Why no active forums for used parts?

[joelavely]

I'm a lot more casual builder than many on here, but curious why there isn't more activity for buy/sell ads, either here or The Gear Page or TDPRI? There are plenty of folks that try a neck or body and don't love them, then we try to sell on a more "general" guitar forum and have difficulty. Am I missing any great sites that have tons of used parts? Reverb costs a lot and isn't well organized for this purpose...plus, trading is hard on there.

 

[Rick]

What? There's a buy sale section here. Everything ive put up has sold ... though it was only a neck. For me i part them out on ebay. Have you looked at ebay or Craig's list? Also your local guitar stores are a great place. At least for me.
What do you got?

 

[teleme01]

I have a jazzCaster body I would entertain a trade for a telecaster body,

 

[Scab Pickens]

I'm a lot more casual builder than many on here, but curious why there isn't more activity for buy/sell ads, either here or The Gear Page or TDPRI? There are plenty of folks that try a neck or body and don't love them, then we try to sell on a more "general" guitar forum and have difficulty. Am I missing any great sites that have tons of used parts? Reverb costs a lot and isn't well organized for this purpose...plus, trading is hard on there.

Gear for Sale or Trade

There is no lifeguard on duty. Buy & sell at your own risk.

unofficialwarmoth.com

Edit: on second thought, it seems you are looking for something different .

 

[ragamuffin]

I've bought and sold a good number of parts on The Gear Page under the "Speakers, Parts, and Accessories" selling forum. Also there's always Reverb.

 

[aarontunes]

There is currently a "Gear for Sale or Trade" forum here on Unofficial Warmoth. This is done purely as a gesture to help out our most loyal customers, but I have considered removing it a few times.

A serious question we ask ourselves often: If you owned a business, would you want to compete with used sales of your own product? Would you create a website to facilitate it?

 

[Bruce Campbell]

There is currently a "Gear for Sale or Trade" forum here on Unofficial Warmoth. This is done purely as a gesture to help out our most loyal customers, but I have considered removing it a few times.

A serious question we ask ourselves often: If you owned a business, would you want to compete with used sales of your own product? Would you create a website to facilitate it?

Really good points to consider here. When seeing Warmoth parts for sale, I consider any custom extra work that goes into it as an important reason to buy that way vs. new parts. If Warmoth could pull off all options on these kinds of used pieces at a similar quality and price point, I'd probably always prefer that for reasons including supporting the business's active operations. I do like making use of perfectly good instruments/parts in terms of practical, reasonable conservation, but feel less bad about new stuff that with the more sustainable woods.

The forum helps feed this fascination/addiction, so in the end, hopefully it's a net positive for W sales and brand, although it does help facilitate an alternative to buying new.

Not sure if the fact that I can trust Warmoth parts to also still be more solid than other big companies' stuff helps create the problem of used stuff taking away from new sales, but the overall sum of this stuff just makes me want to buy more new Warmoth parts. As well as sick used stuff.

 

[supertruper1988]

There is currently a "Gear for Sale or Trade" forum here on Unofficial Warmoth. This is done purely as a gesture to help out our most loyal customers, but I have considered removing it a few times.

A serious question we ask ourselves often: If you owned a business, would you want to compete with used sales of your own product? Would you create a website to facilitate it?

LEGO does it by owning the largest market for second hand parts BrickLink.

I think having it makes for a good place to have your target market also have a place to move on from their builds thus allowing for them to order what they dream up next from Warmoth. Warmoth parts are not worth near as much used as some other brands unless you can find the one other guitar player on the planet that wants what ever whacky thing you have bought and are now trying to sell. What better place than here where other guitar players with very specific tastes congregate?

 

[NedRyerson]

I'm a lot more casual builder than many on here, but curious why there isn't more activity for buy/sell ads, either here or The Gear Page or TDPRI? There are plenty of folks that try a neck or body and don't love them, then we try to sell on a more "general" guitar forum and have difficulty. Am I missing any great sites that have tons of used parts? Reverb costs a lot and isn't well organized for this purpose...plus, trading is hard on there.

Not specific to the subforum here on UW, but just look around on TGP. It's a pretty common (and as is on-brand for TGP, usually rather argumentative and sometimes hostile ) topic where responses range from poor ROI to just plain lousy behavior from the people involved (buyers and sellers). All of those reasons have been covered dating from years back, complete with the isolated anecdotal evidence that leads to hasty generalizations, correlation instead of causation, etc.

Reverb and eBay have the most traffic and is incumbent upon the seller to up their expertise level in crafting a post. eBay's been that way for literal decades (my first eBay account was created in 2000; I've learned some things since then ). Just like picking up a guitar for the first time and thinking of a song doesn't automatically translate to the ability to play it, the desire to post something for sale on those platforms doesn't translate to an effective listing. Not without practice, anyway.

 

[mayfly]

Thinking now - I've got a box of parts that I could, er, part out.

.... Nah!! I'm going to build some more

 

[Don O]

Warmoth parts are not worth near as much used as some other brands unless you can find the one other guitar player on the planet that wants what ever whacky thing you have bought and are now trying to sell. What better place than here where other guitar players with very specific tastes congregate?

 

[aarontunes]

LEGO does it by owning the largest market for second hand parts BrickLink.

Yep. Same reason Sweetwater has tried to get into the used marketplace. Same reason Reverb (Chicago Music) exists.

Oh....what I could do if I had the resources of any of those companies!

 

[teleme01]

I learned In business to stay in your lane, and don't cross the yellow line.

 

[NedRyerson]

Business management cliche for that is "focus on core competency."

 

[mayfly]

But what if you need to 'pivot'? ;-)

 

[NedRyerson]

As long as there's "stakeholder value."

 

[NedRyerson]

And since we're inevitably heading down this road anyway.....

 

[teleme01]

And since we're inevitably heading down this road anyway.....

That was educational