It is a sad affair that Chet was charging such serious money for some pretty crudely constructed guitars and you are only one of many that got stung for a bundle before he got enough flak that he decided to stop. How you go about dealing with your loss is your business, unfortunately there may be no real winning choice here.

If in fact you have played this axe and found it to be FULLY functional, including even and smooth action of all raises and lowers, accurate scale of the fretboard, properly mounted and fully adjustable pickup, correctly mounted and properly working tuning keys, stable legs and cabinet, etc. I would say that your listing is fairly accurate - didn't you call it a "D10 starter" or something to that effect? Still, even at $800 a beginner could become pretty frustrated and more experienced folks will be very unhappy with these guitars, that's the risk one takes when one decides to try to recover one's own loss by reselling them instead of simply giving them away for a song or warming the house for a day or two with them. As far as parts go, a pair of good pickups is a lot cheaper than that, and so far I haven't heard of any other Wilcox parts being useable at all on another guitar.

If, as Bert says, you offered a money-back guarantee and then when called on it you told the dis-satisfied purchaser to "try to live with it" instead of simply proceeding as advertised you had better be ready for some bad press, forum member or no. When you further complicated the matter by failing to disclose the serial number (or dodging the question, same thing) then you have at the very least generated the appearance of deceit. It's a small world and getting smaller every day.

When I naively bought a similar S10 last fall and discovered that it was complete junk I eventually found a way to use it as an opportunity to educate the community and out the perps at the same time, starting the auction at $0.01, paying extra for a ten day auction and many photos pointing out every issue I could find with the axe in a brutally honest fashion and with some sense of humoer as well. I ended up selling it for about $230 to someone who was well acquainted with what they were getting.

I took a big hit, but I turned my dilemma into an enjoyable opportunity and eventually met a lot of great steelers. That one bad deal was responsible for me meeting at least six pickers in my own neighborhood that I didn't know of before.

I wish I could give you a good suggestion as to how you could recover your loss without ticking somebody off but unfortunately I've got nothing for you here. All I can say is hang in there, be COMPLETELY honest along the way and above all accept and own your own choices and I am sure that somehow you will find a winning combination for all concerned.

Compassionately yours, dg

[This message was edited by Dave Grafe on 23 February 2005 at 05:05 AM.]

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D.S. Rigsby
Wilcox SD10 3&5
http://www.touchinglittlelives.org

Credibility is important, I agree with you.

I would cancel the ad on Ebay and rewrite it. You have no bids, I don't even think they will charge you for revamping it. Don't advertise the guitar as a piece of junk, just advertise it for what it is, home made. Even Chet Wilcox when I inquired about his instruments told me that the parts were not machine finished and perfect, that they were rough and not like the name brand guitars. If you describe the mechanics and include close up pics of the changer and the linkage then put your best price on it you would fare better in my opinion. I would not offer a return on the guitar after disclosing everything about it. You are asking for a lot of trouble. There are plenty of buyers out there (including myself) who buy instruments as non returnable projects when they know all there is about them and the price is right. They assume the risk and you assume no responsibility because of full disclosure of the instrument.

I know that you are in this thing WAY upside down, but most businessmen are happy to get 10-40% of their investment back when the deal goes totally wrong. If you are into this guitar for $1500 then don't even expect to get 1/2 of that back. The red guitar sold for $230 on Ebay with full disclosure. If you get twice that, then you will be lucky and a whole lot wiser.

The instrument is worth more whole than parted out as these are not quality made name brand parts. I bought a set of used GL pickups just like your (now used pickups for $50. They are widely used among steelers and frequently changed out for others.

Best to you in this situation. You seem to be wanting to do the right thing here.

Bonus is, now you're getting bids and nobody can say later that they didn't know what they were bidding on.

Peace,

Here is the original post for your reference: http://steelguitarforum.com/Forum2/HTML/006856.html

[This message was edited by Bill McCloskey on 02 April 2005 at 06:38 PM.]

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D.S. Rigsby
Wilcox SD10 3&5
http://www.touchinglittlelives.org