Lowden F38 "ex demo" ?

artiebear

I have had some great dealings with GuitarGuitar, but items like this leave me somewhat baffled. This guitar appeared on the website, about 3/4 months ago, priced a bit higher than the current offering, but without any mention of it being ex demo. The only giveaway at the time was that the serial number placed it to being approximately 4/5 years old ( there was a release of a few 38 series guitars back then, at roughly the price this one was first listed at ). Okay so now they have knocked a few quid off, but "ex demo" on a 4 year plus old guitar that hasn't been part of GG stock since they sold out the aforementioned 38's allocated to them ?

Looks more like pre owned, and from the newly added description, pretty well used. I have seen this "ex demo " description a few times on their site, it always appears that the guitar has been a lot further from the store than the description seems to allude to ?

https://www.guitarguitar.co.uk/product/170407309661008-863161--lowden-f-38-brazilian-rosewood-dark-red-cedar-ex-demo-21

malcolmkindness

A couple of years ago I bought a high end Martin from GuitarGuitar. Although it was being sold as new, according to the serial number it was built in 2008. It was a model I particularly wanted and it certainly was in as new condition, where it spent the previous 12 years is anybody's guess.

Regarding that Lowden, all I can say is that many years ago I owned a Brazilian Rosewood Lowden and sold it for half that price. It was an OK guitar but nothing special, I remember selling it to fund the purchase of a Froggy Bottom with Indian Rosewood back and sides.

Honkycat

Yes, I was looking at that a while ago too and there was no mention of ex-demo. It was Glasgow too. Seems a bit shady. If you’d ordered it online back then and it came with those scratches I’d have been very unhappy. 

bertie

Honkycat said:

 If you’d ordered it online back then and it came with those scratches I’d have been very unhappy. 

If you ordered an £8,000 acoustic on line........................Id consider seeing a psychiatrist 

Honkycat

Haha true!

Mellish

 

Dave_Mc

bertie said:

Honkycat said:

 If you’d ordered it online back then and it came with those scratches I’d have been very unhappy. 

If you ordered an £8,000 acoustic on line........................Id consider seeing a psychiatrist 

Why not? I mean, if it sucks you can send it back. You also might not live somewhere near any good shops. Also if you can afford an £8000 acoustic you're more likely to be seeing your accountant...

CavemanGrogg

Dave_Mc said:

bertie said:

Honkycat said:

 If you’d ordered it online back then and it came with those scratches I’d have been very unhappy. 

If you ordered an £8,000 acoustic on line........................Id consider seeing a psychiatrist 

Why not? I mean, if it sucks you can send it back. You also might not live somewhere near any good shops. Also if you can afford an £8000 acoustic you're more likely to be seeing your accountant...

If you can afford to drop £8k on a guitar, even taxi rides to guitar shops are well within your budget.

Mellish

@Dave_Mc ; - how does it sound? How does if feel? Playability? Finish? Any issues?

In-store you can check all that out, online you can't, so in a sense you're buying blind and trusting to luck. Yes, you can return it but if the store isn't local there will be an expense.

If you simply have to buy online, fine, but it's better if you don't  

Wazmeister

Dave_Mc said:

bertie said:

Honkycat said:

 If you’d ordered it online back then and it came with those scratches I’d have been very unhappy. 

If you ordered an £8,000 acoustic on line........................Id consider seeing a psychiatrist 

Why not? I mean, if it sucks you can send it back. You also might not live somewhere near any good shops. Also if you can afford an £8000 acoustic you're more likely to be seeing your accountant...

Spot on Dave.

bertie

Dave_Mc said:

bertie said:

Honkycat said:

 If you’d ordered it online back then and it came with those scratches I’d have been very unhappy. 

If you ordered an £8,000 acoustic on line........................Id consider seeing a psychiatrist 

Why not? I mean, if it sucks you can send it back. You also might not live somewhere near any good shops. Also if you can afford an £8000 acoustic you're more likely to be seeing your accountant...

Id want to go, see, touch, play -  I wouldnt be happy couriering a £1k acoustic  -  but each to his own  

Mellish

When I got my Dove from GuitarGuitar Brum it cost me £180 extra to go and try it before buying. I could have got it couriered for a lot less but I wanted to see it, try it, inspect it, to be happy before I paid. 

But that's just me YMMV  

Dave_Mc

CavemanGrogg said:

Dave_Mc said:

bertie said:

Honkycat said:

 If you’d ordered it online back then and it came with those scratches I’d have been very unhappy. 

If you ordered an £8,000 acoustic on line........................Id consider seeing a psychiatrist 

Why not? I mean, if it sucks you can send it back. You also might not live somewhere near any good shops. Also if you can afford an £8000 acoustic you're more likely to be seeing your accountant...

If you can afford to drop £8k on a guitar, even taxi rides to guitar shops are well within your budget.

I'd need to get on a plane and stay overnight. At the very least- at that amount of money I'd probably want to go back to try it a few times across several days (plus trying to do it too quickly is tiring, which results in mistakes-and when you buy from a shop in-person, you lose the right to return the thing which you have with online purchases). I'd be very surprised if I got away for much under a thousand. And then you run the risk of the stuff you want to try not being in the shops, or the people in the shops not letting you try the stuff, etc. etc. - I've been annoyed enough when I travelled for an hour to try something and the shop worker couldn't be bothered to take 10 seconds to take something off the wall... not sure how I would take it if I'd got on a plane!

digitalkettle

You're in NI @Dave_Mc , you have to get a Lowden

ICBM

Very suspicious. If it genuinely hasn't been sold, I would suspect an employee has been "approving" it for some considerable time...

Guitar Guitar have also been known to sell almost certainly second hand gear as new or ex-demo before.

wizbit81

As someone who used to work in a guitar shop many years ago I can tell you back then we had a bunch of guitars in the warehouse that had been there for years and years. It's quite possible to have something that's new but has been sat with a distributer then a shop for quite a few years. 12 does seem quite a lot though as per malcolmkindness's example. 
As for demo/display guitars....can't say for every shop....for mine we had probably 70 guitars out on display and maybe 30 amps. I'd dust them all every day, they occasionally got played by someone coming in but you'd watch them like a hawk so they didn't scratch a 5k Gibbo or anything. Everyone in the shop had a favourite demo guitar to test gear with, mine was a blue SG Special. Everytime I had to demo an amp or a pedal I'd reach for that one, it would have had probably 10's if not hundreds of hours of playtime from me on it. No marks or scratches though as I was very careful, and wiped it down after testing with it, but I can imagine other guys in other shops not taking that care and you potentially buying a guitar that's been very well played by customers and staff. The boss once threatened to make me buy it I played it so much, pretty sure it wasn't even listed as ex-demo....just another guitar hanging on the wall. 

Dave_Mc

digitalkettle said:

You're in NI @Dave_Mc , you have to get a Lowden

LOL. Just to be clear, I was talking about a hypothetical situation, lol. I'm (much) more of an electric player, I can't imagine spending that kind of money on an acoustic any time soon!