Gig guitar theft - ever happened to you ?

[EuroAussie]

As the title suggests, have you had a guitar stolen from a gig you participated in ?

 

Or have heard of somebody that did have their guitar stolen ?

 

Never happened to me and have not heard it happen amongst my muso friends, but I do feel that it could happen quite easily. Between sets while guitar sits on the stand, or post gig as the case is placed in a corner.

[58 Relic]

Hi Ive lost a SM58 Mike at a gig , so now I never play on my own I always have someone watching my gear , of if they can't I do .

 

[BluesKing777]

There might be too many people around, but out the front while loading/unloading the gear is usually when it happens , or if you are too tired to unload when you get home. A friend would back his van up his garage so the back door couldn't open.......except they took the van!

 

 

BluesKing777.

[sparquelito]

We played a wedding gig back in the spring, and this one (very odd) fellow displayed an inordinate interest in my Les Paul Copper-Top.

 

I chatted with him in between sets, and even offered to let him pick it up and play it.

He declined, but sure loved chatting about how much he coveted Les Paul guitars, and how he had always wanted to see/own one.

 

I kept my eye on him the rest of the day, just in case.

[kidblast]

nope, this never happened to me, or any one I've worked with, I've gigged a lot too.

 

I do remember one night as we were leaving one of the bars in the last "gigging" band I was in, our rhythm player, who'd spent the second half of the evening drinking a bit more than he should have, left his guitar leaning on the stage wall, near his rig (it was the first of 2 nights).

 

we always took our guitars home, leaving them at the clubs was just begging for trouble.

 

so I grabbed it, and took it home with me..

 

I called him around noon the next day, asked if he knew where his axe was.... long pause.... "actually, no I don't remember taking it home. SH!@#!@#!.."

 

"Right, you didn't, I have it.."

 

he was bit relieved.. (it was in fact his only working guitar, a USA Gib les paul. silly boy..)

[RichG]

1966. Brand new Epiphone Cortez stolen out of the car while I was at class in Boston at NU. Who knew you couldn't leave a guitar in plain sight in a locked convertible. Yes, the top was up! I sure didnt, I guess.

 

I bought another one off eBay a few years ago so I could finally remedy that problem

 

I don't gig much but when I do, the guitar is never out of sight.

 

Rich

[rct]

No, not me or anyone I've been out and about with, for decades. People who need to steal guitars can't afford to get in the high class places I play. [laugh] [laugh]

[Dave F]

Back in '70 we had a steady gig three nights a week for going on 9 months. We left our bigger amps one night. The next day they were gone.

[MissouriPicker]

Never lost a guitar or mic by theft. Have lost a few capos, but that's more likely from forgetting them or someone else thinking it belonged to them......I was at the Folk Alliance Convention back in Feb. I was told some guitars were stolen from a couple of private rooms. When I wasn't using it, I kept mine in "the guitar room" which was guarded.

[L5Larry]

Around 1979, one of my guitars (a '69/70 "Dan Armstrong" plexiglass guitar), which was on loan/swap to a guitarist friend in Chicago, was allegedly "stolen" from a dressing room at a gig.

 

Months later, when it was time to swap back (whenever we crossed paths between Chicago and St. Louis), I saw him walking up the sidewalk with a beat up case held together with a bungie cord. I asked him what had happened to the CASE, "Well,.......".

 

He proceeded to tell me the "story" of MY Dan Armstrong getting stolen, and that he had found me another one to replace it. I opened up the busted up case to find a guitar in similar condition. I had loaned him a pristine rare/vintage guitar, and got back a POS. I never really took to, or played, the replacement, and finally traded it off in the mid-80's for a new '57 RI Strat. I didn't really have any hard feelings about the incident (easy come, easy go), and had no reason to doubt the story until.........

 

Jump ahead another 15 years, and I get a phone call from this guy, now living back in St. Louis. "Hey Larry, why don't you come by the house, I've got something for you". I go by his house and he hands me ANOTHER Dan Armstrong. The serial number dates it to 1969, and one of the first 300 made. It looks like a closet queen with three of the optional interchangeable pickups, and a bunch of documentation from Mandolin Bros. guitar shop. Not one to look a gift horse in the mouth, I gladly drove off with the "free" guitar, no questions asked.

 

But...... If 20 years later this guy still felt like he "owed" me a Dan Armstrong guitar after replacing the first one in the first place.......

 

What REALLY happened to my original one???????????

 

I still run into this guy a couple of times a year, and in fact saw him at the grocery store last week, but the "Dan Armstrong Incident" had never been talked about.

[drathbun]

As part of a luthier course I took one summer, I bought an Epiphone John Lennon EJ160e on eBay that had been damaged. The top was cracked and the bottom crushed a little. I used it to practice doing a repair. I spent a week on it and the results were pretty good. After the course, as I already had a few guitars, I gave it to my son. He took it to college with him and it was stolen right out of a rehearsal room under his nose.

 

Before repair:

 

After repair:

[tpbiii]

Well when we travel with guitars -- most of ours are vintage -- we kind of use "armored guitar" techniques. They are always in someone's view when being moved, and never left alone.

 

On the other hand we play a lot of southern bluegrass festivals. These are among the safest places on earth -- if you dropped your wallet, there would be a argument about who would get to take it back to you. It is an amazing culture in that way.

 

However we did once have a couple of guitars stolen. We were having work done to our house, and we needed to put the guitars into storage for the duration. The contractor was a friend and had a storage facility at his house that was used. There were quite a few guitars,so it was a bit confusing.

 

Well, they came back and went on their shelves and life returned to normal -- they were guarded into and out of storage, so we were not expecting trouble. It was awhile later I went to get a particular guitar and could not find it. So I did an inventory and found one more missing. The two guitars were a 1995 Martin HD-28SO -- the only new guitar we ever bought and still under warranty -- and a 1931 Gibson L-2.

 

Now these guitars were insured, but I did not look forward to calling the insurance company and saying I am missing two guitars and I have no idea what happened to them. When we talked to the police in the town where they were stored, they would not take the case because we did not know for sure the guitars disappeared from there. So we started a two month search -- retracing every step, considering every possibility over and over again -- our first thought they were "lost" somewhere. The contractor was very supportive, but eventually began to get angry that I could not mark his facility off the list. I was about to call the insurance.

 

But the Martin was a special edition -- #16 of 45. Every night I would surf the net looking for the guitar -- and then, there it was. A local dealer in an adjacent town was bragging about selling it, and it had the "16." Well I knew the dealer, who is really sort of a friend --when I called him, he was horrified and 100% cooperative. He had bought both the guitars from a nice looking young man in a new SUV, who said he had inherited them. He had paid a reasonable wholesale price, and he had done everything he was supposed to -- including copying identifications for the kid. Also, he had sold the Martin but still had the Gibson -- "it sounded so good, we decided to keep it" (tell me abut it!) -- he had taken it home.

 

Long story short, the kid was a friend of the contractor's son. When the contractor found out, it was like a hand grenade in a chicken coop -- he totally took responsibility and went to work to make everyone well. Us, the guitar dealer, and the buyer. Of course the guitar was provably ours, so by law I could just have demanded it back and the police would have gotten it or me. The guitar had not even been played -- just kept in a closet. Long story short, every one dealt with it like adults, and the busted kid was made to make enough restitution to make everyone well and then some (plus other severe punishments.) Us, the dealer and the buyer.

 

A cautionary tale for sure.

 

Let's pick,

 

-Tom

[littlejohnny]

Two stories came to my my mind reading this thread:

 

1) in the late 90ies I played a gig in Paris/France with my band. After the gig we had to sleep in some kind of motel and it wasn't quite the best part of town. We all took our guitars with us, except for our bass-player, who wasn't a bass at all, but a befriended guitarist, who only played on this tour. When we asked him, if he doesn't want to take the borrowed bass with him, he said: " Ah no, I don't think its necessary, and its not even my bass"

 

Next morning we found our van busted open, the bass, a cymbal case and two cases with effects and cables were gone. One of the effect cases was mine, it was worth about 300 € at the time.

 

2) I guy I played with in one of my bands was a real pita, since he was completely unreliable. Though he's a drummer, I'd helped him track down a nice Gibson electric one time, cause he wanted to play guitar.

 

Fast forward a few years: The guy took his guitar to a rehearsal one day (don't know exactly why), on the way he stopped at some supermarket to get some booze: Outside the supermarket he leaned the guitar to a wall to tuck his booze away and....left the guitar there. After his rehearsal he notices that he left the guitar leaned on some wall at the supermarket and guess what, it was gone.

 

Bottom line: Don't leave your stuff unattended in an uncontrolled environment. This is even more true, when the headstock screams "2000-5000 $ guitar".

 

I taped the Gibson-Logo on my J-45 case, cause I was using the subway and busses at one time quite often.

[OldCowboy]

Two stories came to my my mind reading this thread:

 

1) in the late 90ies I played a gig in Paris/France with my band. After the gig we had to sleep in some kind of motel and it wasn't quite the best part of town. We all took our guitars with us, except for our bass-player, who wasn't a bass at all, but a befriended guitarist, who only played on this tour. When we asked him, if he doesn't want to take the borrowed bass with him, he said: " Ah no, I don't think its necessary, and its not even my bass"

 

Next morning we found our van busted open, the bass, a cymbal case and two cases with effects and cables were gone. One of the effect cases was mine, it was worth about 300 € at the time.

 

2) I guy I played with in one of my bands was a real pita, since he was completely unreliable. Though he's a drummer, I'd helped him track down a nice Gibson electric one time, cause he wanted to play guitar.

 

Fast forward a few years: The guy took his guitar to a rehearsal one day (don't know exactly why), on the way he stopped at some supermarket to get some booze: Outside the supermarket he leaned the guitar to a wall to tuck his booze away and....left the guitar there. After his rehearsal he notices that he left the guitar leaned on some wall at the supermarket and guess what, it was gone.

 

Bottom line: Don't leave your stuff unattended in an uncontrolled environment. This is even more true, when the headstock screams "2000-5000 $ guitar".

 

I taped the Gibson-Logo on my J-45 case, cause I was using the subway and busses at one time quite often.

Yes! ALWAYS tape the case logo.

[BluesKing777]

There was a blues jam/open mic that I used to go to with a friend.

 

Instead of writing your name down in a list, guess they couldn't be bothered, everyone had to line their guitars in their case up in this little area at the side of the stage. I watched in fear a couple of times and no way was my guitar going in that lot, so I clung to the thing all night while they rambled around the bar and everything free-spiritedly carefree about their guitars. But at the end of the night, it was like musical chairs and the music stopped and everyone grabbing their stuff, leaving one guitarist with no guitar!

 

No way! I developed a method of getting there, grabbing (reserving) one of the tables near the back, leave my guitar in the car under a rug, race out to grab it just as I was about to get up, finish my 3 tunes, sneak it back out to the car and put the rug over it, or be sitting against the back wall with my guitar under the table between my feet.

 

And that was just my beater. :mellow:

 

 

 

BluesKing777.

[Murph]

On the other hand we play a lot of southern bluegrass festivals. These are among the safest places on earth -- if you dropped your wallet, there would be a argument about who would get to take it back to you. It is an amazing culture in that way.

 

 

Yep.

 

When we retire, the wife and I are going to cruise around the Country following Bluegrass Festivals.

 

Best bunch of people on Earth.

 

When I was very young and in a Rock Band we had a CS800 Peavey power amp lifted during a load-out. Never happened again, as I always insisted on the "tag team" "somebody is ALWAYS watching" technique.

 

It was probably just luck though, because over the decades I've left amps and stuff at gigs thousands of times.

 

But, I've NEVER left a guitar at a bar overnight.

[stein]

 

 

No way! I developed a method of getting there, grabbing (reserving) one of the tables near the back, leave my guitar in the car under a rug, race out to grab it just as I was about to get up, finish my 3 tunes, sneak it back out to the car and put the rug over it,

 

 

 

BluesKing777.

I knew a banjo player that used to do that, leave it in the car. One time, he remembered or thought he might have left the car unlocked. By the time he got out there it was too late...there were 2 banjos there.

[blindboygrunt]

Haha , beat me to it stein

 

Classic

[BluesKing777]

Haha , beat me to it stein

 

Classic

 

 

Easier to get in the Yugo with it locked than unlocked, we are told........

 

 

 

BluesKing777.