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Post subject: A place to buy a Fender
Posted: Sun Jul 28, 2013 11:49 pm
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Hello, community.
I am preparing to buy a Fender American Precision Bass in a couple months.
I live in Lviv, Ukraine and we don't have any official dealers of Fender here. But I want to go and try a bass in a store before I buy it.
Unfortunately our local stores don't have any of those instruments. And if some of them have - I heard from few people that it's a very good visual copies from China with copied ID numbers from originals instruments on them.
Also another way of messing around with customers is when store order American Standard (which is a very rare bird here) and when it's arrives - they take off all original electronics from it and put back some cheap ones.

All this information is making me thinking about alternative ways to try and buy an instrument.
I can also travel to Poland for this purpose. But as far as I know - they don't have a Fender official dealer there as well.
Any advices, please?

Thanks in advance.


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Post subject: Re: A place to buy a Fender
Posted: Mon Jul 29, 2013 12:25 am
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Have you tried any of the on-line retailers like Musician's Friend, Sweetwater Music, or Ebay?

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Post subject: Re: A place to buy a Fender
Posted: Mon Jul 29, 2013 12:32 am
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Retroverbial wrote:
...or Ebay?

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Post subject: Re: A place to buy a Fender
Posted: Mon Jul 29, 2013 1:09 am
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Retroverbial wrote:
Have you tried any of the on-line retailers like Musician's Friend, Sweetwater Music, or Ebay?


As I said in my original post: I want to try and maybe compare before buy.


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Post subject: Re: A place to buy a Fender
Posted: Mon Jul 29, 2013 4:00 am
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Location: Romania
The official distributor for Poland is Aplauz Sp. z.o.o. (http://www.aplauzaudio.pl/glowna/index.php). For Hungary you have Bauer Sound Hungary (http://bauersound.drpinterkft.hu/hu/main). Also, in Romania there is Pro Guitar SRL (http://www.proguitar.ro/ and http://guitarshop.ro/).

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Post subject: Re: A place to buy a Fender
Posted: Mon Jul 29, 2013 10:57 am
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Purple wrote:
The official distributor for Poland is Aplauz Sp. z.o.o. (http://www.aplauzaudio.pl/glowna/index.php). For Hungary you have Bauer Sound Hungary (http://bauersound.drpinterkft.hu/hu/main). Also, in Romania there is Pro Guitar SRL (http://www.proguitar.ro/ and http://guitarshop.ro/).


That is VERY good info.

Firstly eBay is a MINEFIELD of fakes, mods and outright liars.

Secondly, no North American based Fender dealer, even the online ones, will be permitted to ship any Fender instruments into another distributor's territory. The North American Fender dealers simply can not ship out of FMIC's territory, which is North America, because Fender strictly prohibits it.

Have to tell you that when you get in touch with Aplauz Audio they may not have much to choose from and will actually have to order what you want which can take a long time. Eastern Europe does not have what I'd call an avid demand for high end Fender USA made basses.

It is VERY easy to spot swapped out electronics. Insist on seeing the electronics before buying. When the pickguard is gently lifted you should see CTS pots with pot codes starting with the numerals "137" and neat solder joints with a very small orange colored ceramic disc cap that is slightly larger than a little green pea and it should be stamped 0.05uF. If you don't see that then I'd suspect a swap. The bottom of the pickups themselves should also be marked with a Fender marking of some kind. As the pickup markings change frequently it is hard to say just what to look for there. Over the years I've seen pencil marks, Fender stickers, USA flag stickers and stamped numeric codes. There should be something there though.

Frequently real Fender export instruments have a serial format unique to export instruments. Therefore when you crunch an export serial through the usual serial references it will not translate and appear on the surface to be a fake. It is probably real though as Fender does that to make export instrument serials instantly recognizable to lock them permanently out of the FMIC North American support system.

I wish I could say electronics swaps never happen offshore, but I suspect they do as I've seen photos of an instrument from Australia that I'm positive was modified before the customer opened the box on his "brand new/factory sealed" bass he had ordered. The pots were wrong, the cap was wrong, the pickups probably had been swapped too but I didn't see the bottoms of them. He took it out of what he said was a "sealed" box at the dealer and the buyer didn't notice these things right away. The pots in it were no-name Asian and it had a chicklet poly cap which was totally wrong for a USA Fender bass.

Should also tell you that off shore distributors often, but not always, will order USA made instruments shipped to them with NO FACTORY CASE. Some have their own sources for cheaper cases locally. Be sure to ask about that because the same case you get free in the USA may be at an extra charge there, if it is available at all. Also the warranty you get from a European distributor is different than the FMIC warranty. The distributor warrants the Fender instruments they import, not FMIC and usually a European warranty is more limited.

If you go directly to the distributor they can guide you to the largest and most reputable dealer in their territory. I think there would be less risk in dealing with a larger dealer where a USA P-Bass would not be such a big deal, instead of going to the closest one which might be smaller and actually rarely ever have a USA Fender bass in the shop.


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Post subject: Re: A place to buy a Fender
Posted: Mon Jul 29, 2013 10:33 pm
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So as I understood - there are actually dealers of Fender in Poland, Hungary, Romania etc. But is is rare for them to have a USA made Fender. Because of a small demand.
So maybe I should look around central Europe, in richer countries? Like Germany? Or few times in year I go to Aarhus, Denmark. I see there are few dealers of Fender marked on Fender's web-site.

Special thanks to brotherdave for explaining how to spot the swap.


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Post subject: Re: A place to buy a Fender
Posted: Tue Jul 30, 2013 3:42 am
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I can't vouch for the other countries, but I know for a fact Pro Guitar in Bucharest has US-made instruments in stock all the time. You can check the availalability online (www.guitarshop.ro) or just give them a call or an email (http://guitarshop.ro/contact.html).
I understand you want to try before you buy, but if you decide to go the online way, there's always Thomann (www.thomann,de).

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Post subject: Re: A place to buy a Fender
Posted: Tue Jul 30, 2013 11:26 pm
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Purple wrote:
I can't vouch for the other countries, but I know for a fact Pro Guitar in Bucharest has US-made instruments in stock all the time. You can check the availalability online (http://www.guitarshop.ro) or just give them a call or an email (http://guitarshop.ro/contact.html).
I understand you want to try before you buy, but if you decide to go the online way, there's always Thomann (http://www.thomann,de).

Thanks for the feedback regarding Bucharest's shop. Good to know that some neighbor countries have high-end instruments. I will keep that in mind.

I am still hoping to get any comments regarding US Fenders in Eastern Polish shops because it is much easier and closer for me to get there instead.

Considering, that I am Eastern European citizen - I was thinking about try an instrument in a showroom but actually buy one in internet shop (like Thomann for instance) just to save some money.


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