Frequently Asked Questions
How Old is Indian River Guitars and how did it get its name?
The company was started in 2011, the name is a result of the fact that we are on the Indian River here.
Will you branch out into other types of guitars like electrics?
It isn't likely, we are actually an electro acoustics development company, we may branch out, but it may not be in musical instruments.
Do you accept orders online?
Not now, we prefer to talk to people to make sure we understand what they want. We will be able to process credit cards online so orders can be taken over the phone, but we will never have an online sales page like the large music distributors. We will sell through Amazon and eBay.
Do you have a philosophy about guitars?
I can best illustrate it with a true story. I bought a Yahama guitar in 1968 and have played it ever since. Its was starting to get old and by the mid 90's I wanted to get another to play around the house so I wouldn't wear it out. I searched high and low for another guitar, the original wasn't expensive so I tried every guitar I could find with costs from several hundred dollars to four thousand. Back then I had a real job ( Senior Fellow at Raytheon Corp) so I could afford about anything I wanted. I didn't try out custom guitars but tried about every production guitar I could find. But I never looked at the name until after I played it. After some time, I found the one I wanted. It was another Yamaha similar to my original; an inexpensive guitar to say the least. Perhaps I liked it because it sounded like the one I was used to, I don't know, but I know what I wanted. Now here's where my philosophy come in; don't let anybody tell you what you want, I know there are guitar snobs who will tell you that the Yamaha is a poor instrument and you have to spend at least a thousand dollars on a ....( fill in the blanks here guitar snobs you've all got your favorites). Now don't get me wrong, there are wonderful guitars out there for a thousand bucks, I've played them all, but I like my Yamaha's, and now I like the Indian River Guitars instruments. Because we can produce an instrument at a competitively low price doesn't mean it isn't a good instrument, Conventional wisdom about guitars that appears in internet blogs is generally designed to make you swoon over the vast knowledge and talent of the perpetrator rather that convey information. A guitar should be fun, otherwise what is the point?
Do you have a guarantee or return policy?
When you get right down to it, there is not much that can go wrong with a guitar. By the time it is purchased it has been unstrung, restrung, adjusted, played, and probably banged into something much as we try to avoid that. So if the neck was going to collapse, or the body implode it would have happened already. But if that does happen, sure send it back and we'll fix or replace it. Likewise if the electronics go bad, we'll replace them. But don't send me a preamp that smells of spilled beer or a crushed neck with an imprint of your tennis shoe. We sell guitars mail order, if you get it and hate it , or, it wasn't what you wanted, you pay to send it back and we'll refund your money if the guitar is still in the condition we shipped it to you, in minus a 10% restocking fee which is under fifty bucks. It would cost you that much in gas to drive somewhere to play the thing anyway so how can you lose. We don't guarantee discounted guitars that are demonstrators or prototypes, but again what can really go wrong with a guitar.
How do you ship?
UPS or FedEx which ever you'd like. It typically cost between $15 and $30 dollars shipping with $100 insurance. If you want to add insurance it is a couple of dollars more but the guitar will get to you in 2 to 4 days depending on where you live.
How do you take payment
You can order the guitar over the phone, We'll notify you when it is ready. You can pay by check, money order, or credit card. We are still setting up our credit card processing so right now we run credit cards through my wife's barber shop. We've been using the same company to process our credit cards for 10 years an never had a problem, we'll have our own soon with the same company.