How far can you trust an ebay bass guitar?

Question

we really dont have the money to get a real nice bass for my birthday and I found a couple of really nice bass guitars for a lot less than the cheapest name brand bass. some of these eBay stores are: nationalmusicsupply, kurtzentmaier, one_at_a_time, 2kool4skool-music, maggio-music, musicians_heaven, jerseyguitarandmusic, and musiciansdiscountwarehouse. Are these guitars okay to buy or do you think they would fall apart as soon as I got them?

Answer 1

go to a used guitar shop, there are lots of them scattered in down town areas. atleast then you can see and play them before you buy.

Answer 2

trust it as far as you can throw it. so, ya, it will live for a while

Answer 3

It totally depends on the individual instrument you choose and what brand it is, as well as on the ebay seller.  My thinking is, if the ones on ebay are THAT cheap, they can't be very good. It costs money for the manufacturer to buy the materials to make the instrument, plus pay the workers that build it, and the overhead on the factory, etc, and then sell it at a profit.  Then the ebay seller has to buy it, add a markup to cover his/her expenses, and add a profit margin, before selling it to you. If the ebay seller is selling a bass for $100, for example, I'm guessing he probably paid no more than $60-70 for it.  That means it probably cost the manufacturer no more than $40 to manufacture it from start to finish (if that much) -- including labor and materials, so how good can the materials he used be? How painstaking could the craftsmanship be if it was slapped together in a factory by workers making $2.00 a day in China or Korea?

So to a certain extent, you get what you pay for when you buy a musical instrument. The more you spend, the more likely you are to get better quality materials, careful workmanship and attention to details that will result in a better quality instrument that sounds good and plays well.

Personally I wouldn't buy any musical instrument over the internet,  I want to look at, try out and listen to an instrument before I buy it.  So if it were me, I'd save my money and wait to get my bass until I could afford to go to a real music store and look at and try out some name brand instruments in person.  

Answer 4

no, most ebay sellers are very trustworthy,... check out the sellers feed back to be sure