Reverb: Buy & Sell Music Gear Reviews

by Evanseesred

Downgrading a star because somehow this is still an issue, making Reverb completely useless if you’re looking to sell gear locally. Come on folks! Didn’t Etsy buy you?? They have this totally figured out. Could you get on the horn with their tech team to help you out?

If you’re looking to buy small gear through the mail, you’re gonna love this app. If, however, you’re looking for someone in your area that has what you need, sadly, this app is not your tool. Somehow they’ve decided Craigslist is still best for local searches. Yes, this app does have a button on their app to search locally. But, almost laughably, that feature doesn’t let you search for specific items. So, in other words, you’re welcome to browse EVERYTHING at once in your local area. But if you’re wanting to see who is selling, say, a piano in LA and not Tulsa? Nope. Craigslist is your best bet. It’s perplexing because Etsy is SO good at this, allowing you to easily search for items within an area. After they bought this app it looked as if they could bring their UX knowledge to the this app team. Alas, Craigslist continues as the undisputed winner in local search for music gear, despite this app having the ability to solve this in a weekend with a good UX designer. Oh well! this app, if you ever decide you wanna get into local search, I’ll be using Reverb constantly for my studio.

by AO3627

Awful! We would’ve made more money at guitar center and that’s sad. We listed a fender guitar for $50 with $50 shipping. Once the guitar was purchased the label calculator said the cost would be $22 to ship. Once we went to purchase the label (literally 5 minutes later) it said it would be 53 to ship! There was an option on the same page for $5 for this app’s shipping label and protection. Based on Reverb , we were under the impression we would pay the $5 to ensure we had insurance on the guitar and pay for an actual label at the UPS store. We went ahead and purchased what we thought was a $5 protection plan under this app. We verified that did not have a $53 on our account (to avoid buying two labels) and went to UPS to purchase a label. The woman told us it was a $29 charge and we thought that was the end of it. Well turns out we have to pay this app $58 plus their seller fees and the $29 from UPS is just for a box! I called to speak to a this app representative to explain our confusion and ask why I didn’t have a $53 charge pending on my account. He said I will get a bill statement and then pay this app! If the charge would have been there I guarantee we would NOT have kept the process going. We would have called to void that charge and canceled the order for the guitar on this app. Protect yourself and don’t give your instruments away for nothing. Don’t sell on this app.

by FrontLineAssembled

Original: Had a good time buying and selling on this app. Now the company has blocked me for failing to pay a bill I am contesting. They are not working with me and refuse to call me to get things fixed. Sellers and buyers beware, what they claim to be isn’t how they treat their customers. If you like your money, go elsewhere, there is no respect for it from their company.
Update: had a surprise bill added on to my account for “shipping label update” for $1.08 six months ago. Now my account is suspended again for a surprise and now contested charge. They fixed the first one, now I get to see if they’ll fix this. I got the no hassle insurance both times. I am concerned with attaching another card to the account because they charge with no bill, email or contact. It’s only a dollar, but I bet they’d do it just as easily with $5k. I’m almost done with this shady business and lack of respect for time and money.

by Cassidyturb

I like selling on this app but sometimes payouts take longer than their 1-3 business day perod. I’ve sold about 15 items through this app. Most payouts come within 3 days of shipping out but I’ve noticed that when the sale amount is over 1k it can take a while. A recent sale I did took 11 business days to get my money. I wrote support and they responded with what seemed like the same answer to the FAQ area on their site regarding payouts taking 1-3 days. My initial message to them clearly stated that it’d been 10 days since I’d shipped the item out. I replied with basically the same message and was told I needed to give them a voided check... then the next day I got payout. Not sure why so complicated.

Sometimes I prefer Ebay. Bigger audience, bigger business. I’d rather support an up and coming business like this app but in 10 years of eBay use I’ve never had any issues with getting my funds in a reasonable amount of time.

by DilRyeMaster

Why did we take this out of Reverb ? It was super useful as both a buyer and seller. I have to open up the share link in my browser to actually see it. So it’s not that it’s gone altogether, just removed from Reverb for our convenience? I’d prefer not to have to have to use two different methods of interaction, especially when it was there before. Maybe it’s hidden in there? Well, I can’t find it.

Similarly, the shipping calculator is only accessible when actually listing a product.. why? Again, I have to open a browser and search for “this app shipping calculator” to find a version of the tool that doesn’t make me jump through the hoops.

One more thing... The first item I listed seemed to let me select the the actual item as it is in this app’s database and filled in all the necessary info for shipping. When it came time to purchase the shipping label it was super easy. Now it doesn’t do that? Every item since has asked for the HxWxL and weight. I like to have the shipping place pack it up with proper materials so I can never be sure if the label I purchase from this app will be correct. I don’t want to overpay but I also don’t want it to be incorrect and have to buy another one.

by Doctor Robotnic

Great place to find instruments, even if some sellers think they have gold, while others buyer la won’t pay but dog turds for really good guitars and complain or write scathing lies, but like any public exchange, lots of scammers and rippers, but easy to filter out.
As a seller you will have many people try to scam you and keep your gear after intentionally breaking it or complaining about condition. The do it just to steal( or attempt to), and I will say this app favors buyer a little too much on such reports. Maybe it’s because they make money on the seller, so the system is biased against buyer pretty heavy. At the least, it feels that way. I always recommend item to be listed “as is, no warrantee” and insure it. Let the shipping company deal with breaks and scratches or made up scams. That way the receiving party can be held accountable for constant claims and intentional breaks for profit.
Otherwise, if you like instruments and actually play (resellers who just collect and don’t play are the Bane of late stage capitalism and drive up prices for musicians) this app will make your addiction absolutely the purest insatiable desire.
If you start shopping on this app, you will have so many instruments your wife and/or girlfriend(s) will leave, while on the other side your husband and boyfriends will be forever endeared.

by Enderisnotmyrealname

Generally this is a great app - my only gripe is that notifications aren’t configurable enough. I don’t like having alerts/badges on my app icons so I usually either respond to them right away or configure Reverb to not display ones that aren’t important to me; this app notifications are very important when I’m selling things so I want to leave them on, but I don’t like being prompted for feedback on transactions where I’ve sold an item but it hasn’t even been delivered to the buyer yet. That transaction isn’t over yet! And there’s no way to turn that notification trigger off, or clear the badge once it’s triggered. That’s annoying. I’ve mentioned this to customer service and they don’t seem interested in doing anything about it, so.... ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ Minus a star I guess.

by GuitarPlayin'Fool

this app has always been the best place to find a deal on music equipment. However, I am starting to see trouble ahead. After Etsy took the reins this app lost that personal touch that Chicago Music Exchange provided. this app has sold out unfortunately. I understand why the creators left. They never expected this to be such a hit, and was admittedly overwhelmed. Since the change of guard we’ve seen a fee hike, transparency is not strong, support is becoming difficult to receive, surprise fee’s being added for “processing”?? What really bothers me is now tax is being imposed upon used items. None of the above is good signs for how the future of this app is going to look. This used to be my first and last stop for all things music. Now there is no driving factors keeping me around. I want this to succeed, but this business model is a fast sinking ship. I hope something changes before this place is a barren shell of what it used to be.

One last thing.. I have mentioned this to support more than a few times but this bug still persists… Please fix the feedback shuffle bug!!! It’s so frustrating trying to read through a shops feedback then all of the sudden the page jumps to a completely random spot, thus losing my place down the list.

by Lamar.Fandango

I keep wanting this app to get it right. The major hassle is that they allow sellers to post junk search terms and file junk guitars under the brand of the parent company, but they don’t allow buyers to “exclude” those terms. Every rookie selling a Squier junker labels it a “Fender Squier”. There are separate categories for Fender and Squier, so this app allows garbage search terms. Fair enough. It says “by Fender” on the headstock. But for the love of god, allow me to exclude the term Squier from my search. EBay does it because it works. So either stop Squiers from being posted under Fender or allow searchers to exclude garbage brands.

The second screw up is in their “price reduction” notice. It isn’t clear how to do that. Hey this app, how about a 10% off button, or at least some confirmation? You know, something like “Are you sure you don’t want to knock an additional X dollars to get to 10%?”

by Hesaidpow

It seems to me that the “customize feed” button should allow me to....I don’t know.....customize my feed. Except when I click it I am only given the option to remove or view a previously selected list that I was not given any notice of reason for selecting items. I didn’t even get to sign up yet when I selected what I thought was a category of products to search so of course I selected only one category. Simple mistake I’ll just click the “customize feed” setting and add all of the other categories to the list. Oh wait, I can’t. I can only remove just the one category I was forced to choose before I even created a profile. Reverb is a great platform with so many well designed features so how is it that one of the most obvious and first features included is the least user friendly?

by Needle And Groove

This is a great app if you’re in the market for a used instrument. The buyer protection is a great peace-of-mind feature. The interface and layout of everything is very intuitive and straightforward. Its simple design makes navigating Reverb easy and painless, unlike eBay, which can feel cluttered. However, this app is nuts if they think I’m going to be selling anything substantial on here with a seller fee of 5%. At double the selling fee of eBay, people are crazy to sell on Reverb. 5% may not sound like a lot but when you’re selling a $1000 guitar, that’s $50 out of your pocket, and if you offer free shipping, that’s another $30-$40. This is all before the payment processing fees. All together, you’re dinged almost 8% in fees (7.7%). Sorry, I’m not looking to lose money. I’ll be doing my selling on eBay.

by GunjaBeans

this app quickly turned into the number one online music store. It is the best place to find used gear anywhere in the world actually.

Their App, I gave 4 stars because 01 it can be glitchy at times 02 their search engine is too specific, and 03 I’d like to have saved searches that I could be alerted for when new listings pop up.

The main glitch I find in Reverb is when you are filtering your search, and then sorting, it will say no results, when there definitely are results. Usually closing Reverb and reopening fixes this but it can be a pain or downright misleading if you don’t know this is an issue.

What I mean by their search engine being too specific is, if you mistype feMder Stratocaster instead of “Fender” or GiVson instead of “Gibson” it will say, “Wow that is really rare, no results found” or something to that effect.
Unlike every other modern search engine that will intelligently realize you made a typo and say “showing results for X, if you want to search for the mistyped thing click here” you have to type exactly what you want. Well, what if the person selling the item mistyped? What if there was some little nuance that you were unaware of like a Gretch BroadKaster (spelled with a k) drumset?

Overall Reverb is very good. Just fix those issues and add a way to save a search and be alerted for new listings and I’ll give it 5 stars...

by Cheerio101n

It really is. Sellers make a real effort to answer questions and get back in a reasonable time. This isn’t perfect, but its very good. The larger galleries mean no excuses here for not clarifying details. Many serious players vend gear on this app because of the more gear literate user base - and aforementioned ease of listing and showing the buyer details. Apps are rarely as full featured as a website, but this one comes very close. The “seller template” is very well organized and definitely more user friendly than some others. Search filters are also well organized. Tech support is currently the achilles heel of Reverb. Many support techs seem to have been laid off, so responses to queries are quite slow, and phone support is non existent. The five stars is for ease of use, efficient transaction billing; and thoughtful display and browsing options.

by IHateStratsDotCome

I found this app awhile back so you can call me an early adopter. Since joining, I’ve bought and sold over 200 pieces of gear, largely for a profit. Synths, guitars, low-end mics, and of course pedals.

The transaction history that they provide for nearly every product under the sun is super helpful, both to make sure I’m getting the best deal on a buy or how to price what I’m flipping (sometimes I land deals on Craigslist locally, list it on this app, and make some money to help me get the thing I really want). I’m always buying used too. Not sure why anyone would buy a new piece of gear at this point considering how many used options there are on this app and beyond for WAY less money.

For the most part the sellers I’ve bought from are friendly and open to offers. I’ve only encountered a few sour grapes. Sometimes people low-ball me on my listings which is annoying (though, I do it too...LOL) but I recently learned about a feature where you can automatically decline offers under 70% of asking price which is pretty great.

All in all, I continue to be impressed with Reverb and the site in general. The Feed is super addictive once you build it out and the customer support has always been responsive and pleasant. Recommended for any musician or collector.

by MarqR

this app is an excellent service with a great app. It enables both individuals and stores to sell music equipment easily and effectively. For customers, it provides an easy to understand UI, ways to message sellers, make offers, or simply buy equipment for the asking price. There’s also a rating for both buyers and sellers to use to establish reputations, and share experiences. It is still a social human experience that has the potential for misinformation, but my experience apart from one purchase (ironically my first one from an individual, and we are still in the process of working out my issues amicably), have been very positive.

I highly recommend both the this app app and service. The title of my review is ironic - I have found lots of intriguing equipment for excellent prices, and several items I thought were no longer available, and the danger is from me to my bank account. 😬

by SurfMunkey

Only reasons for 4 instead of 5 stars is that when you “Watch” an item that you have clicked on to see the description it does not also “Star” that item in your feed. An item you click on to see the description and then decide to follow should also “Star” that item in your feed. As of now, you are not sure if the item in your feed is something you’ve already “Watched”.

Also, if you are scrolling through your feed, many times, for no apparent reason, the feed will recycle, and you will have to scroll through the same items you’ve already seen at least once, sometimes more than once. Just an annoyance, doesn’t really affect the listings. But kind of buggy.

by Mostly Reverend Kim

this time, it was a stevie ray vaughn styled bass guitar strap for my old p bass. shopping on this app always does the trick for me, without the need of “going to the mall,” for which i have always been too old. the variety of stuff here is unlike any i can find at any of my local music shops - which i do frequent - but as a leftie, the options are minimal, at best. with this app, i have literally a world of local music shops, as well as countless musician’s private stashes, from which to choose.
you guys have fueled my addictions well.
thanks to all who have contributed along the way, and especially today, the folks at “new york fine vintage music instruments,” who helped me arrive at a satisfying price for this item.
it’s just what i needed. they’re now one of my favorites; you should check them out, too. if they can put a big old smile on the face of this old iowa hippie, think what they can do for YOU!!

by Glockenspiel2323

this app makes it SO EASY to not only find whatever musical “gear” that one is looking for, they will tell you about similar kinds of stuff (I don’t think that I would’ve even known about the Alesis Sample Pad Pro, which I just bought, if they hadn’t pointed it out to me while I was searching for “Electronic Drums”)
They also compare prices, which helps tremendously when someone, like myself, is on a “tight budget”.
It also helps that they are a trustworthy & reputable business on-line that stand firmly on customer satisfaction, a business model that, unfortunately, is becoming harder & harder to find these days.
Lastly, I have to say that I love the fact that they have created a place where a person can also advertise & sell their own gear without having to resort to eBay (or other on-line “auctions”) or places like Craigslist, where a seller can only hope to do so locally.
Bottom line: I LOVE this app. Whether you are a buyer or a seller (or both) I recommend this app highly!! 🎼🐵🙈🙉🙊🎶

by Maddyf3rguson

I recently decided to stop selling on this app. I’ve been selling with them for a number of years, since before the acquisition by Etsy, and it’s changed quite a bit. The market is flooded with new buyers and sellers, but remains severely male dominated which I suppose female dominated Etsy couldn’t care less about. As a non-binary femme, I faced issues of micro aggressions with buyers and sellers alike. Reverb became increasingly difficult to navigate inventory as a buyer. As a seller, I dealt with what I strongly suspect was gender based harassment from buyers that when I contacted support about, had to endure a ridiculous, time consuming, mainly unsupportive ordeal to resolve.

All of this considered I see no benefit to this app compared to other selling platforms anymore. They need to improve Reverb for sellers and buyers alike, allow blocking (even eBay has this feature!) and take reports of harassment more seriously. Until those things happen I won’t be using this app anymore.

by Medusy

Reverb is great for buying and finding the gear that you want, but not so much for selling. I attempted to sell a guitar pedal, so I set up my PayPal and got a deal that I accepted. I received several emails form this app telling me to confirm my paypal, worth no instruction how to do so. I later received an email telling me that my account would be placed under review if I did not verify within 24 hours. Still, they have not helped me at all. 24 hours later, my sale is cancelled by this app, my account is under review, and I cant buy or sell anything at all. I called and emailed them multiple times with hopes for instructions, but all that they told me was that I needed to email paypal and ask them to confirm my this app payments. So, I sent an email to paypal customer support, who told me that I should have received instructions from this app giving me an email link. I never got the link. After a couple more days, my account was deleted and I was not able to make a new account.

by Mike Hord

My son sold a guitar and when the customer got it he decided that he didnt want it because it had been repaired. This is a 70’s model bass guitar. My son bought it broken and had it restored. Parts had to be fabricated because they dont make them anymore. The guitar worked and played well. My son posted videos of himself playing it. The buyer wanted his money back and sent the guitar back broken. He had sent a picture showing the guitar when it was not broken . Either the customer broke it or the guitar was damaged during shipping back to my son. this app did pay for the repair but they are back charging him and basically rewarding the buyer for breaking the guitar. this app should have made the customer keep the guitar. So if youre in the market to buy people good guitars and breaking them so you can get your money back this app is the store for you

by BrokenBuyer

Had 2 low trust issues trying to purchase instruments this week. As a buyer, I agree to the terms and conditions of the site where I agree to make payment if I submit an offer. Makes sense, right? Well, after I paid for an item, the seller backed out because they did not want to pay the credit card fees. The buyer wanted to make a direct payment with me, for which this app support said I would lose buyer protection. Even after support knew what the seller did, no corrective action was taken. Each buyer and seller agrees to terms and conditions on this app. Another seller retraction experience happened to me. We were looking to purchase an instrument for our daughter’s graduation today. We were at her ceremony when the seller must have decided I was not responsive enough for her. I had 24 hours to respond and yet the seller could not wait a few hours. This site delivers minimal trust to buyers.

by Alexander.jled

I actually go to this app for the articles. Before anything else out there, I check this app for Gear Reviews, and I'm an AVID fan of the Series articles/videos like Synth Sounds Of, How To Sound Like, Potent Pairings, etc.

My problem is that with the latest update, you can't access most of these. Also, now that videos are sorted by categories, you have the SAME VIDEO showing up in multiple categories. And it's not like you can just scroll past it all to find what you're looking for, because the categories only show a limited amount of videos (instead of going farther back).

I'd love to see this portion of Reverb improved, or a whole app created by itself just to access this one portion of this app, SEPERATE from the buy/sell portion of the site (similar to the this app LP app)

by John Jarbone

No longer do I, or anyone else for that matter has to be confined to limited selection of gear and pay prices that are jacked up, I’ve been shopping for all my gear on this app! Anything that a studio owner and a Pro gigging guy could dream of is here, all the vintage gear you've read about from all your hero’s and favorite albums are at your finger tips! And brand spanking new gear! Not to mention reverbs gear videos and reviews, articles and even their own line of low cost products..”XLR cables are to die for btw” No more searching high and low city to city state to state, it’s a couple of clicks away.... done! delivered to your door! Saved time, gas wear and tear on the car and no stress! What more can anyone ask for?

by Thedanpratt

This is the best place for musicians to find used gear (and new gear too). Most of us are either musicians or shop owners and I have literally found everything I have searched for. The setup makes it super easy to make offers and negotiate back and forth and the use of PayPal makes me feel secure. My favorite part so far was one of the sellers asking me about my pedalboard after I bought a pedal from. And finally, Reverb is actually worth your time. this app took everything about their great website and gave it superpowers when they coded Reverb .

Okay I’ll give one downside. It makes it waaaay too easy to drool over new gear that I probably don’t need.

by Jdsivley

I have never had a problem and have bought numerous items through this app; however, I recently bought an amplifier that shipped broken to me. The buyer even bought the shipping protection this app offers and the process has been a huge pain both in returning my money back to me and response time from this app. Highly recommend not paying for the protection and staying away from this app.

(Update) To update this review, this app has apologized for the delay in my refund and has compensated me for the inconvenience. Wish this would have been the case at the start of the return but better late than never.

by Adam Android

Real musicians selling things at great deals. You wont get this kind of customer service on ebay. this app has created a marketplace for your gear and you can now buy/trade/upgrade with everything you have. The reward system they have for quick, honest, sales (preferred seller)
Makes it so easy to buy with confidence and most of the regular guys on here are better sellers than the actual music stores. This SHOULD be your go-to first place to check for literally everything. Unless you like paying retail for something that is worth half what you paid for it by the time you take it home.

by Stevie DeLuxe

After being blown off again by GC NOLA for trying to negotiate a better price on a used guitar, I was treated like a first class bona fide customer by Sam Ash Raleigh! I got a great price and they made another sale.
Took about 10 minutes, didn’t have to stand around waiting for an arrogant know it all to tell me, with the way he treated me, that looking for a better price at their store was not gonna happen! He would have had a sale if he had met me in the middle, or even close
Thanks to this app for providing a platform where buyers and sellers can happily do their thing!
Thanks to Sam Ash, too!