The good and bad of preordering a guitar

It's Thanksgiving Day and Black Friday is tomorrow. If you plan on buying a guitar, you may be entertaining the idea of preordering it. If so, here's some information that will be useful to you.

The guitar above is the Squier Classic Vibe '50s Stratocaster in black. This guitar is for all intents and purposes the closest thing you can get to an Eric Clapton Blackie Strat for the lowest possible price without it being a Fender.

At the time I write this you basically have two options to get the Squier Blackie Strat. Either preorder it if buying from Guitar Center or get the Squier from Amazon.

The price? It's the same from either place. However, many would buy from Guitar Center even though Amazon would get it to you faster, and there are a few good reasons for this. If trading a guitar out, and/or using existing store credit you may have, and/or having the ability to ship the guitar to the store so you can check for damage there before taking it home is important to you, GC is the better choice... but you must preorder the Squier Blackie if you go there. That's the tradeoff.

Or is it?

Can preordering a guitar actually save you money?

In certain instances, yes it can.

It is possible, however unlikely, that there might be a rush on the Squier Blackie Strat. If for whatever strange reason this particular guitar becomes really desirable, scalpers a.k.a. flippers will snap up every Squier Blackie they can get their dirty hands on. Shortly after that they will quickly post them to eBay and mark the price up anywhere from 40% to 60% for a quick cash grab.

To completely avoid this crap, you preorder.

Yes, it is true you pay full retail price by doing this. But at least you don't pay over retail, and that is where you save money.

Again, it's unlikely the Squier Blackie will become this super desirable thing. But then again, it might. While true it's not a signature model or a limited run or anything like that, it's got almost everything that makes a Blackie a Blackie. And the only reason I say almost is because the fretboard radius is 9.5" instead of vintage 7.25", and it's obviously not nitro finished. Other than those two things, it's totally a Blackie guitar.

Now as far as where you lose money by preordering, you never get a discount. Not even on Black Friday. The price is what it is, and it will be full retail cost. If you're a big time bargain hunter type of guitar buyer, you don't preorder.

The advantage with the new Squier Blackie is that the full retail cost is actually $50 lower from the previous generation of Classic Vibe Strats. This means even at full retail price, it still costs less. It's a good buy all around - as long as you don't pay over retail for one.

Published 2019 Nov 28