Refurbished - Yamaha EG-112 Electric Guitar (no amp)

 Good But Needs Work
I got this guitar for my son as a Christmas present and found it has both good and bad points.

The good: Looks new, came with all parts, no scratches or rust. Everything works very well on the guitar with the exceptions noted below.

Excellent price for a beginner guitar.

The bad: Slight fret buzz (strings sometimes hit the frets up by the neck of the guitar), so the guitar will have to be adjusted to eliminate that. In my opinion, that adjustment should have been done before reselling it;

No manual of any sort included, and could not find one on the Yamaha site, so adjustment may be tricky;

Lastly, I agree with one of the other reviewers that the single box packaging is not enough protection for shipping this guitar.

 Great for me!
Ordered mine a few days before Xmas with free shipping and received it on the 23rd, bravo Amazon! Unfortunatly I did not receive my Rogue 2x12" 100w $150 amp from MusiciansFriend.com until yesterday. The guitar looks brand new and came with everything it was supposed to come with. One of the pickups has a small amount of rust but it is barely noticable. All and all it was a great price for what I was looking for and I didn't have to spend extra money on the small amp I didn't need. Instead I got a much bigger amp for almost the same price as the kit!

 I'm Very Happy With This Guitar, but...
I bought my refurbished Yamaha from a different website. When I placed my order, I thought I was getting a brand new guitar. I paid $40 more than Amazon charged because I thought I was getting something brand new. A few days later I checked the website and saw a refurbished notation had been added to the description. Needless to say, I was very apprehensive about what might arrive.

The guitar arrived with a huge REFURBISHED sticker on the box. Sigh. But when I opened the box and took the guitar out of the case I couldn't believe my eyes.

The guitar was beautiful but not an EG-112. What I received was an EG-112C2 with a black metal flake body, black pick guard, and black headstock. What a surprise! And, yes, I did recieve all accessories.

If the guitar hadn't been all black and so cool looking, I would have returned it and bought one from Amazon for a $40 savings. I think I just lucked out in getting that model. Or they may have sent me this one because I called to complain about the change in the description... Who knows?

The biggest problem I had was with the strings. The strings it came with were only so so. When I was in the process of restringing it with D'Addario strings, I couldn't get two of the original strings off the guitar. The bottoms of the strings were really jammed in there. I took the guitar to a local music shop and had to have a bit of work done on it to get the strings out. It took two men to figure out how to remove them without damaging the the guitar.

I could only find a few very minor dings and scratches on the body. No big deal. You'd really have to be looking for them in direct light to see them.

After getting the string problem resolved I found that the guitar sounds and feels great. With new strings and a couple effects pedals, the sound I get from this guitar is outstanding.

In the end...I'm very happy with my Yamaha guitar. Even if there are minor problems that need repaired, you cannot beat the price for an HSS guitar of this quality.

 It's not bad
After purchasing this guitar, I was warned to never buy a used guitar online, so I was pretty apprehensive in waiting for it to come. When it got here, it didn't seem that bad. I'm sorry for PH_7 who never got a cable. But mine came with a 9 foot cable, a set of allen keys and the Tremolo arm, which you screw onto the guitar. Although I was a little dissapointed in the guitar's body condition. By refurbished, I guess it means that they replaced certain parts. But my guitar had scratches on the frount, one of the pickup is rusty and the strings are a little old. But hey, it is a used guitar.
All in all, I'm pretty satisfied. I think it's a good guitar for a beginner who doesn't need a $700 fender to start on.

 Not Truly Refurbished
The Yamaha 112 has an excellent reputation as a beginner's guitar, and I looked to Amazon to pick one up. Amazon sells the full 112 beginner's kit, which is essentially the guitar, gig bag, guitar cable, amp, and pitch pipe. I already have an amp and tuner, so this refurbished model fit the bill -- a guitar, gig bag and cable for a reasonable price. I know repairing/refurbishing guitars in not really rocket science, as every pawn shop and music exchange manager can attest. I assumed that Yamaha was refurbishing customer returns and selling them through Amazon. Naturally I expected that Yamaha and Amazon would do the job right.

Well, I'm sad to report that the job was not done right on the guitar I received. A new Yamaha 112 comes with a chrome tremolo. The Amazon listing for the refurbished 112 confirms that the guitar comes with a tremolo. The guitar I received had NO tremolo. Instead, the guitar has a hole where the tremolo belongs. Nice and classy, huh? How did this get through quality control? I can imagine some teenager broke the tremelo off the guitar, returned it, and Yamaha (through Amazon) shipped it right back out -- to me!

The promised guitar cable was also missing. Just a gig bag and guitar with a missing tremolo. Also, although the package seemed to arrive in good shape, I was surprised to find the guitar has shipped without any outer packaging around the original box. Just 1/8" of cardboard and a few styrofoam spacers between the guitar and the harsh world of a UPS trailer.

Caveat emptor. Refurbished is subjective, it seems. Maybe you'll be lucky, and get all the parts Amazon says you will receive. I was not so fortunate.