It's official: I have a problem. I went cross-country to try guitars and bought one!

[Rosette]

Originally Posted by LakewoodM32Fan

$5000 Round trip.

Fixed it for you

OP I relate to your predicament, I too have considered a weekend trip for the purpose of guitar shopping. in my case the motivator is living in an isolated city with slim pickings

[luecack]

$90 is a no-brainer, no second-guessing your decision, and a cool story. Go for it.

[Yrksman]

I can’t tell you how many times I’ve crossed the Atlantic or flown somewhere in Europe to try a guitar or just to visit a shop or luthier. Whether something is bought or not it’s always a great experience and I’ve made many friends along the way.

[jdinco]

For that price of travel, seems like a smart thing to do....good luck to you !

[LakewoodM32Fan]

Originally Posted by GoPappy

I was thinking the opposite: What are the odds he falls in love with more than one of them and comes back with multiple guitars?

Two answers: the chance of falling in love with more than one of them? Pretty decent. Chance of coming back with multiple: slim to none, says the pocketbook.

Originally Posted by jpmist

Like many, I'll be following this thread and rooting for you to blow your bank account buying up guitars so be sure to posts pics etc.

One small thing that occurred to me - are you're picky about the type/brand of strings you play? Would it be too much to ask, considering your 2000 mile trip, to ask the seller to have them on the guitars before you get there? On your dime of course.

For me, there are strings I know I wouldn't like, 80/20's for example, and I'd have no way of projecting how the guitar would sound with the "right" strings. That for me would be the only possible glitch in buying a guitar which on paper I know I have a shot of really liking . . .

Safe travels!

Good point about the strings. Once I finalize the travel plans I'll talk again to the owner (we chatted today and let him know I was going to make the trip but that the dates aren't set in stone yet) and ask what strings are on them. Really the only strings I dislike are Elixirs. If he has any brand of phosphor bronze, plain is great, or even coated ones like D'addario EXP, XT or XS, or Martin Lifespan 2.0 I'm fine with that. They're close enough in tone and I use all of them in my various guitars, that they'll give me a good idea. Elixirs make everything sound like Elixirs to my ears. If he uses those I'll have to ask if he'd mind changing to just about any other PB string.

Originally Posted by Charmed Life Picks

Hey, chalk up those Frequent Flyer miles. I see no problem here.

scott memmer

A few of your picks are coming with me. I'll show them to the owner, see what he thinks.

Originally Posted by Rosette

Fixed it for you

OP I relate to your predicament, I too have considered a weekend trip for the purpose of guitar shopping. in my case the motivator is living in an isolated city with slim pickings

I don't disagree with the price tag change (though unfortunately $5000 is likely going to be low estimate ). Unfortunately I don't have your excuse of slim pickings, Southern California has more than its fair share of good guitar shops, large and small. But when you're talking about boutique builders that build well south of 1000 guitars a year, and when you narrow to the body size and tonewood combo you want, probably in the low double digits, sometimes even the myriad of SoCal shops don't have what your looking for.

[LakewoodM32Fan]

Can confirm, I've officially lost my mind .

Booked my flights. Red eye over next weekend, land Saturday in the morning, will spend the whole day at two shops, most of the time will be in my target shop that I've already notified I'm coming, but I also realized a forum sponsor is also in the same area (but about 50 miles away). The sponsor doesn't have the rare tonewood/body combo I'm looking for, but they do have a short-scale. slope shouldered dreadnought from a boutique builder in stock that I'm itching to try. Apparently SS Ds are not in fashion in SoCal as none of my local shops have any on hand nor on order, so this may be my rare chance to try one out. After flying cross country what's adding a 50 mile drive?

Fly out Monday night so if I need to finalize any business, or just want to go back to the shop during business hours and hang with the owner (who has been great over email and phone) and his shop's crew, I may do that before making my way to the airport.

[Kerbie]

Originally Posted by LakewoodM32Fan

Can confirm, I've officially lost my mind .

Nope. Sounds like perfectly normal behavior to me.

[Steve DeRosa]

Originally Posted by LakewoodM32Fan

...I'm going to be vague on the details so I don't get scooped. But a high end shop across the country has several very unique guitars I'm interested in. Obviously I don't have to explain this to you all, but they're not the "off the shelf" type of guitars, even by boutique builders standards. They're also not the kind of guitars that you want to buy sight unseen unless you have so much disposable income you can just throw it away. And there's at least two, and maybe up to four, in this store's stable that I want to try...

Good luck - hope you find your dream guitar[s] - and looking forward to a NGD or three...

[Br1ck]

A very sensible solution in my book. A very mid range mandolin these days is the $7500-10,000 segment. The only real place to go is Nashville if you want to sample a luthier built mandolin.

Now the flip side is to be patient and take the first good one you can find locally, but that would not be as much fun.

[brushknee]

I'd wager the place is Mighty Fine Guitars.

You'll probably end up buying the business from him and moving there.

[davidbeinct]

Looking forward to reading about your adventure and seeing your new guitar.

[Dru Edwards]

Originally Posted by LakewoodM32Fan

Can confirm, I've officially lost my mind .

Booked my flights. Red eye over next weekend, land Saturday in the morning, will spend the whole day at two shops, most of the time will be in my target shop that I've already notified I'm coming, but I also realized a forum sponsor is also in the same area (but about 50 miles away). The sponsor doesn't have the rare tonewood/body combo I'm looking for, but they do have a short-scale. slope shouldered dreadnought from a boutique builder in stock that I'm itching to try. Apparently SS Ds are not in fashion in SoCal as none of my local shops have any on hand nor on order, so this may be my rare chance to try one out. After flying cross country what's adding a 50 mile drive?

Fly out Monday night so if I need to finalize any business, or just want to go back to the shop during business hours and hang with the owner (who has been great over email and phone) and his shop's crew, I may do that before making my way to the airport.

Fantastic. Looking forward to hearing about your journey. I would call before you take that red eye just to make sure the guitars are still in stock. Good luck!

[LakewoodM32Fan]

Originally Posted by Steve DeRosa

Good luck - hope you find your dream guitar[s] - and looking forward to a NGD or three...

Originally Posted by davidbeinct

Looking forward to reading about your adventure and seeing your new guitar.

In 72 hours I should be on the ground in my destination city and on my way to the first shop. I'll post pictures as I can, but it may not be until after a purchase is made (if one is made).

Originally Posted by Dru Edwards

Fantastic. Looking forward to hearing about your journey. I would call before you take that red eye just to make sure the guitars are still in stock. Good luck!

The good news is between the two shops there were initially 9 I wanted to try (a clear top 2, and then 7 "if the top 2 don't work out" candidates), and in the week or so since I planned the trip, only one has left inventory, and it was not one of my top 2 (if I had to rank it, I would say it was the 4th or 5th one on my list). So I'm keeping my fingers crossed that most of the rest will hold for 72 hours.

At this point I'm locked in to the trip, barring the top 2 and say the 3rd and 4th also selling. And even then I'd probably still go just to put faces to names of the people I've met, and to allow myself to be surprised by guitars in their inventory that I may have overlooked.

[jklotz]

After all this build up, you better post some pics!

[LakewoodM32Fan]

Originally Posted by jklotz

After all this build up, you better post some pics!

If I pull the trigger on Saturday, count on it for Sunday. If it takes until Monday to finalize things, I'll likely post them Tuesday night after I'm back home and after the work day is over.