Cool offsets at Norm's

[PorkyPrimeCut]

If anything's going to make me miss my old '59 ES125T, but also make me think about getting something with more options, it's this picture!! Hell, I might even start wearing white jeans!

[hornz]

I think the vids are great, nice light hearted short daily bursts of entertainment for us nerds. Every so often there's some errors about spec, history or condition but I can live with that. Catch some of Mark's covers of Brent Mason numbers, very impressive, to me at least.

[zhivago]

Burgundy Mist '63 JM!!!!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=99ksFeq0fwI" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

[riscado]

puzzles me a little bit that when you go to their website, you don't actually see the guitar just posted on a video listed. I don't believe they are moving them so quickly, so what's up with that? They have the guitar, but you have to guess they're for sale? Is it a only displayed to local customers kind of thing? Don't really get it.

[sookwinder]

I think it goes like this
1. guitar is brought out of storage or is bought from a walk in seller
2. guitar is so cool they do a vid
3. the vid is posted THAT Evening
4. Photos must be taken of the guitar to put up on the interwebs, most likely in the following day(s)
5. meanwhile many of the guitars/basses get sold be fore the pics even go up by people viewing the vids./
6. scenario (5) is often mentioned in follow up vids.
7. those guitars that are not sold immediately do go up on the web. I have actually enquired about a couple and have seen the photos and the prices

they are using Youtube, entertainment and a loyal following of watchers to sell guitars.
Nothing nefarious about it, just a reasonably good business model

[riscado]

I certainly don't think there's anything nefarious about it, everyone chooses to do business their own way. I was, however puzzled, mostly about the fact that those guitars were selling within 8 hours of the video being posted on youtube, because a big percentage of them never hit the website. And I've seen dealers with really good reputation and sometimes lower prices, having good pieces that are well advertised on the web, for sale for months, sometimes years, on end.

[sookwinder]

A high priced "pristine" guitar (say the CAR EXII that was video taped and sold while it was being video taped!) will sell quickly, it will sell even quicker if you are one of the handful of top level vintage guitar sellers (irrespective of the cost ... they sell on reputation .. buyers with the ready cash or over abundance of ready cash rely on that.)

The particular guitars I was looking at were the 68 Epiphone Frontier that there is a vid from about 6 months ago... it is still there, it's an awesome guitar but the nut width is 1 4/8". Also some years back I was looking at a mid 60s Riviera, it was on the site for some time and now is sold... I didn't buy it as I fou8nd THE guitar I wanted at Gary's Classic Guitars. FWIW, I am sure Gary's would sell a lot more if they had vids like Norm's. A buy (especially those who cannot see the guitar in person) wants all the info and data they can and if it includes a vid then great.

[riscado]

Gary's prices seem to be a little bit on the higher side, but that's expected as he is quite reputable and has really nice stock available. I do agree with you, he'd move more of them if he was more active on social media.

When I bought my 1965 jazzmaster, he was one of the dealers I looked at, mostly for availability. I kept seeing jazzmaster videos from Norman's rare guitars, but not once was I able to see any stock available on the website, for a period of months. Which sort of left me scratching my head.

[zhivago]

I think it is also about the lists that these guys have...if I'm looking say for a '61 SG Custom in 9/10 condition, I put my name on the list.

When they get a guitar that is what I am looking for, they call me and I buy it on the spot...in this case the Youtube crowd may get a video before it ships out me, or it may not. Either way the guitar never lists on the website.

This happened with the Bonamassa Flying V...he wanted one, knew Norm had one in storage for 30 years, went down there, bought it and none of us normal guys even knew it was there.

Some Bursts are the same, the Uber-Bursts get dealt in private circles of very wealthy collectors. Some people do trades of 15 guitars for one, stuff like that. We are small fish to them

Norm's deals with high-end buyers...film stars, musicians etc...these people are not about kicking tyres or trying to "Get a deal"

They just buy right away as they have cash to burn. I doubt they check the site every day...they just ring up and ask for a mint first-rack ES345 because they know Norm probably has one, or can get one very quickly. In their position I'd do the same thing...look up Richard Gere's collection on YouTube, for example...his mint Blonde '60 ES335 came from Norm's. He just rang Norm up and asked for one.


I'm rather happy we at least get to see a few of them on YouTube

[riscado]

For sure, it's really cool to get so see them played on youtube, and have some sort of video register to go back to whenever you want, especially because it's not just the average noodling. I completely give them credit for that.

[sookwinder]

The down side to the Norm's business model is that they may well have guitars (expensive guitars) that are on their website that are not actually in the store. I.e. they may well be in the "secret stash". A couple of times over the years I have asked for nut widths and just been told the generic width 1 9/16, 1 5/8, 1 11/16. Now I have been playing/buying vintage epis and gibbys long enough to know that it is very rare for a nut from the 60s or even the 50s to match exactly one of those dimensions. I can handle a nut width from about 40.5mm -> 42.8mm on epi/gibby acoustics ( electrics maybe 42.5mm)
That is the problem when describing nut widths using imperial rather than metric... something that is still OK for me maybe described as 1 9/16" when really it is closer to 1 5/8, but not quite 1 5/8. If I see 1 9/16 I move on immediately.

So for me to lay down some big $$ (big as far as I am concerned) I would like to have a real understanding of the nut width, not some generic size that "covers all".
In my limited experience one cannot always get the exact measurement from Norms .. maybe they have many many email requests for info every day .. and maybe because the instrument is actually in a safe place rather than in store.

If they had the nut width sizes on the website as a matter of course .. even all the other vintage guitar sellers had them , it would save a lot of emails and wasting of time.

I still never miss a "guitar of the day" vid

[PorkyPrimeCut]

The down side to the Norm's business model is that they may well have guitars (expensive guitars) that are on their website that are not actually in the store. I.e. they may well be in the "secret stash". A couple of times over the years I have asked for nut widths and just been told the generic width 1 9/16, 1 5/8, 1 11/16. Now I have been playing/buying vintage epis and gibbys long enough to know that it is very rare for a nut from the 60s or even the 50s to match exactly one of those dimensions. I can handle a nut width from about 40.5mm -> 42.8mm on epi/gibby acoustics ( electrics maybe 42.5mm)
That is the problem when describing nut widths using imperial rather than metric... something that is still OK for me maybe described as 1 9/16" when really it is closer to 1 5/8, but not quite 1 5/8. If I see 1 9/16 I move on immediately.

So for me to lay down some big $$ (big as far as I am concerned) I would like to have a real understanding of the nut width, not some generic size that "covers all".
In my limited experience one cannot always get the exact measurement from Norms .. maybe they have many many email requests for info every day .. and maybe because the instrument is actually in a safe place rather than in store.

If they had the nut width sizes on the website as a matter of course .. even all the other vintage guitar sellers had them , it would save a lot of emails and wasting of time.

I still never miss a "guitar of the day" vid

In this day & age, and with the size of their inventory (I'll take people's word that it's huge as they're actually relatively new to me) you'd think that they'd be documenting this kind of info, purely for buyers. I mean, they wax lyrical often enough about the lesser known sides of vintage guitars. You'd think if they're gonna talk the talk they'd walk the walk.

[riscado]

From the very informative replies we got in this topic, one can clearly see that Norm's is not that kind of store. That's part of the reason I gave up on them when I was buying my old jazzmaster. In any case, really happy and thankful that they continue to share the videos, of some of the guitars thay hold.

[zhivago]

Look at this!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m28JYCQ3hoc" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

and of course yesterday's Burgundy Mist JM is already gone in under 24 hours

[riscado]

Yeah man, I saw that one, really cool, even looked it up in the website, but as usual... no entry! Any way, happy with my sunburst.