The baryonic matter does interact with elements, and this one was abused by at least two.
Some of you may remember this guitar. It’s the first ever Baryon I made about a year ago.
It travelled the US with the Boutique Guitar Showcase and was sold during the tour. After the tour ended it was shipped to the customer, but never arrived.
We were trying to figure out what FedEx did with it and in the end they said the package was lost in a truck fire! They refused to give up the remains and just paid out $100 for the uninsured package. We will talk about insurance later, as it is not as straightforward as you might think.
But imagine my surprise when one of my customers texted me saying he bought this guitar on Reverb for $3000! It didn’t have fire damage, but it was completely drenched in water. All sorts of ideas went through my mind while it was in transit, including theft and fraud. But it turned out to be a simple case of a salvage sale. FedEx had written off the entire truck and sold what it could to a salvage liquidator. I would still prefer the guitar over a payout, though!
Anyway… the customer received it and sent me these pictures. The foam inside the case was completely saturated with water, the guitar was covered in droplets. The back cover was warped and some of the finish separated from the fretboard edges. The neck seemed warped as well but it was impossible to diagnose from the pictures.
Eventually, I decided to buy it back to at least study how the guitar reacted to this degree of abuse, and if possible restore it.
It’s been a few months, so the guitar had enough time to dry out properly and we can examine it.
I was quite surprised at how well it fared considering what it went through. I’ve seen drowned guitars before and they were falling apart. This one has mostly cosmetic damage, rusted electronics and a predictably warped neck. This is definitely fixable. And once the repair is done the Phoenix will indeed rise from the ashes of a FedEx truck fire. Fittingly enough, that fire happened near Phoenix, AZ, so I guess it will have a second name now.
What needs to be done:
restore the fretboard geometry
refret
sand off the pealing finish and some dents on the neck
seal the neck
fresh top coat for the whole guitar
new cavity cover
new electronics
Watch out for the next post!
P.S. About insurance. When you buy something and have a receipt to show, the claim is quite straightforward. But the builders don’t have that luxury. The most we can claim is material cost of the build. Insurers don’t care what price tag you slap on it.
Some business insurance policies (not all) cover the inventory in transit, but again, most likely the material cost. And this is such an edge case — shipped from me to BGS, from BGS to the buyer. The chances of getting anything in this case are extremely slim.