Heavy smoke and soot damaged guitars.

[phavriluk]

This is no game for amateurs. Consult an attorney. Negotiate with the insurance company to get paid for the guitars, and move on. Ambiguity? They make lawyers for that. My guess is a practice that specializes in casualty losses. There's a hundred ways this can end up.

[EZYPIKINS]

Originally Posted by Peter Z

I might be the only one here, but I loved camp fires and BBQ since my childhood and wouldn’t mind the smell. Of course the guitar should be structurally ok.

As a son, with a fireman father. I can tell you, a house fire, smells much different than a campfire.

And yes, I had a room burn, in my house once.

Once the entire house was painted and all carpeting had been removed/replaced, with either carpet or tile.

It began to smell better.

[rmp]

Originally Posted by EZYPIKINS

As a son, with a fireman father. I can tell you, a house fire, smells much different than a campfire.

And yes, I had a room burn, in my house once.

Once the entire house was painted and all carpeting had been removed/replaced, with either carpet or tile.

It began to smell better.

Originally Posted by phavriluk

This is no game for amateurs. Consult an attorney. Negotiate with the insurance company to get paid for the guitars, and move on. Ambiguity? They make lawyers for that. My guess is a practice that specializes in casualty losses. There's a hundred ways this can end up.

100% all this!

Like I said, we HAD a house fire, causing enough damage to require a complete rebuild, during the rebuild steps were taken along the way to correctly treat anything that wasn't ripped out and put in dumpsters. (Like beams, studs, rafters, sub floors.)

I would also suggest to consult a Public Accessor and perhaps retain them. That's what we did and had we not, the insurance company would have screwed us over. It was a battle to get them to settle the claim based on our coverage which as we learned we were over insured.. and they still tried every trick there was. The public accessor we hired was all over them at each turn.

Take it from one who's been there, don't go it alone with these insurance companies. Fires are a different ball game from an auto accident or a tree falls on your garage.

Large Claim adjusters have a different rule book.

Insurance companies are great at taking your money, they suck at giving it back when something like this happens

[phavriluk]

A friend had a very serious house fire, and he had 'replacement insurance' but replace exactly what? He hired an archaeologist to inventory what they found and a gang of us friends picked through and inventoried all the small stuff we could find. It made a huge difference. Each piece of clothing lost, every possession lost, each object ruined. Everything wound up on a spreadsheet that ran for many, many pages.

[buddyhu]

Originally Posted by smittybat

I would clean them thoroughly and run a few sessions with an ozone generator.

This is what came to mind for me:

• If you have insurance coverage, put in a claim and hope they write all of the guitars off as a total loss. If they don’t give you what you feel they are worth, send them supportive documentation and negotiate with them.
• If insurance doesn’t cover the losses, buy an ozone generator and give that a try. There are several people who have posted here on AGF about the effectiveness of an ozone machine for removing smells.
• If cleaning and ozone treatments still leave some residual smoke smell, sell them at a discount, acknowledging that they smell of smoke, outlining the steps you have taken to address the smell, and state that the smell will likely persist for a long while. Perhaps you can salvage some portion of the value despite marking them down substantially to attract buyers.

Contacting StewMac also makes sense.

Wishing you the best….that is a very upsetting situation you are dealing with!

[JT11]

First of all, I would like to say a big thank you to everyone who responds. We benefit a lot from this. Before we consider what exactly we are going to do. The guitars are still in storage and we want to make a plan next week what is best to do. Many thanks in advance for these nice and helpful comments!

[mcduffnw]

Call luthier and world renowned restoration expert TJ Thompson and show him the photos and ask him his thoughts.

He is THE best in the biz...period. If anyone can give you a solid answer it will be TJ.

Wow...I am so very sorry...such nice guitars...I hope TJ can offer some good advice.


duff
Be A Player...Not A Polisher

[UncleJesse]

Ozone Generator but I wouldn't buy a cheap one on amazon I'd rent one from a tool rental place (much more powerful) and run it for several days in a closed environment.

[rmp]

Originally Posted by phavriluk

A friend had a very serious house fire, and he had 'replacement insurance' but replace exactly what? He hired an archaeologist to inventory what they found and a gang of us friends picked through and inventoried all the small stuff we could find. It made a huge difference. Each piece of clothing lost, every possession lost, each object ruined. Everything wound up on a spreadsheet that ran for many, many pages.

this is what the public accessor we hired did.

everything they could find, was put on a list and researched for value. They would come to us for things they were not able to determine values for.

it made a huge difference for sure

[DaveG]

Call them reliced and raise the price.
Sorry, couldn’t resist.