If you are buying mail-order, and send something back because of a cosmetic issue, I've wondered if the guitar you ship back gets labeled as a "blem/2nd" or if it just goes out to some other buyer as "new."
I think the place that the analogy between guns and Gibsons fails is that you can have a blem Gibson that otherwise is "the one." The feel and sound of a guitar, to me, are more important than minor blems. I'd rather have one that is "it," but has a minor blem than one that is cosmetically perfect but doesn't have the sound or feel. You risk sending back a guitar that you love to play and which sounds great, and getting a replacement which is cosmetically perfect, but feels or sounds dead.
Of course, I've had MANY Strats of all vintages, several Les Pauls of various vintages, and I always end up coming back to my well-worn SG. No matter how perfect the others were cosmetically, they just didn't speak to me.
BTW - did you ever try the LP Faded DC Special? It's a double-cutaway slab LP, slim-taper neck, w/2 P90s. They were around $600 new when they came out. They rocked.
at MF, they don't. I received rejected products sold to me at full price.
I know the analogy is not spot on, but my point is that I dont understand why people pay a bunch of cash for something they consider to be imperfect and then complain about it rather than dealing with the vendor, dealer, etc?
A lot of these guys say "i didnt see it until I got home, but now i'm completely disappointed. I spent 37 years saving for it and now my dream is ruined. i can't believe ______'s QC is sooooo bad!!"
1) did you contact the dealer? no.
2) did you contact the manufacturer? no.
3) did you try to use this issue as a haggling point? no.
4) did you get butthurt and whine on the interwebz? absolutely.
and what really kills me, are the guys who have such strong feelings, but buy a second rifle, gun, whatever from the company they have no faith in.