They will honor the 15% off. I can guarantee it is brand new old stock. That Rit L5 is the only Gibson you can get with a "true" JS pickup.
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Originally Posted by vinnyv1k
And yep that pickup is much more likable than the BJB.
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JazzNote, Talk to Garrett. He will give you that price. He also offered me that wine Brydland for $5100 delivered.
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First of all, Julie and I would like to wish all members of this thread a very Happy New Year, with special thanks for all those who spared a good word for us. We apologize for not responding to the thread more quickly, but have just been pointed to it by one of our trusty guitar students. As sunlight is the best disinfectant, we wanted to correct several statements that require some clarification, below:
…my experience submitting a guitar for consignment was not a good one.
phantom setup charges and substituted parts…
To be clear, we have never assessed ‘phantom charges’ on any instrument. When an instrument arrives, clean, properly set up and strung, it goes straight to the showroom, But shipping valuable instruments is expensive for our customers, and doubly so in the event of a return. So if an instrument arrives that needs some attention, we owe it to our customers to ensure it looks and plays its very best, right out of the box. This attention to detail, which some might call obsessive, has paid off well over the years in happy customers, maximized return to consigners, and an enviably low return rate.
If an instrument should need vintage correct parts or hardware to maximize its sales price, we are happy to supply them, while keeping whatever non-original parts were removed included in the case. We never perform any work on an instrument that is not intended to improve its sales price, and we estimate that every dollar invested in proper preparation yields many times its vale at the time of sale.
Moreover, we never require our consigners to pay for any labor or materials out of pocket: we cover all costs until the instrument is sold, regardless of how long it takes, interest free. If however a consigner should prefer to have their instrument prepped in advance, we’re delighted to provide our detailed setup specs directly to their luthier: it makes our job a whole lot easier to have instruments arrive in sales-ready condition.
"Hand antiqued" really means well-used.
Not at all. Our hand antiqued parts are always brand new, and carefully aged to look as close to original parts as humanly possible.
I've seen several guitars w/obvious known issues that I previously owned appear for sale w/no mention of said issues.
To protect our customers, we do inspect all instruments we receive as intensively as possible. But we do have to rely on our consigners to alert us to any issues that may have arisen in an instrument’s history. But if they have failed to do so, for any reason, we’re the ones who have to accept the responsibility. And if we have somehow missed any significant issue with an instrument, we do refund all costs, including shipping in full to the customer, both ways. It’s expensive, but we do it because it’s simply the right thing to do, regardless of where the responsibility ultimately lies.
Yeah, not being able to get a hold of him within the 48-hour trial is a familiar tune.
In point of fact, we are very flexible with our approval period, and have never declined a request for an extension of the approval period. In fact, the only time we have ever declined to accept a return request was one that arrived several weeks after purchase, well after we had already paid the consigner in full.
Yeah, you WON'T get that (25% excise tax) back from your Customs and Excise should you have to return it. Joe knows...
Actually, Joe, doesn’t. We ship instruments to dozens of countries worldwide, and if we were to try to monitor every individual set of tax regulations, we’d wind up doing nothing else. However, we are more than happy to help expedite and customs or import issue as best we can, and we do this regularly for our valued overseas customers.
One person had the original knobs of his guitar swapped out and a $200 bill because "nobody wants those knobs".
Outrageous…if it were true. We looked up the service record for this particular instrument and found it actually received: 1) a custom made vintage correct pickguard, 2) cleaning and buffing for scratches and dings, 3) a complete top-to-bottom setup, 4) a new set of strings, and 5) an extra set of hand-antiqued Gibson knobs. Total cost for the new knobs: $7.50 apiece. And the knobs it came with, of course, stayed with the guitar.
He also told me that he would pay the expense if it was indeed set-up related. This was memorialized in email correspondence as well.
If you still have a copy of this correspondence, please forward it to us at your earliest convenience. More importantly, if you still have the repair invoice, please forward a copy as well, and we will be more than happy to reimburse you for your setup costs in full, no matter how long ago this may have occurred.
…he charged me a 20% restock fee plus shipping back…
This is a bit confusing. As a matter of policy, we do not charge restocking fees on returned instruments, and searching our records, can’t find a transaction that matches these details. In the event of a return, our customers cover only the shipping costs. (If the purchase was made with a card, VISA, MC etc do not refund their processing fees, typically around 3%, so we can’t refund these either.) If however, you still feel you have been charged unfairly for anything, please forward us a copy of your invoice and we will look into it asap for you. If you can’t locate your invoice, just forward your name, and we will pull it up for you ourselves, with thanks in advance for your prompt attention.
As we at archtop.com celebrate our 20th year, Julie and I have been gratified to have played matchmaker to players and their beloved guitars, and made good friends in the process all over the world, from celebrated artists to Sunday pickers of all kinds. We’re humbled to have received a number of kind comments over the years as well, many of which you can see here, if you like:
archtop.com: Friends
And finally to all of our valued customers, if you ever have any questions, queries or complaints about your experience, please just call us direct, toll free, at the number below: it goes right to our desks. There's always room for improvement in our customer service, and we welcome the unvarnished feedback from our friends to help us keep improving as well.
Many thanks, and stay in touch.
Joe Vinikow
archtop.com
toll free: 877-850-1978
206.325.3737
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Originally Posted by vinnyv1k
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Congrats buddy !
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Folks, I don't know how many of you know what 2bop is describing, but I was bitten by the Hi End audio bug, too, in the early 90s. OMG did that get expensive. My buddies and I jumped into the deep end of the pool with cement shoes on, I swear. Class A amps, oxygen-free copper, gold-plated connections, time-phased speaker arrays, paper-in-oil capacitors for speaker crossover networks, 1-bit digital-to-analog converters, etc.
Things get pretty out of hand, pretty quickly with High End. A pair of Audio Note Gaku On monoblock amplifiers--rated at 45 watts each--cost about $250,000 second hand. The transformers take 500 hours each to manufacture. The wiring throughout--even in the transformers--is pure silver.
If you think that playing violin or piano is an expensive addiction, compared to archtop guitar, just think about High End audio. Mercifully, I survived that era and now have a relatively modest "stereo." Meanwhile, most people now listen to music via computer speakers or headbuds. We have re-entered the "lo-fi" era in which a Blows table radio is often considered to be good sounding equipment, these days. Hmm? Making matters worse, the bit-rate that many people use (unwittingly) on the music they download is generally 196 kbit/sec. Compared to CD quality (1,411 kbit/sec) this is about 1/7th of the audio quality. You can definitely hear the loss of audio fidelity on most mp3 recordings and transmissions--at least you can when they are reproduced on a system with speakers larger than the ones in your laptop or cellphone.
I guess we should stick to making live music with our comparatively inexpensive guitars/amps.
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Originally Posted by Greentone
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You know, with all due respect, someone should respond back to Mr Vinikow's rebuttal. Its the fair thing to do.
I'm not sure how this turned into the "miracle of make-up and proper lighting" thread.
I'd like to know if Archtop dot com is a reliable, honest vendor. I trust the advice I get from the great folks here. That's what I will go by.
JD
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medblues,
I didn't mean to hijack the thread. While I would agree that for many non-critical purposes lossy media are adequate, I think most of us can immediately hear the difference between live, acoustic music and the same music reproduced on even the best equipment--in the early 90s I heard a money-no-object system at the Epcot Center at Disney World...impressive. The sound stage isn't the same. (This is often a consequence of recording technique, but there _still_ remains a difference.)
You can do a very simple experiment. Take a ride cymbal and a stick. Tap the cymbal in a rhythm pattern and record it. Play this back at CD-quality, then progressively more lossy playback values. Before you get to 196 kbit/sec you will here degradation of the cymbal sound.
You can do the same thing with an upright bass. The rhythm and pace of the bass will suffer as you proceed to lossier reproduction values.
AND, many people will convincingly claim that the CD-quality bit rate is already lossy enough to produce a degraded cymbal sound vis-a-vis high speed analog tape or vinyl playback. Certainly, the drums don't sound quite the way they do live (when you are standing or seated near them).
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Joe,
To get things back on track...I think archtop.com is a very respected vendor of archtop guitars. It has been around longer than almost anybody else on the 'net. (Gruhn, Mandolin--shed a tear, looks like they are closing, and Elderly go back farther.) IMO, the _average_ grade of instrument offered at archtop.com seems to have changed over time. Once, it was primarily a place to track down great Epiphone guitars. Gradually, archtop.com expanded to become the place to get the best archtops outside the unobtanium rooms at Gruhn's Guitars, Norm's and elsewhere. Perhaps the quality of the typical guitar offered has slipped a bit, but this seems to be almost universal. As the "boomers" reached peak earning power, they sucked up all of the great guitars. It's mostly player-grade instruments that are trading these days. Go to shows and that's what you see.
I would not hesitate to purchase from archtop.com, myself. A little pricey, but no more than Gruhn's.
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"One person had the original knobs of his guitar swapped out and a $200 bill because "nobody wants those knobs".
Outrageous…if it were true. We looked up the service record for this particular instrument and found it actually received: 1) a custom made vintage correct pickguard, 2) cleaning and buffing for scratches and dings, 3) a complete top-to-bottom setup, 4) a new set of strings, and 5) an extra set of hand-antiqued Gibson knobs. Total cost for the new knobs: $7.50 apiece. And the knobs it came with, of course, stayed with the guitar."
I already responded in this thread, and don't want to pile on, but I will again.
I specified that I wanted to avoid setup charges and the like and sent a guitar that was cleaned and setup already.
Then w/out my consent or knowledge, the original knobs and truss rod cover were removed and a new pickguard made and installed.
It was only after receiving my check did I become aware of the following deductions:
Custom pickguard, Gibson 5 ply wide bevel antiqued edge $85
Knobs, Gibson gold reflector cap, antiqued [4] $35 [not $7.50 ea. as stated above, but whatever]
Truss rod cover, Gibson 3 ply, antiqued $15
Set up, [blah, blah ,blah--read the bottom of one of their ads for all the standard details] $50
Restring $15
Total cost $200, removed from my check.
so yes, it wasn't $200 just for knobs, but rather $200 for unecessary changes.
The pickguard may or may not have been original, though if it wasn't it sure fooled me, and I've been around the block a few times when it comes to vintage guitars and their parts/specs as many here know.
whether archtop.com or anyone else likes or dislikes the original parts or feels replacing them would facilitate a sale is pointless. it was done w/out my knowledge. only when I received the check w/deductions did I become aware of this.
and as I said before, I know of NO other dealer that removes original parts!
"Outrageous" indeed.
I'm not telling anyone to buy or not to buy from them and I'm sure they've had enough satisfied customers to stay in business this long, but just relating my own experince since it was asked in this thread.
ymmv....Last edited by wintermoon; 01-06-2016 at 01:34 PM.
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I would not hesitate to buy again from archtop.com, but I would be very explicit with my questions and would not assume anything based on the write ups.
However well-intentioned Joe is, the ad copy utilizes too much boilerplate content and somewhat irrelevant general historical information for me. I don't need to know that a Gibson L-5CES began life in 1922 as a fully acoustic instrument. Just tell me more about the specific guitar being sold, please. Don't bury those details in so much generic and flowery copy.
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Originally Posted by Joe DeNisco
I will say his opinion and my opinion of mint is very different but so is everyone's. Is he honest ? I would say yes.
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if someone bought a $10,000 guitar and had to pay $2000 in restocking fees because you couldn't reach a dealer w/in a pre-determined time frame, that's absolutely ridiculous.
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Speaking only from my personal experience buying from archtop.com, I would not hesitate to purchase a guitar from Joe again. Of course, like for any guitar purchase from any seller, private or dealer, one has to ask all the right questions first, especially if one is buying online. It's also a good idea to discuss the return policy to make sure that all parties understand and agree.
All sellers have their idiosyncracies. Spending a little time in their store or on their website will reveal them in no time.
I am sure that a thread about any dealer could turn into a series of posts detailing bad experiences. They happen. Sometimes due to miscommunication, other times through more or less honest mistakes from one side or the other. Truth is though, the long time dealers have to do something right or they wouldn't have been in business for that long.
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Like I said, I had one bad experience with him. All the rest were good. I still sell guitars with him.
Why is the internet out of tune, and what can you...
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