by lost in music » Fri Aug 18, 2017 10:03 am
REVIVE! Hoping you guys can help me think through my current guitar shipping problem, because I've only shipped guitars twice before and the last time was 4 years ago.
I've got an as-is "project" guitar that I want to list on Reverb. Before listing it though, I decided that I would try to get a quote on shipping so I could have a solid number to list as the shipping price instead of just estimating that it'll cost $50 and then having that come out of my pocket later. So I packed the guitar up using my best known practices: using a guitar box (bass box, actually, because this is what I had laying around), lots of big bubble-wrap at top and bottom of box, body secured in a gigbag (bolt-on neck is currently separate from body, because that's part of the as-is nature of this thing, but is also mummified in bubble wrap), with enough newspaper filler surrounding to keep everything from moving.
So I took it to UPS yesterday to get a quote on whatever the highest price would be to ship it in CONUS. The lady measured and weighed the box and quoted me $120 to ship it coast-to-coast, with an extra $5 for insurance. This is WAY more than it had previously cost me to ship guitars, which had previously come out at much closer to $50 each. Like, I could eat $10 if it ended up being $60 bucks, but $120 just seems stupid. So here are my questions I'm trying to iron out:
1.) Is this close to what I should expect to ship a guitar for these days?
2.) Could the bass-sized box be contributing significantly to the price?
3.) Is newspaper a heavier filler? In my previous experiences I had used styrofoam peanuts, but didn't have any on hand this week. Not sure how they compare.
4.) Since I'm dealing with a separate body and neck, would I be better off just chopping the box in half, forgetting about the gig bag, and positioning the body and neck side-by-side in the half-sized box?
Any suggestions would be helpful. Thanks.
This is a very impressive collection of Roto Toms. That's 21 Roto Toms in all. That is only $33.00 a Roto Tom.