Repurchasing Gear You've Previously Sold

bleujazz3

Fractal Fanatic
You've likely heard this old story before...you once owned a nice piece of gear, be it guitar, effect or amp, that you needed to sell in order to finance a purchase of whatever replaced that gear...

This story is a classic one, of love, love lost, and love found again. (No, not boy meets girl. Love of something I should never have sold to begin with.)

My story is this: Some months ago, before I owned my FM9, I owned an FM3, replete with Temple Audio Duo 17 board, XLR module, and 2 EV-1s that sat on my adjacent Duo 34 board where my FC-12 resided. My goal was to own an FM9, but to facilitate its purchase, it was necessary to sell my FM3 and FC-12, plus Duo 17 board, as well as one EV-1.

The sum total of my sales proceeds still did not meet the total price of the FM9 plus 3-year warranty I'd planned on purchasing.

So, to offset the total, I sold my beloved PRS SE A60E acoustic/electric, knowing that the total net sales would effectively help cover the cost of the incoming FM9.

But, like most guitarists, I lamented needing to do so. So recently, as good fortune smiled upon me, I realized that my tax refund this year would cover the cost of a replacement A60E and then some. Not wasting any time locating one, sales financing was made possible so that a new A60E would soon arrive, and the option to pay off the balance of my purchase price was possible instead of incurring payment charges for the next 5 months.

Like many of you who have been in this same situation, I ask you to tell us your story of gear you once loved, but was either forced to sell out of hardship, or for whatever financial need there may have been, and how you got back what you once loved.
 
When I was in college and playing in bands a lot, I sold my Ibanez JPM P2 to purchase a first run Music Man JP6 in Blue Dawn. I already had a P4 and have since acquired a P4, but the P2 still haunts me. I still have the original JP6 and a few others, but with the current prices of a P2, I just can't justify spending the money to acquire another one.
 
I had one of the first MusicMan Steve Morse models, the blue burst hardtail with 4 pickups. Owned that for close to 10 years, and one day was at Guitar Center when Taylor launched their first solid body electric line. I ended up falling in love with that Taylor the first time playing it and ended up trading the Morse to cover most of the new purchase.

The Taylor is still great, when it works, but it's one of the most environmentally-finnicky guitars I've ever owned, very difficult to set up, and everything about the bridge hardware and pickups is proprietary stuff. If I catch it on a good day it's awesome but I would never trust gigging it out anywhere.

If I could do it over again in hindsight I would've just kept the Morse. I feel like there's a woman analogy here somewhere.

Haven't yet re-bought a Morse, as I don't really need it for my current gigs, but if the right opportunity came about I'd have a hard time saying no.
 
I got the 1998 PRS Standard 24 Maple Top Goldtop in the pic below back a couple of years ago after trading it away in 2012. Nowadays they would just call it a Custom 24.

I was browsing Reverb when I saw it and it occurred to me that it looked just like one that I had traded away about 7 years before, something that I regretted almost immediately. I was interested because it was a dead ringer for that guitar.

As I looked at the pictures in the listing I began think that the guitar for sale might actually be my old Goldtop. I messaged the seller with the serial number of my old guitar and asked him if the number of his guitar matched the number I sent. He replied pretty quickly that it matched! I was floored; it was my old guitar.

Needless to say we negotiated a price and I bought it. The icing on the cake was that the guitar was only about 50 miles from me. The seller allowed me to pick it up the next day.

1643719747830.jpeg
 
I bought this pedal 3 times.

61MIwewlkSL._AC_SX425_.jpg

I thought: if Petrucci uses this pedal it must be good through my Mark V...but every single time I have connected it to my pedalboard I realized it was the most useless, unusable, meaningless pedal ever created. 3 different modulation that you can change only turning the knob (no midi or external control).
 
I lot of stuff I sold is now worth far more than when I bought/sold them. Why did I have to have such damn good taste in gear?
 
I bought this pedal 3 times.

View attachment 95271

I thought: if Petrucci uses this pedal it must be good through my Mark V...but every single time I have connected it to my pedalboard I realized it was the most useless, unusable, meaningless pedal ever created. 3 different modulation that you can change only turning the knob (no midi or external control).
Totally agree in this one! I bought this pedal used, and tried it with my mesa mkV90. Within days I sold it one of the (maybe stupid) reasons was the crazy bright LED. In the end I bought the TC corona which I still own, but since I own the FM3 I did not touch any of my pedals and the Mesa is collecting dust...
 
Several years back I had the nicest playing MIM Jackson Dinky. Everything about that guitar was perfect to me. I started acquiring 'higher end' guitars/gear and decided to part with that guitar to fund.. who knows..

I would buy that guitar back in a heartbeat if I could get it back for what I sold it for.
 
In the 80’s I once got back together with a girl I’d broken up with.

It was kind of like buying crap from my own garage sale.

Funny, I’m currently “involved” with my ex-fiancé, whom I was engaged to 16 years ago. We didn’t speak the entire time but some coincidences pushed me in her direction and I reached out to her last July. Both our marriages were coming to an end and we decided to meet up just for shits and giggles. Fast forward a few months and we both never would have expected things to be going as great as they are. The core things that attracted us to each other are still there, stronger in many ways (we’ve both got a really twisted sense of humor) and the things that broke us up was straight up immaturity and lack of communication skills, which are things of the past. It’s totally blown both our minds and we’re just running with it.
 
My first guitar was a Cadillac pink BC Rich NJ Series Warlock my uncle gave me. I stupidly traded it for some cheap pedal because I was a 12-year old idiot. I spent years tracking another one down; this one had a Strat style bridge and while I found fixed bridge versions all day long, I couldn’t find one with a Strat-style bridge. Low and behold, a forum member on another forum bought one to flip and it’s the same year as the one I had, with the Strat-style bridge.

I stripped the finish off it and I’ve got to bring it to an auto-body shop to have them paint it Cadillac pink. I bought it strictly for nostalgia, but now that I have it I think I‘ll put some time into upgrading it.
 
I had one of the first MusicMan Steve Morse models, the blue burst hardtail with 4 pickups. Owned that for close to 10 years, and one day was at Guitar Center when Taylor launched their first solid body electric line. I ended up falling in love with that Taylor the first time playing it and ended up trading the Morse to cover most of the new purchase.

The Taylor is still great, when it works, but it's one of the most environmentally-finnicky guitars I've ever owned, very difficult to set up, and everything about the bridge hardware and pickups is proprietary stuff. If I catch it on a good day it's awesome but I would never trust gigging it out anywhere.

If I could do it over again in hindsight I would've just kept the Morse. I feel like there's a woman analogy here somewhere.

Haven't yet re-bought a Morse, as I don't really need it for my current gigs, but if the right opportunity came about I'd have a hard time saying no.
I also had a blue Morse like you described. I sold it a while back and while it was great, I am OK without it.
 
Still kick my self for ever selling my MXR Blue Face Pitch Transposer, MXR Blue Face Flanger Doubler, Moog Taurus II Bass Peddles oh and My Rock Man!
 
Back
Top Bottom