Official Luthiers Forum!

Has anyone used shipping agents to buy parts from the US? How much savings can I save by doing that? I have a problem that I need to buy parts from many different suppliers because Stewmac carries some good stuff but they don't have any decent wood (Stewmac woods are overpriced compared to LMI), while LMI doesn't have too many guitar "parts" such as screws, electric guitar related stuff, etc. and even worse, other suppliers like Alaskan Specialty Woods has some amazing deals on spruce. Problem is ordering from all of them on its own makes me pay a ton of money on shipping...

Do most of you just bite the bullet and pay the excess shipping from the US when ordering parts?

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Cat-gut strings are made from kitten guts, stretched out to near breaking point and then hardened with grue saliva. As a result these give a feeling of Pain and anguish whenever played, and often end up playing themselves backwards as part of satanic rituals.

Typhoon Guitars
http://www.typhoon-guitars.com

I've never done it, but...

There are a bunch of companies that run "drop box" facilities in the USA. The idea is that you get everything sent to this USA address ("your" USA address, often taking advantage of "free" domestic shipping rates), they consolidate it and ship to you at better rates than the retailers do, so like a "retail" shipping agent, if you like, but supposedly giving you a better deal on smaller volumes. I looked into it a while back, but the business case didn't stack for shipments to Australia.

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Trevor Gore, Luthier. Australian hand made acoustic guitars, classical guitars; custom guitar design and build; guitar design instruction.

http://www.goreguitars.com.au

I looked into that but I question if I can actually save anything over retail shipping. Most mail order companies do enough business with shipping companies that they get better rate than if you showed up at UPS/DHL/Fedex and shipped it yourself, and they pass that saving onto the customer. So it seems you'd save if you were ordering from ebay but since they also charge a fee for receiving something, and repacking something, it seems it would just eat up any savings you get from using their service. Then the hassle is you don't get the stuff to your door and you have to wait longer for them to repack/ship it.

This is also in addition to domestic shipping cost too, which you pay on top of whatever international rate they give you.

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Cat-gut strings are made from kitten guts, stretched out to near breaking point and then hardened with grue saliva. As a result these give a feeling of Pain and anguish whenever played, and often end up playing themselves backwards as part of satanic rituals.

Typhoon Guitars
http://www.typhoon-guitars.com

What really got me was when I ordered some soundboard and brace wood from Alaska thinking that it was really cheap compered with what you pay in Europe.
A week later I got a letter saying I had to pay import tax before I could recive the goods. Ended up paying more for the wood than if I had bought master grade spruce from Germany.
What I need is someone to recieve my goods in America and then send to me a parcel as a "present", hopefully avoiding paying tax twice.

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We are all in the gutter but some of us are looking at guitars.

Yea problem is no one will do that, because it's against the law to misdeclare value. But customs fee depends on country and generally if it's sent by USPS there are less chance of customs fee (again depending on country). USA is about the worst when it comes to customs fees... stuff coming in from Germany didn't get a tax even though the shipment got inspected... I guess it's due to better trade agreement with the EU?

Does a FTA between your country and the country the package came from mean you won't get tariff, or is that limited to large scale import/exports?

If you are in Germany get your stuff from Espen.de, the prices aren't that bad. In fact I order stuff from them in Taiwan. Funny thing is the order total always ends up being the same whether the stuff is shipped to Taiwan or shipped within Germany, due to the high (19%) VAT in Germany... I try to keep orders from the US small because the US is the worst when it comes to tariff.. and unlike most other country's suppliers they will not declare a lower amount than the invoice... In my country anything below 100 USD is tariff free.

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Cat-gut strings are made from kitten guts, stretched out to near breaking point and then hardened with grue saliva. As a result these give a feeling of Pain and anguish whenever played, and often end up playing themselves backwards as part of satanic rituals.

Typhoon Guitars
http://www.typhoon-guitars.com

If you can find a shipping company in your country that has dropbox facitities in US as mentioned above, you can ask them for their service rates. With that, you can compare with the shipping costs from ordering individually from different suppliers. If still unsure, you might have to try ordering both ways to know which way would do good to you.