Fundraiser

In 2009, we launched this site with some big plans for our business. Our first step was to develop our social network, and build relevant information to attract visitors. We have been working on our mission of returning musical instruments to their rightful owners, bringing awareness to the counterfeit issue, and helping retail businesses avoid operating loss in our scam warnings and reference materials. We’ve heard from a number of you about instruments you’ve lost years ago and still miss, and we’ve seen a couple of recoveries. For what we’ve done, we feel very successful. But it is time to make this work even better.

In 2010, it is time to take the next step, and develop a larger network of professional followers and develop our web application. This we application will do much more than what the site currently can, including:

• Creating user accounts for individuals and businesses
• Automatic notification to local businesses surrounding a theft via email
• Improved and confidential scam alerts for the retail industry
• Automatic uploading of listings for individuals and businesses
• secure off-site data storage for businesses and individuals
• Used gear pricing guide based on on-line auctions
• Law enforcement access
• iPhone and Android apps

And many more features we shouldn’t get into just yet. We need your support to help develop this application. We are looking for seed money to help get this going, coming to the very manageable amount of $5,000. Now, we have almost 2,000 followers on twitter. If half of those gave $5 apiece, we’d be there. But we also have followers on Facebook and more people find is every day. The button below will go to our paypal address. If you feel this is a worthy cause, and if you can spare $5, please consider helping us out.

Just wanted to let you know we have a new feature to the a gearwiki. You can access it by links on the right, or at http://gearwiki.gearsecure.net. The gearwiki will become a reference site for knowledge for consumers and retailers looking for guidance on purchases.I know from experience that when a rare piece of gear comes into a store looking to sell a piece and the salespeople want it for it’s scarcity but don’t know what to price it at or buy it at, determining the right pricing can be near impossible.

Also, we’d like to get as much concrete and specific information to help authentication efforts. More and more, the public is asked to distinguish between the genuine article and a copy. I even saw counterfeit iPhones this week, so we know electronics are not immune to counterfeiting.

If you have any knowledge to contribute, please help make this as large a reference site as possible.

I added a custom Google Search Engine for our visitors to use. You can see it in the upper right hand corner of our main page.

Stolen gear most often goes to a retail store or pawn shop, or on-line in a classified or auction site. Listing with us is a good first step. We spread the word to many people who are buying instruments and may just see it on-line. This search engine is a good second step in your search. It will search from a targeted group of sites in which a stolen item may turn up. Often these sites will not give you a serial number, and there may be many to look through. This is just one more tool for you to use.

To get the best results, be as specific as possible. Say “Les Paul Silverburst Supreme” Instead of “Les Paul”. Adding in a location may help narrow your search, but it may make it too narrow as well. We suggest you try both ways. Most of these services will not display the serial number, but you can contact the buyer to verify that information. Be smart, tell them you want to know what year it was made, not that you think it could be your stolen gear. Once you have entered your search, you will be directed to a google results page, and away from the GearSecure site.

While you’re there you might want to click some ads. It will help us make a little money around here.

We will be working to expand and refine this search. If you would like to recommend another site to search, feel free to drop a line to bryan@gearsecure.net

By including these sites in this search engine, we do not wish to imply that any of these sites are complicit in trafficking in stolen goods in any way.

This search engine will look at results from:

eBay
Craigslist
Kijiji.com
used.guitarcenter.com
axebay.com
gear-vault.com
Netinstruments.com
usedflutes.com
stringnet.com
Musicbrokers.com
usedmusicgear.com
Casiotom.com/ads/
musicgoround.com

You can read the article here. In 1999, Sonic Youth had their van and all of the equipment in it stolen. You can imagine the kind of stuff they had in there, including the unique custom built Moonlander by Yuri Landman. Some of it is, I’m sure, irreplaceable.

Well, one of those guitars has been found, ten years later.

I actually sold a couple pedals to Jim O’Rourke who was made a member of the group just before this incident, an MXR Blue Box and a DOD Gonkulator. Let’s hope that this leads to more for them.

There is a link to a full list and discussion of the gear. I don’t know if any of the numbers work still, but I’d be remiss if I don’t post it.

Subject: URGENT/SY GEAR STOLEN!
From: krakkak@aol.com (Krak kak)
Date: Sun, 04 July 1999 03:46 PM EDT

URGENT/SY GEAR STOLEN!
july 4 1999
LA/Orange County

Hello all, this is Lee from Sonic Youth here, we have had a fucked up situation come down on us over this last night–a brand new Ryder truck parked at a Ramada Inn in Orange County with ALL OF OUR GEAR IN IT was STOLEN! All of our guitars, tools, amplifiers, drums, synth — EVERYTHING. We are fucked, both for the show tonight at the “This Ain’t No Picnic” here in Orange Co., and for shows upcoming this week in Austin and Santa Fe. Our guitars are all mostly older and either very modified and/or fucked up/beat up. They are unmistakably ours, as are some of the amps, including my own 60s Fender Concert with the red/blue/yellow “Jasper Johns-style” target on it.

We are asking ANYONE with ANY INFORMATION about this to get in touch with us as soon as possible by calling our man Aaron Blitzstein in New York City at 212.343.2314, or via email to “Mascaras66@aol.com”. Call collect if you want to. Please no pranks, all, this is really serious–all the gear we’ve used to write our last few LPs worth of stuff, instruments used for songs old and new which if truly lost will mean those songs will be lost forever.

Help us out if you can, there will be a reward for any info, I’m sure. All our road cases, etc, are fully marked up with our name on them, the gtrs are so unusual that they won’t really be too hard to mistake. ANY info at all will be appreciated. Continue reading

We were interviewed on the Six String Bliss podcast this week. Here’s a link to the site. We’re in show # 147.

Check it out in itunes

Things are moving right along here at gearsecure. We have found a key person for our plans and will be updating the site soon, I hope. We have a lot of plans for this site and this company that go well beyond just listing stolen equipment, but I can’t lay them out for you just yet.

Searching for followers on Twitter.com is turning out to be our best marketing tool for the moment, but you can also find us at myspace and facebook. If you belong to any social networks you’d like to see us on, leave us a comment, and we’ll investigate it.

As far as personal contacts go, I also do some podcasts in my alternate life as a writer, and every time I post a new one, I use the music of a follower. So far I’ve used Martin Fletcher, his other band The Girl with the Replaceable Head, Derrick McKee, and Brian Casel. I have enjoyed all of the music, and have a few others in the queue, Chris Huff, and a couple of other contacts. I also helped Telling on Trixie find a backline for a show in Chicago, which I hope to be able to attend. As we build our network, we hope to become more of a source for this kind of information as a service to our musician customers and business owners. I’m also happy to promo our musician followers as much as I can in my podcasts. It is the least I can do in exchange for the early support. Michael and I have a lot of creative projects that we are pursuing in our free time (like we have any of that), and we would like to support our followers in all of these endeavors. If you’d like to participate, pay close attention to our twitter feed, as that is the most likely place for us to drop a line at this point.

There are two things you can do that would help us out quite a bit. First, tell all of your musician friends about us. The strength of our site is in how many people we can reach, and even in this early form, we can really help some people out. We would also like to be in the network of stores and studios that you may frequent.

Second, we need a small amount of money to help us get going. This would help pay for some business costs, and marketing to help expand our reach in the real world. Money is tight everywhere in these times, and so we can break it down this way: 1,000 people x $20 =$20,000. Math doesn’t get any easier than that.$20 is a fairly small price to pay to build a network intent on helping musicians and businesses. We have a donate button on the side of the page here, and this handy comic book to help illustrate the point.

The financial crisis has made times much harder for many people, and with this desperation, there is a definite upturn in theft as people try to steal their way to making rent, but this has the effect of depriving a professional or a business of a living. Let’s keep instruments in the hands of the right people.

Thanks,

Bryan at gearsecure.net

Our network is growing. You can now follow us at Twitter.com/gearsecure and on myspace.com/gearsecure.

I hope to have facebook, and a few other similar things going soon.

This could be the most important page on this whole blog. I am working to start a company that would help musicians recover stolen equipment, but funds between myself and my partner in this are very limited. Here is a little comic about the company. If you have a few dollars to spare, consider donating or investing. If you can think of another way you might be able to help, or interested in working with us, send an email to bryan at hiddenbadger.com