The A4 that's not an A4

[mrmando]

Someone took an ordinary pumpkin top A1, and added a not-very-convincing fleur-de-lis and headstock binding ... which just looks weird on a paddlehead.

It wouldn't fool your average vintage Gibson mandolin enthusiast, but it fooled Guitar Center.

http://www.guitarcenter.com/Used/Gib...A4-Mandolin.gc

[MikeEdgerton]

That is indeed pretty awful. For posterity.

[MikeEdgerton]

The tuners have been changed as well.

[William Smith]

Yeh that's not good! Another "Guitar Center mandolin huh"

[Jeff Mando]

Selling to Guitar Center is an interesting experience, IMHO. In the last year I've sold them 4 instruments, two guitars and two amps. FWIW, I'm now at an age where everyone working there is decades younger than me, including the manager. Everyone I dealt with was very professional and friendly. The two amps and one guitar were recent and could be easily researched online and those transactions took less than 15 minutes to complete. Needess to say, I try to pick a time when they are not too busy and "school" is still in session! If the item you are selling is a name brand (Gibson, Fender, Martin, etc.) and it is clean they will pay 70 percent of their selling price, although they will start by offerinng you 60 percent. Once you remind them that they have 5 others on their website for such and such price, they will give you 70 percent with not much negotiation. It also helps if you use the same salesman each time who remembers you. I also mention I drove 70 minutes in heavy traffic to get there. If it is an off-brand or in bad condition, they will offer less, of course. One guitar I was selling was a vintage Gibson and in that case, nobody at the store was qualified to buy it, but they were happy to send pictures to their home office in Los Angeles. This process took approximately 2 hours and resulted in a sale. The guitar showed a fair amount of wear and I think they took at least 100 pictures of it, close-ups every 3 or 4 inches of the entire guitar front and back. The manager was on the phone for quite a long time and then he was asked to take blacklight pictures, so he and an employee went in the backroom and did that. After he sent those pictures, he was asked to take a couple more close-ups of certain details. Anyway, when it was all said and done, they offered me $1400 for a guitar that was probably worth $2000 in the condition it was in, again 70%, which I felt was fair, since my other options were to sell it online and wanted to avoid the possibility of a return, due to the condition. That, and I had owned the guitar long enough that I was still doubling my money at $1400! For me, the experience was good, but I felt I guided them through the process, having several printouts of similar guitars from Reverb, eBay, etc. as examples. Needless to say, I think it would be easy to confuse them with a vintage mandolin, IMHO.

[rcc56]

That's a plain style A. With one of the more horrendous "The Gibson" logos that I have ever seen. Might be a good mandolin, though. But it is neither correctly identified nor correctly priced. "Let the buyer beware."

[jaycat]

Many years ago (20+) I walked into Boston Guitar Center, hoping to get $600 for my Gibson EB3 bass... they offered me $1200 for it. Needless to say, I took the money and ran...

[Jim Garber]

Here is what a 1914 A-4 headstock should look like:

[MikeEdgerton]

So close......NOT!

[Ray(T)]

I acquired my first decent mandolin in 1976. I traded a guitar combo amp for it which I'd bought new in the same shop around 18 months previously. They gave me more for it than I originally paid them.

[fentonjames]

Is it any wonder that GC is rumored to be out of business by June?

[rcc56]

GC has been running in the red for years, and their demise has been predicted dozens of times. So far, they are still open, huge debt or not withstanding.

[Jim Garber]

I just dealt with them last month. I played a few Recording King guitars and liked them. My daughter decided she wants to play and they had a solid top parlor model reduced by 50% — for only $99.99. I haven't seen it in person but it is playable and in videos it sounds pretty nice even tho she is a beginner. The nice thing is that they called me before shipping to tell me that there were some scratches and I told then that that was fine as long as it was structurally playable: that the neck wasn't warped, the action high or the frets weren't sticking off the sides or there weren't any other obvious problems. The guy i spoke to checked it out and told ne he would run it by the techs there. So, all-in-all a bargain and they handled it fine.

I do stop there when I go on a shopping run and the folks who work there are quite nice and amenable. Hardly any mandolins but a small pile of ukes and some decent new guitars. Same thing for the other chain around us, Sam Ash. They have had an Epiphone mandolin for years that needs serious set up. You would think they would fix that. OTOH I played a Seagull S8 that is very playable.