How to Protect Your Guitar From Theft – Best Tips And Tricks

If you’re like me, your guitar is one of your most prized possessions. Are you doing all you can to hold it safe? In this article, I will explain “How To Protect Your Guitar From Theft” and what you may do to get it to your lower back if a person steals it. Write your serial numbers down, as well, and keep them somewhere, away from your guitars. Do not trust storage rental spaces, no matter what sales pitch they give you

I had a guitar stolen off-level a few years ago in Chicago. I want to have followed some of those easy techniques returned then, which can have made all the distinction! Millions of dollars worth of guitars are stolen every yr worldwide. In most instances, understanding what to do while doing it may save you the tragic lack of a musical device.

Tips, How to Protect Your Guitar From Theft:

Here are the matters you may do to preserve your guitar secure. You don’t need to spend extra money protecting your guitar; the tool is worth it. You can personalize and improve your guitar’s look or overall performance by converting the pickguard, knobs, or pickups.

Be careful with vintage gadgets because changing authentic components will lower the cost of the guitar. Some pointers may appear “over the top” or “paranoid” but pertain to various conditions. The important thing here is to pick out those that apply to your state of affairs and use a common feel. Enforcing loose matters that provide the most basic safeguards is normally profitable.

Make Your Guitar Identifiable:

The simplest and best way to protect your guitar is to make it uniquely identifiable. Carve your initials in a un easily seen area, like the hollow tremolo space, for quick recognition. UV pens are to be had to invisibly write your name and address for your guitar, which shows up underneath a UV mild.

You can personalize and enhance your guitar’s look or overall performance by converting the pickguard, knobs, or pickups. Be cautious with antique gadgets because changing the original parts will lower the fee of the guitar. Take photos of each guitar you own, the serial number, and any identifiable capabilities.

Use a spreadsheet or database to keep the data prepared. There are “inventory” apps that you can use to keep all of your photographs and written records stored together. Be sure to print out a number of the pictures and convey them whenever you journey.

Police won’t be given digital image documents in the occasion of theft, and you can want a few copies to post in song stores, and so on. Consider keeping your receipt to expose as evidence of buy. Please keep it in a secure location at home now, not in your guitar case.

Lock Up Your Guitar:

Hold your Guitar locked up in a secure case or gig bag on every occasion protection is a situation. I’ve visible human beings cover a high-priced guitar underneath their bed and chain it to the mattress body. Some humans use devices that “clamp” around the guitar neck and can not be removed without the important thing. Be cautious with those gizmos as they could harm your tool.

Display instances are an excellent way to show off your collection; however, they are not very powerful in keeping it secure from intruders. Interrupting the glass or opening the case with a crowbar is normally easy. You could simply be assisting the thief in determining what Guitar in your collection is the maximum precious.

I realize a studio musician who “relied on” a cheap Strat concealed a GPS tracker in the tremolo cavity and stuck it in a display case to make it look high-priced. Every time he goes out of the metropolis, he adjusts the battery within the tracker. He calls it the “fail-safe” for his home protection device.

If protection isn’t a large situation, you can preserve your Guitar on a stand, so you’ll be encouraged to play it with each threat you get. Make sure to lock up your Guitar and position it somewhere out of sight if you depart the metropolis. Don’t put your Guitar in a garage facility. They may need to be more nicely climate managed and are often broken into.

Make Your Home Secure:

It’s constantly a good concept to safeguard your private home to protect your family and possessions from intruders and fire. Here are a few points on “How To Protect Your Guitar From Theft” from your house. Some points to secure your home are enlisted below:

• Install an alarm system.
• Brighten up your yard.
• Install timers.
• Eliminate hidden house keys.
• Reinforce your locks.
• Eliminate potential hiding places.
• Protect your windows.
• Don’t broadcast that you’re away.

Get A Home Security System:

Consider getting a home security machine with movement detectors and high-definition video cameras. Doors’ movement-activated lighting and cameras also are awesome ideas. Most thieves are reluctant to interrupt houses at night in a well-lit places.

Security systems monitored at a central station are much more powerful than an alarm that makes noise to scare off intruders. If you don’t have a monitored gadget, ask your pals to name the police; if they listen to your home alarm or see any suspicious activity around your house, they must inform you.

It’s well worth the greater cost to have the police or fireplace department sent to your house in case of a hassle while you’re no longer there, particularly in case your journey loads. You’re protective of your musical system and all of your other valuables.

Think twice approximately marketing your protection device by placing a large sign up your front lawn that says “covered by way of ADT” or something else. It can make humans walking or driving by curious approximately what high-price items they could have in their homes. Using stickers for home windows or doors that warn intruders if they approach your private home is higher.

Investigate getting a guitar vault if you are a serious collector or purchase and promote highly-priced guitars. Rick Nielsen, the guitar player in the band’s reasonably-priced trick, has a vault that competently homes hundreds of guitars!

Protect Your Privacy:

Maintain your guitar in a place where it can’t be visible out of doors your property thru windows or sliding glass doorways. Discover a handy low-traffic area this is hidden from traffic or workers. Preferably, pick a unique place with a door that locks, like your bedroom or a room within the basement.

Maintaining your guitar on a stand ensures the room is comfortable. Positioned a deadbolt on the door of a room with a high-priced system like your private home recording studio and installed sun shades on the windows.

You may have wonderful friends, but home ruin-ins in excellent neighborhoods are normally finished utilizing human beings living elsewhere. “Storage Bands” are loads of a laugh but can be volatile within the incorrect community. Remember, if someone sees you playing a high-priced guitar in your garage, they understand wherein to find it while no one’s domestic.

Garages may be smooth to break into, so don’t leave a musical device set up while you aren’t using it or deploy a great lock to your garage door. In no way let humans into your own home while you’re not there unless you genuinely recognize and consider them. It’s typically a horrific concept to let people come and pass without being unsupervised.

Beware Of Smartphone Photos:

Maintain pics of your guitar, taken from every attitude. Additionally, make certain to take photographs of the serial numbers of your guitars. Write your serial numbers down properly, and keep them somewhere far away from your guitars.

Refrain from trusting storage condominium areas, regardless of what sales pitch they give you. Assume two times earlier than letting human beings take photographs of your guitar and different musical system, specifically at your private home address.

You by no means realize who they’ll display the images to. If they have “geotagging” enabled and text the image to different human beings or publish it on a social network, the report might include the total cope of wherein the guitar is located. Geotagging is enabled by default on top smartphones.

Constantly be cautious about who you display your guitar pix too, particularly if you have a lot of musical equipment or a recording studio. Posting photographs on social networks may be an unstable enterprise if human beings have to get admission to your deal.

Buy Guitar Insurance:

When you have a guitar worth several dollars, like an antique or custom-built tool, recollect insuring it for the full appraised value. There are only types of coverage you should purchase, depending on the price of your guitar and how you want to shield it, like during travel or against water or hearth damage in your house, among others.

Your house owner’s insurance enterprise can probably promote extra coverage against theft and harm. Some companies concentrate on insuring expensive guitars from theft and harm at home and at some point of travel. One famous choice is Heritage Insurance.

Subscribe To An Online Registry:

Listing your guitar and another gadget with an online registry lets you maintain your data in a single area. You could speedily get admission to it to give to the police and your insurance enterprise if your guitar receives stolen.

While creating a registry account, you could add photographs, serial numbers, receipts, and particular identifying information. The police and 2d-hand shoppers and sellers like pawnshops can have direct get right of entry to the database, which offers them a manner to contact you directly.

Before signing up with a registry, check to ensure that it will no longer reveal the precise location of your instrument other than by using city or metropolis, submitting any of your non-public info, or selling your records to third events.

Here are 2 online registries established to help retrieve stolen belongings.

PlayChecked:

PlayChecked is a loose registry service specifically designed for musical gadgets. If your guitar is stolen, you may alert the local people and get hold of an Email from each person with beneficial guidelines or facts regarding the device’s capacity and whereabouts.

Immobilize:

You can additionally sign up your guitar on the loose country-wide registry internet site “immobilize,” a US database for any item. It additionally has a United Kingdom-precise branch.

Install Location Technology:

Location Technologies are hardware and software programs that assist you in leveraging area, area, time, and geography so that it will make extra informed decisions using data that have a geospatial factor.

If you own a costly device, then a few alternatives are available to help identify the owner of a guitar or even locate its region. The primary drawback with this generation is that unique scanning or finding gadgets are required to enter the device.

Microchips:

A microchip may be installed in the guitar and then scanned to reveal the true owner’s call and deal with. Gibson has hooked up microchips in some of its customs keep guitars, but it is only sometimes a usually carried out practice. Microchips are famous for dogs and cats; however, this idea remained relevant for musical gadgets.

One motive is that police and pawn stores stopped using microchip generation in favor of different theft healing modalities and online registries. An RFID guitar microchip advertised as “SNAGG” is now not available.

RFID Tags:

Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) tags can be small, particularly the passive kind, making them clean to hide. They function with the use of extremely-excessive frequency (UHF) radio waves. Passive RFID tags don’t require their electricity supply and may be very thin, which makes them ideal for slipping underneath your guitar’s pickguard.

The paintings are nicely in an inventory situation; however, they are now not suitable for theft trackers because they have several about 12 meters (approximately 40 feet). Lively RFID tags are battery-powered gadgets that act as radio frequency beacons. They can have tracking distances of a hundred meters or extra (approximately 300 to 350 toes).

They might be beneficial if your guitar had been stolen, like if it was taken off-stage but continues to be someplace in the construction. You may adjust the tag’s beacon rate to match the situation. The higher the beacon rate, the more correct the vicinity may be, but the shorter the battery life. A five-minute beacon price will possibly come up with a 1-to-2 yr battery life.

Bluetooth Trackers:

Bluetooth is short-variety UHF wi-fi technology. It is a small IoT tool you can attach to items like a purse, keys, ground buffer, or tablet. If you lose that object, your telephone can talk with the tag, supporting you in locating it quickly. It’s far usually constrained to a transmission range of 30 to 45 feet (60 ft max).

However, “Tile” makes a tracker that can be hidden interior of your guitar case or electric-powered guitar, which may assist you in finding it. Tile Bluetooth trackers are battery-powered gadgets smaller than most GPS trackers.

Their “pro” model can speak with your cellphone from as much as 400 ft away, so what makes them more useful than energetic RFID tags? Tile trackers can assist in discovering your guitar through the use of their “lost and found” community. If someone else using the Tile tracking machine app is near your guitar, it will send the location info on your phone, irrespective of how far away you’re.

For instance, if your guitar is at the train station or airport and any other Tile tracker user walks with the aid of within variety, you will get the guitar’s place for your cellphone. It seems like a “long shot,” however; Tile claims that their lost and discovered community reveals 6 million matters every day in 230 countries and territories and that 90% of the tiles marked misplaced are, in the end, located.

They have a top-class guard Plan at approximately 8 dollars/month to reimburse you up to1thousand dollars per item if they can discover it, which can be best if you plan a vacation or an enterprise ride with a steeply-priced guitar.

GPS Trackers:

A GPS monitoring device is a transportable unit that lets customers reveal and music their area. These gadgets are maximum generally utilized in automobiles as vehicle tracking systems. While monitoring devices are just like in-vehicle navigation structures, some key differences exist.

GPS tracking gadgets may be small enough to hide inner a guitar case or in locations like a guitar’s tremolo cavity. Hiding a tracker under the pickguard in a routed hole is only sometimes a good concept since the battery typically lasts about 2 to 3 weeks.

Systems are to be had that could allow you to tune a guitar’s area online in actual time; however, they may be costly. GPS trackers require a SIM card; however, this is the exceptional generation presently to be had to find your guitar if it is stolen.

EasyTracGPS makes a chargeable GPS tracker ideal for guitars and different devices. Their Geo-TraxMICRO tracker sells for $one hundred seventy with a $15/month subscription plan for 60-2d tracking updates.

Travel Wisely:

While journeying for business, pleasure, or permanently relocating, keeping your guitar from being stolen or damaged is important. Continually travel with pix of your guitar that display its specific functions and serial variety.

Take alongside a low-price instrument or purchase journey coverage if your guitar is steeply-priced. If you regularly tour to the equal area, keep a second guitar at your destination with a relied-on pal or band member.

Don’t Call Attention To Yourself:

Whenever moving your musical system in a journey van or trailer, cover any home windows showing your car’s contents. By no means park it in darkish or dimly lit areas. Test to ensure it has a great lock that can be challenging to interrupt.

Never decorate the doors of your car with a flashy paint process, decals, or the call of your band. Maintain your guitar case inconspicuously performing so that it does now not appeal to useless interest. Remove any travel stickers or different information from the possibility that would suggest you play in a talented band.

Make Travel Arrangements Ahead of Time:

When journeying via commercial transportation, make special arrangements beforehand for your guitar, particularly if you are taking an aircraft. Set up to sit near where your guitar is saved as a bring-on so you can keep an eye fixed on the overhead rack or garage closet.

Constantly try to take your guitar on a bus or train as a “convey-on.” Don’t check it as ordinary baggage to be put in a compartment wherein you can’t watch it.

Whenever you take a plane, attempt to make special preparations to take your guitar on board or have unique airport personnel safely take care of it. A high-priced or irreplaceable device can justify the fee for any additional expenses.

What To Do If Your Guitar Gets Stolen?

Here are some things you could attempt to get your guitar returned if it is stolen. How much motion will you take depending upon your guitar’s value or sentimental cost? If your guitar is stolen, record a police report straight away. Contact nearby pawn shops and test websites like eBay and Craigslist to see if your instrument is up.

Leave flyers with pictures at neighborhood antique guitar shops and places where a person could try to promote a stolen guitar. There are certain matters you will need to have set up earlier so that you’ll be capable of acting quickly. The faster you work, the more likely you are to achieve success.

Publicize and Investigate the Theft Immediately:

Notify the nearby and state police straight away. Make certain to fill out a police file with as much info as possible. Offer the police images and the serial quantity of your guitar. Check out the region wherein your guitar turned into stolen.

If there are CCTV or wi-fi cameras internal, outside, or on nearby buildings, ask the police to get the right of entry to the video pictures. If your guitar was stolen from your house, communicate with your pals. They will have seen something that may be helpful or taken a photo on their smartphone.

Go to the nearby pawn stores and track shops to inquire and leave facts and flyers. Reveal them online if they have a website. Reveal the social networks and create public posts on eBay, Reverb.Com, FB, Twitter, and the nearby Craig’s list.

Communicate to all the neighborhood musicians and entertainment established order proprietors and ask them to preserve an ear to the floor and an eye fixed out for any suspicious pastime. Call the nearby musician’s union and deliver the info.

Notify Your Insurance Company:

If you have insured your guitar, notify the coverage corporation immediately and complete all the office work for the claim as soon as feasible. If you did now not purchase robbery insurance and your guitar became stolen from your private home, see if your homeowner’s coverage will reimburse you a percentage of your guitar’s retail fee.

If your guitar became stolen while working on the process, discover if the venue has insurance to reimburse you for the guitar.

Find it Electronically:

An international Positioning device (GPS) chip is a microchip used in a GPS receiver, which gets alerts from four or more of the 27 GPS satellites currently orbiting Earth. A GPS device can calculate its function based on the time it takes to acquire a signal from every one of the four satellites.

If your guitar is ready with identification or vicinity era, like a microchip or GPS chip, then take the ideal steps to apply it to help get your tool better. If you find the device at a non-business deal, ask the police to inquire on your behalf or accompany you there.

Offer A Reward:

Announcing a Reward for finding the guitar is the best way. If your guitar is highly-priced or has a sentimental fee, then recall presenting a “no questions requested” praise for its return. Post the credit inside the local papers and the web social networks cited above.

If a person contacts you to go back the guitar, then arrange to fulfill that individual in a public area and produce someone with you to make the transaction safe. You may ask the caller to discover a unique guitar function to ensure that the guitar is yours or that the call is not a prank.

Hire a Detective:

A detective can find your guitar easily. If you had a guitar of extremely good price stolen, remember to hire a detective to conduct a more thorough investigation. Ask the local police for suggestions and look online to discover a surprisingly rated detective employer.

Use an organization that specializes in finding lost and stolen objects. Try this as quickly as feasible. No longer in any case else has failed to produce consequences.

A Visual Demonstration – “How To Protect Your Guitar From Theft”

Here is a video from “Dan’s VLOG” about how to securely preserve your guitar and musical equipment and how to get it again.

Final Thoughts on How to Protect Your Guitar From Theft:

In this regard, you can use “Anti-theft Protection” as your top preference. Retaining your guitar secure is an issue of assessing your character’s state of affairs and taking all the steps required to defend it thoroughly. Constantly use not unusual feel and treat your guitar with the honor it deserves. Avoid the addiction of loaning out your guitar or taking needless risks.

When you have a “near-name” with a safety flaw, examine your mistake and take steps to correct the problem before it occurs again. It’s tons less complicated to properly safeguard your guitar than to try to get it to your lower back. If your guitar is stolen, it’s critical to do so immediately.

The faster you act, the more likely it’s miles that you get it returned. Have guitar photos, the serial variety, proof of buy receipt, and anything else you want in a file or pdf record. Hence, it can be received by the police and posted in the appropriate locations and online.

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