For my sins I recently bought a Jackson DXMG Dinky off Ebay.

It was a pretty good price and arrived in VGC for what I paid. Hadn't been played or cleaned in a long time though. So I tool it to the guitar shop to be cleaned up, set-up to drop-D with 0.10's.

I get a bit of frosty response picking it up (I live in the hippy-capital of the UK and pointy headstocks are not that common - this is mandolin-central).

I get it home and the D is flapping about all over the place. Fretbuzz on the D all the way up the neck, likewise on the A up about 7th. It sounds like something from a carboot sale.

Worse still, when i picked up this one I dropped off my beloved Charvel model3 to be restrung and setup...

Is there a non-confrontational way of dealing with this?

Justifiable pointy-headstock-icide?

Just go in there with the guitar, show them what they've done and ask them to sort it out. You've just paid them for a service and they've failed to provide it!

You don't have to be confrontational, just calmly explain what's happened to them - I'm sure there's a fair chance it was a geniune error.


Of course, if they refuse then I'd go absolutely sick at them, but that's just me

Exactly what Migstopheles said. Ask them to fix it, remain friendly but firm.