B Stock

gcapel

boom box recordings
Anyone ever buy the b stock gear on musicians friend or any of the online stores?

I have my eye on a mackie onyx 1620. There seems to be b stock or refurbs on these sites with tempting prices. They still honor a manufacture warrenty.

Any thoughts or advice?
 
Depends on the discount, I've bought numerous B and refurbish with no issues, but if it's a small bump to new... I'll go for the new car smell.
 
I ordered a small bass amp bstock from MF.
When I opened the package which was done
extremely poorly the speakers had been kicked
back into the speaker cabinet. I called them up
and they came out picked it up at no charge but
I don't think I'll be ordering in bstock or blems from
them in the future.

I did get a new LA610 from American Musical as
Bstock which looked like it had never been open
for $950.

So I guess you take your chances and hope
for the best.

Good Luck!
 
I am seeing a $300.00 difference.
I just did a quick Google and Sweetwater and Full Compass are both selling new for $729 so really the B Stock price at MF is only saving you $125... at that discount I'd go new...
 
I just did a quick Google and Sweetwater and Full Compass are both selling new for $729 so really the B Stock price at MF is only saving you $125... at that discount I'd go new...

I seen a b stock at AV giant for 579.00. 729 is the lowest I have heard of new. Thanks. I may use that to bargain with at my local music store.
 
I seen a b stock at AV giant for 579.00. 729 is the lowest I have heard of new. Thanks. I may use that to bargain with at my local music store.
I'll usually look for savings in excess of 25%, that justifies the risk (but I'm pretty anal about the visual appearance of the equipment... blemishes give me a rash). That price from AV Giant is close enough for serous consideration
 
I always buy B stock or used. usually used.

The reason is that there's some things you can get by only paying a lot, like Neumann mics, old K. Zildjians or land, and so I cut corners every way I can (cheap used car, cheap tires, used clothes) so I have more more towards those things.
 
I bought a B-stock Mackie Onyx 400f from Musicians Friend and it's performed flawlessly (knock on wood). If there's anything wrong with it, you could always return it.
 
I just did a quick Google and Sweetwater and Full Compass are both selling new for $729 so really the B Stock price at MF is only saving you $125... at that discount I'd go new...

You might want to call Full Compass as well. You can typically only get their best price (which can be lower than their MAP web price) by calling.
 
If you buy B-stock or used, make sure you give the unit a full workout as soon as you get it. Don't let it sit for a month before plugging it in. And make sure to test *all* it's features and audio routings. You just want to discover any flaws earlier rather than later.
 
yeah, definitely run it thru the paces. Just a good ideer.
I got my Akai DPS24 6 or 7 years ago, B stock, and never had a problem with it. Not even a hiccup. The "B" part was cuz it has a ding in the metal casing on the bottom of it. That ding saved me about $550. ;)
 
I ordered a small bass amp bstock from MF.
When I opened the package which was done
extremely poorly the speakers had been kicked
back into the speaker cabinet. I called them up
and they came out picked it up at no charge but
I don't think I'll be ordering in bstock or blems from
them in the future.

I did get a new LA610 from American Musical as
Bstock which looked like it had never been open
for $950.

So I guess you take your chances and hope
for the best.

Good Luck!


We have a musicians friend distributership where we can test and buy the returns here in the KC area...right now your amp is being bought for arround 1/10th the price and someone is putting a screwdriver to it...lol.
 
I love B-stock... When I was first starting playing out I bought my whole first PA setup through B-stock... I still use the amp and the mains I use as monitors now... Been going strong for almost 2 years.

On the mackie onyx's... I got me an onyx 1640 its absolutely amazing. Can't say enough about how much fun they are and how great they sound. The only downside I've found is that when it needs servicing they use all SMT and won't sell parts to non-authorized repair centers. Finding an authorized one is difficult and even they have a hard time getting parts out of mackie.
 
On the mackie onyx's... I got me an onyx 1640 its absolutely amazing. Can't say enough about how much fun they are and how great they sound. The only downside I've found is that when it needs servicing they use all SMT and won't sell parts to non-authorized repair centers. Finding an authorized one is difficult and even they have a hard time getting parts out of mackie.
Somehow that paragraph doesn't leave feeling warm and fuzzy about the desk...
 
If you buy B-stock or used, make sure you give the unit a full workout as soon as you get it. Don't let it sit for a month before plugging it in. And make sure to test *all* it's features and audio routings. You just want to discover any flaws earlier rather than later.
Great advice!! I'll buy just about anything for the right price, either for the future or to flip for a profit... nothing worse than pulling something out a year later to find performance issues after just giving it a cursory plug-in immediately after the purchase.
 
The thing about B-stock is that there's a lot of places out there that don't differentiate between it and "refurbished" gear. B-stock should be open-box returns, scratch/dent, that kind of thing. Refurbs are the crap that comes back because it's broken, then it's fixed at the lowest possible cost and sent back out onto the floor.

B-stock is usually a pretty good risk. I've had very few problems over the years.

Refurbs are typically a very poor risk. There's a reason why they didn't work in the first place, and you can bet that the retailer spent as little time and money fixing it as humanly possible. I'd avoid them like the plague.

Learn to ask the retailer whether it's *really* B-stock or whether that's code language for "refurbished".

Frank
 
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