Riceage Guitars & Parts on eBay

[bronorb]

Does anybody know where this company gets their guitars from? They have a ton of broken guitars, missing parts, etc. for really good prices. Most are name brand Fenders, Epiphones, and others.

A couple of curious things, however:

• They have a video on eBay and on their website that shows them unpackaging huge bins of these instruments from their supplier. Each bin has hundreds of guitars in it!
• Most of the guitars are broken in the same way, snapped headstocks or heel cracks. They look as if they were intentionally broken. Other than that, they look pretty clean.
• The Fender guitars have the logo scratched off the headstock and all of them have part of the serial number on the tag blacked out. They are also stamped "USED" in the back of the headstock. They explain that their supplier has to do this to prevent warranty claims.

They explain this on their website, http://riceageguitarsandparts.com/ but I am curious where all of these guitars come from. I am assuming that they are rejects from the various factories in Asia and the manufacturers don't want to sell them as seconds because of warranty claims. But why intentionally break them?

I am looking for a project to work on and I am thinking of picking one of these up to fix. $32 for a Fender Acoustic-electric is a pretty good deal even if I have to fix it.

Anybody know anything about them?

[espgold]

I comb through their listings from time to time. Only pulled the trigger once. On a Fender Sonoran acoustic/electric that was listed as having a bad neck set. I ended up steaming and flattening the top instead of resetting the neck and it turned out to be a fantastic looking/sounding/playing guitar. I gave it to my nephew who used it on a Nashville recording date.

[bronorb]

Thanks for that info. Good to know. I may have to look a little closer and take a bite.