If you are not happy with a guitar you buy from me, I will give you your money back.
I see it like this - if you buy a brand new guitar (or any other instrument), you have a really good idea of what a certain brand or model will sound like. Maybe you go check them out at your local music store and then order one from somewhere you can buy the same thing cheaper.
Vintage Martin guitars don't all sound, feel or look the same. That is why I go to great lengths to provide high definition pictures, recordings and try so describe the look and sound and feel of each guitar in detail. I want you to feel you have come as close as possible to holding and playing it yourself. Also, you might be spending more on a guitar than
you ever have before.
Money Back Guarantee
So when you combine the uniqueness of each vintage Martin, and the amount of money you're investing in one - I believe you should be able to do that with confidence. I just don't understand the "all sales are final" in this kind of situation.
Now should you decide that you don't want a guitar, then you would be responsible to pay the shipping and insurance both ways. Obviously, it would have to be in the same condition that you received it in.
Because I am not a guitar repair expert, I take each guitar to Byron Berline & John Hickman. I have them check things like - what repairs have been done to the guitar? what repairs are needed? has it had a neck reset? does it need one? They inspect each one, looking inside the body of the guitar, etc. Sometimes they will tell me that such and such a thing has happened at some point (like a fret board has been slightly planed), and although it's something I certainly can't see, I will include it in the description.
I know that most people realize that any guitar that is decades old will has had some repairs done to it, maybe a new bridge or tuners. The last thing I want to do is misrepresent a guitar, have you buy it and then be unhappy and send it back. That's bad for you and for me.
So I try to be as complete and accurate as possible. Then, if you simply will not have a guitar that doesn't have the original bridge or the original tuners, then you will have that information. If you decide to buy a guitar knowing that the pick guard has been replaced or that there are a couple of repaired cracks on the top, then you know in advance without any surprises when you get the guitar.
Here is another reason I believe you should be able to get your money back if you are unhappy with a guitar - one time I bought a 1948 000-28 for $8000 on Ebay from a dealer. Later, I listed and sold it on Ebay for $8850.
However, the person who bought it from me took it to a Martin repair shop and the guy there said that the head stock had be cracked and repaired at some point. He said that the crack wasn't huge and the repair had been done extremely well, however damage like that definitely lowers the value of the guitar.
So the guy called me and told me what he had heard. I in turn called the guitar dealer who I had purchased the '48 000-28 from. They basically said, "tough luck, your 48 hour window to decide to return the guitar is past".
So I told the guy who had bought the guitar from me to return it and I would give him all his money back (even though he was well past the 7 day period I had given as the time to check out the guitar).
I then relisted it on Ebay, but this time disclosing what I was unaware of the first time, about the repaired head stock. The guitar sold for $6500.
So I lost $1500 from what I had paid for it and then I lost the $850 that I would have made from selling it for $8850. So $2350 all together.
However, I believe in doing things with integrity, even when it costs to do so. I also believe that people who do things with integrity, over the long haul, have more success.
That is the way I hope people will treat me and so that's the way I try to treat them.
So that is my "money back guarantee".
