Instruments you regret buying: the ones that should have got away

[journeybear]

I just remembered, I do have another regret. I bought something the seller called a resonator mandolin - not a typical steel resonator, but with a built-on wooden apparatus on the back of the body. It wasn't much, maybe a couple hundred bucks, so I went for it. I don't know how much louder than usual it was, but it was probably louder than my late 1970s F-12. The thing is, I couldn't get it to sound anything other than happy. I just couldn't get it to sound right if I played the blues on it. Weird. Also, it was really heavy, with all that extra wood. So it's sitting in deep storage, too. It's an odd duck. It looks rather like this:



A side picture would show how thick that back is. It's heavy.

All told though, three instruments out of the twenty-odd I've owned isn't too bad a track record, especially considering the cost involved, $500-600 altogether. I've surely wasted more money than that on dodgy equipment. Sometimes I regret holding onto them more than getting them in the first place!

[JeffD]

Ohhhhhhhh. I guess I posted to the wrong thread. I was thinking this was the one that got away thread.

[bigskygirl]

Monday morning quarterbacking is always easy, I don't regret any purchase because at that particular time it made me feel good about music and myself and that's all that matters to me....YMMV!

[FLATROCK HILL]

Eh? Guys! This thread is about regret, but of the opposite kind. "Instruments you regret buying" - capisce?

I know threads meander, and we all have stories to tell, but ... still ...

Here's my story, and it falls into both catagories. The only mandolin I regret buying was a relatively recent purchase. It was a slightly used, mint condition instrument from a high-end builder. When it arrived, I was quite disappointed. To me, it sounded not one bit better, maybe not even as good as my Northfield or Weber. I'm not saying there was anything wrong with it, it just didn't really float my boat. And it certainly didn't float it for that kind of cash. So...I sent it back.

I regret buying it in the first place because I lost a sizeable chunk of change on shipping (both ways) and insurance.

I also regret letting it go. I bought it at a very reasonable price. I shouldn't have been so quick to send it back. I believe I could have kept it for a while and sold it later without eating the shipping cost etc.
Live and learn.

[Jeff Mando]

Got me thinking in the old days, if you bought something you didn't like you were stuck with it. Sure, you could put it in your yard sale or run an ad in the local paper. If you wanted to buy a more expensive instrument you could trade it in (and probably get fleeced!) but other than that you were stuck with it. Today with eBay, CL, and The Classifieds here, you can usually get back close to what you paid for something. So regrets don't sting as much these days!

[Austin Bob]

Instrument cases are another matter entirely. I am now on my 4th case for my Gibson in about as many years. This includes the original, which I've never used and is sitting in my closet. I should probably try to sell it, but I fear that I will regret it if I do.

Every case I get, I find something I don't like about it and end up buying another and selling the previous one at a big loss. I'm now using a top of the line Hoffee with Thinsulate lining. The only nit pick I have about it is that it's hard to open one handed while holding the mandolin in the other. I just wish I'd bought it first and saved money and aggravation.

[journeybear]

Ohhhhhhhh. I guess I posted to the wrong thread. I was thinking this was the one that got away thread.

I thought that might have been the case. Kind of got away from you ...

[OldSausage]

The only thing I really regret is my ability to post-rationalize almost any purchase and make believe it was meant to be.

[fredfrank]

The first F model I bought was an Ibanez. It wasn't a bad mandolin. I only regretted buying it when I went to sell it. Resale value was horrid.

[jaycat]

Some time in the 1980's I picked up a Hagstrom electric guitar at a yard sale. I now regret having squandered that $25.

[yankees1]

A 915 Eastman

[CES]

I regretted my first mandolin, a well researched EBay disaster, for a long time, mainly because it took a lot to get it "playable," and I had neither the skills nor the cash to get it right at the time. So, being hard headed (we'll go with "persistent") and too stubborn to admit defeat, we made it work...ish. It is now the mandolin I'm having those I play with autograph Marty Stuart style. I refuse to play it except in the worst of conditions, but I also refuse to saddle another beginner with it (at least not without a neck reset and a new fretboard/frets, which, of course, it's not worth, except as a guinea pig for me)...

We're in a better place now, and the regret has faded. But it seriously vacuumed at the time...

[Ellen T]

I bought a Romanian mandolinish thing many years ago while on vacation in London. It was a pain to lug around at the time with my other luggage, in the middle of winter, having no idea how I was getting back to the States and basically having to do the airborne version of hitchhiking (I was in the military and had gotten a flight over but had no idea how I was getting back). It probably didn't help its playability, shlepping it around uncased in cold weather, including a stop in Goose Bay, Labrador, on the way back, in the first week of February. It takes the term "folk instrument" into much more folk art than playable instrument, with its nobby wooden tuning pegs that have never turned when I needed them to. But, it has a very pretty inlay on the top, so forty years later, it is still sitting on a shelf in a closet, unplayable then, more unplayable now with cracks in the top, but I've never been able to toss it. It is my albatross.

[journeybear]

It sounds more like a wall hanging than an instrument, and good for a laugh. You should hang it on a wall and have some fun with it, rather than let it sit in a closet, where it can silently nag you. I have a couple of horribly ugly items which I acquired for this very purpose - jocularity, wonderment, conversation starters - because I knew they weren't instruments, but being fairly inexpensive, were worth having for the mirth they provide. I know your situation is a bit different, or was originally, but you might as well make some lemonade out of that lemon.

[brunello97]

I didn't exactly buy it, but I traded a souped up Gibson EBO bass for a 70s era Aria F style mandolin. The Aria had a great neck and played well and easy but always sounded like there was cotton in my ears (even when there wasn't.) Wasn't the best horse trade I've ever made.

Had the Aria for a long time and eventually sold it and took the money and bought a '50 Martin A. So in the end things worked out A-OK. Still miss that bass every now and then. I don't miss the Aria. (But it did have a great neck.)

Mick

[Dave Hicks]

One mando and some guitars, all of which I've sold on:

Mandolin bought in a Costa Rica shoe store. Very difficult to play above the fifth fret, and poor intonation.

Gibson double cut Les Paul studio. I could never get it to stay in tune for more than half a song.

Fender 69 thinline Tele reissue. Here's where I found that the combination of small, vintage frets and a fairly large neck is pretty hard for me to play.

Fender strat, 1982 or so. Not a prime period for Fender - weighed a ton, and the neck was heavily embalmed in poly finish, making it very hard to bend a note.

D.H.

[journeybear]

Mandolin bought in a Costa Rica shoe store.

Trying to duplicate Bill Monroe's success of finding an F-5 in a barbershop?

[Dave Hicks]

Trying to duplicate Bill Monroe's success of finding an F-5 in a barbershop?

I've also learned better than to buy charangos whose binding was created with a ballpoint pen (always better to go for the sharpie, if not the shar-pei, type).

D.H.

[farmerjones]

In a moment of weakness and instrumentlessness.
I bought an F style New York Pro.
And hey, ima guy with two A style Rogues.
I thought I could tolerate anything. Not so.
I had an equivalent violin as well, I'll not mention.
It seems more like a gamble, than a learning process. I still play my SV100, what was supposed to be a violin shaped object. Some stuff just takes a set-up, some don't.
I always thought it sort of cruel, that many new players were driven away buy poor gear. If you get a little better, it seems you can tolerate poor gear if you have to, but usually choose not to. I've since got better gear, but still try to keep stuff played.

[Randi Gormley]

Dave Hicks -- hey, give a little respect for the drawn-on binding! My 1952 Strad-o-lin has a drawn on/painted on binding and she plays fine! Of course, she's not a charango ...

[allenhopkins]

1. Mexican-made K & S copy of a Weissenborn Hawaiian guitar. Not that bad an instrument, but I think I've played it five times in ten years, and I had to have the bridge re-glued. Think I've gotten more use out of the gig bag it came in.

2. Years ago, a no-name F-5 copy, US made, with the neck wood "figured" by someone with a little paintbrush. Not that awful an instrument, but surely not in the ballpark with even the newer Asian-made instruments. Sold it for what I paid for it ($500) though, so no harm, no foul.

I have an obscene number of stringed instruments, really, and not all of them get played. I've bought some real weirdos -- a four-foot-long ukulele called a Polk-A-Lay-Lee, a guitar-shaped Autoharp called a Guitaro, two tiples, an Octofone, a Thornburg gourd banjo, a Gold Tone cello banjo, a National Havana wooden resonator guitar, etc., etc. A couple of them haven't been out of their cases in four or five years. But -- the occasion does arise when I want/need that particular instrument with that particular sound, and I dig them out, tune 'em up and play them.

Few regrets. Nothing ventured, nothing gained; if I hadn't purchased them, I would always have wondered afterwards if I should have, and what they sounded and played like...

[Jeff Mando]

But[/I] -- the occasion does arise when I want/need that particular instrument with that particular sound, and I dig them out, tune 'em up and play them.

Nothing wrong with that, IMHO. I've got a library of books I enjoy having, some of which have not been read in 30+ years, but they are there if I want to.

[Dave Hicks]

Dave Hicks -- hey, give a little respect for the drawn-on binding! My 1952 Strad-o-lin has a drawn on/painted on binding and she plays fine! Of course, she's not a charango ...

So maybe it was the ballpoint part?

D.H.

[Paul Kotapish]

A few decades back I bought a Yamaha APX-something acoustic guitar with built-in electronics. I thought it might solve my problem when playing for dance gigs (squares/contras/ceilidhs) where the sound systems were uniformly awful and I could never hear myself. It was actually an OK guitar and would have been fine for someone strumming in a rock band or playing solos in a quiet jazz format, but I could never get it to sound the way I wanted for backing up fiddles. It collected dust for a decade or two and then I ended up giving it to a music-in-the-schools program. Probably could have sold it, but I took a tax write off on it and made some kid happy.

I also bought a homemade mandola from a hack amateur builder in Ashland, Oregon back in the '70s. I didn't know anything about double-course instruments at the time and I thought it looked and sounded cool. Took me about a week to realize that the fretting was so random that it would never play in tune no matter where I put the bridge. Used it as a wall hanger for a few years and then gave it away.And it was only $40, so the regret was very minor, and I probably got some value out of learning what to look for--and avoid--in my next mandolin-family purchase.

Other than that, no regrets, even for the instruments I bought and never played all that much. I've had a few that I acquired and then didn't play much for years on end only to rediscover them and fall in love with them when I finally picked them up again.

[Jeff Hildreth]

My second Reinhold Seiffert.

The first one was a jewel, the second not so. I specified nut width, no pickguard, no inlays etc. Confirmation received and acknowledged.

When it arrived, narrow nut... hideous walnut wood inlaid pickguard, huge block inlays.. and it was not the same build quality as the first and the tone was awful.

I later found out, Seiffert's two apprentices made this one. They are now builders of some fame. Don't know how.

I offed it at a serious loss.