To be relisted SX Callisto JR

[BatUtilityBelt]

I bought this Callisto JR, but the Daytona Beach FL Guitar Center shipped it in a very roomy old cardboard case with no bubble wrap to constrain its movement. So it played pinball the whole trip and took some damage points. I returned it today after Daytona Beach GC ignored my email with pictures.

Listing.jpg

But it still plays very well and sounds decent. If someone wants a guitar to try a refinish on, it would be a great donor for that. I can almost guarantee the Omaha GC will relist the guitar in the same "Good" condition for the same $129.99 without adding any pictures of its new damage in a day or two. So I'm happy to share detailed pics of that damage here if someone is interested in the guitar. This is the worst one:

Email 2.jpg

Short story: The pickup selector switch was knocked out. The bottom strap button was broken (metal). The body has several dings, only one revealing wood. The neck at the nut appears to have had a lot of stress and broke away finish on both sides of the nut/headstock base. But I don't see any cracks, and it seems to hold tune fine. The good is that the guitar has great action all the way up the neck and the P90s sound really good, and the finish is paper thin, maybe nitro. I just couldn't keep the guitar knowing what was done to it by the Daytona Beach GC. If I enjoyed refinishing, it would be a good one.

Edit: One day later, and as predicted, GC relisted the guitar without changing anything. No new pictures showing damages, still called "good" condition, same price as before, not even a new note.

[Buddha Pickups]

That neck would scare me away too

[BatUtilityBelt]

I think GC is becoming a cure for GAS. Since the Daytona Beach store didn't even answer my email about the guitar's problems, I ended up putting that factoid in a Google review for them. That got a GC corporate "how terrible, we want to look into that" response:

Google Review small.jpg

I sent them my contact information, and crickets a couple days later, their only response was to remove their answer above on the Google review.

Apparently in Guitar Center's race to the bottom, they know how bad they are and don't actually have any way to address it. When they removed their Google review response, that got me to look at my GC purchases over the last year. Nearly half of them were undisclosed damaged goods I returned. So I'm wondering whether the wins are worth the losses anymore.

[BatUtilityBelt]

I think the Callisto JR story ends my buying used from Guitar Center. I just had a much better buying experience on ebay, and the fact Guitar Center couldn't clear that low bar clinches it for me. So here's a surprising ebay win.

In Case Small.jpg

I had never tried an SX 3/4 scale strat, and since someone mentioned those a while back, I looked at their specs. 24" scale? That's like a Jaguar or Mustang, so heck yeah, I should try one. Except Rondo doesn't sell them anymore. So I googled, and one popped up on ebay in candy apple red and didn't look bad. I shot a $90 offer, which was auto-rejected. I added $5 more, and it was accepted, so cool. That was last week, while I was still telling Guitar Center off for horrid lack of support and dishonesty. It arrived today, and it's mostly good.

The box was tiny, a subset of a guitar shipping box cut down to kid size. But opening it up, there was good bubble wrap all the way around the guitar and its gig bag. I freed the guitar, and unfortunately found no wammy bar, but I have several in a parts bin, and one fit the thread perfectly. The guitar has a few small scratches, but no worries. The setup was maybe the worst I've ever seen. I tuned it up and played just to evaluate its overall condition, and everything works. I decided I could make it decent.

I had to file all the fret ends right away because they were absolutely pokey. Doing that, I saw how gray and dull the frets were, so I gave them a steel wool polish. The fret board got some well overdue lemon oil, and I shimmed the neck. It already had a shim, but I increased the angle a bit so I could raise the saddles. The truss rod was engaged in the wrong direction, which I reversed and took some relief out. I plugged in and set the saddle heights and intonation, and adjusted the pickup heights. The trem springs needed more tension, so I tightened them to taste. I lubed the nut and adjusted the trem mounting screws. I was leaving the old strings on while doing all this, and suddenly it played well and the tuning was behaving, and it actually sounds fairly stratty. In all, it was worth more than I paid, so it was a good afternoon.

But the upper frets are more cramped than I expected. I took out a measuring tape and discovered this guitar is not the 3/4 24" scale length guitar advertised. It is the 1/2 23" scale version. No wonder upper frets are tight. So I still have not tried an SX 3/4 scale guitar yet. But this little thing is fun anyway and I can't believe I made a kid guitar play this well. Best news is it does not need a fret level. I'll probably put 11's on it. I don't take it as a sign to trust ebay, but it worked this time.

Edit: I just stole a spring from a click-pen that no longer writes and repurposed it in this guitar. I cut the spring to length and dropped it into the trem arm hole. Now the trem arm stays wherever I put it, no fuss. That tension idea was one of Fender's earlier Strat trem ideas, but a lot of people never heard about it.

[glasshand]

Edit: I just stole a spring from a click-pen that no longer writes and repurposed it in this guitar. I cut the spring to length and dropped it into the trem arm hole. Now the trem arm stays wherever I put it, no fuss. That tension idea was one of Fender's earlier Strat trem ideas, but a lot of people never heard about it.

Thanks for sending me down a rabbithole of how to stop a Strat trem arm from flopping around! But I do have a clicky ballpoint pen handy, so I'll probably give that a try too...

Followup: Kinda worked. The arm still wants to fall down a bit if I get very active. I tried also adding some heat-shrink tubing to the arm, and that helped a bit, and also stopped some of the forward-and-back play that a Strat trem arm tends to have.