When you sell musical supplies on a marketplace like Reverb, Amazon, or eBay, one of your biggest challenges has to work out the way to ship musical instruments. Thanks to the burden, irregular size, and fragile nature of most instruments, they are often costly and difficult. Recently, ShippingEasy partnered with Reverb on brand new integration, so it looks like an ideal time to debate the way to ship musical instruments that are commonly sold on Reverb and other marketplaces!
Supplies to Ship Musical Instruments
No matter what instrument you’re shipping, whether it’s a brass instrument, woodwind, musical instrument, string instrument, guitar, keyboard, large instruments, or smaller instruments, there are some basic packaging materials you must wear in hand for your shipment.
- Plenty of newspaper or brown wrapping paper you’ll be able to crumple up
- Sturdy packing tape
- Appropriate-sized boxes
- Guitars pose a selected challenge thanks to their size and shape
- You can find guitar-sized packing boxes at a neighborhood guitar store (some give them away for free) and office supplies stores like Staples or Office Depot, otherwise, you could even try a neighborhood storage company
- As do many other marketplaces, Reverb carries 3-packs of guitar-sized boxes
- Consider double-boxing, if possible
- Bubble wrap
- Rubber bands
- Optional: don’t LAY FLAT stickers
According to multiple sources we’ve researched, avoid packing peanuts when shipping a guitar, and possibly other instruments, if you’ll find a much better option. Mess aside, unless you actually pack them in, they’ll shift and potentially not offer the amount of security you would like to stay your instruments safe. If you wish to use packing peanuts, try packing them in a very bag to stay them together, so use that as your packing.
Now, let’s get into some specifics.
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How to Ship Guitars
Shipping a guitar can convince be one among the foremost challenging thanks to its size specifications. That aside, you furthermore may worry about the strings catching on anything within the box (if it’s not during a guitar case), the neck getting warped or broken, the delicate nature of a guitar normally, the list goes on.
Let’s observe some important steps to organize your guitar and box for shipping.
- for the guitar/guitar case to take a seat on top of, create a bottom layer of crumpled newspaper or wrapping paper In the box
- to release tension, Loosen the strings slightly (not necessary to completely detune the guitar, just release the pressure)
- Use newspaper or microfiber towels to fill in loose space around the base of the guitar inside the case (if shipping in a very hard case) to stay it from sliding around
- Our research found two schools of thought when it involves the guitar head
- elevating the neck of the guitar with crumpled paper is suggested by some professionals, like Reverb
- Others suggest padding (not packing) paper slightly below the meeting point of the neck and therefore the head to avoid shock
- Still others suggest neither, so we are going to leave that up to you
- Reverb also suggests paper between the strings and also the frets
- Close the case and shake it a small amount to determine if you hear movement—if you are doing, add more padding of paper or towels to stabilize the guitar
Once the guitar is firmly packed into the case, it’s time to pack the case within the box. Since you’ve already created a bottom layer of crumpled paper within the box, place the case within the box. Liberally pack more paper around the open spaces, as tightly as possible. If done correctly, you ought to have a difficult time moving the case along with your hand.
After you’ve filled the empty spaces within the box, create a top layer as you probably did at the underside. Tape all edges firmly. You’ll consider adding don’t LAY FLAT stickers to every side of the box to avoid heavier boxes ending au fait top of the guitar box, potentially crushing it. Although your package is secured, we also recommend obtaining shipping insurance to safeguard your instrument.
How to Ship a Drum Set
Much like a guitar, when shipping a drum set, it’s important to fill all empty space and make buffer space to avoid damage from drops or collisions.
Reverb created an excellent video explaining all the small print of properly packing up your kits and shipping drums.
Many of the guidelines discussed for shipping guitars and drums should be applied after you ship musical instruments of all other shapes and sizes:
- Fill all empty space with newspaper or wrapping paper
- Secure and separately wrap pieces that would break off during transit
- Perform a “shake test” to form sure your instrument is securely packaged before taping the box closed and weighing it for shipping
How to Save once you Ship Musical Instruments
We found many that ship musical instruments defaulted to UPS, FedEx, and DHL (sendungsverfolgung DHL). If you aren’t keeping USPS in consideration, especially if you utilize a shipping solution like ShippingEasy to urge USPS Commercial shipping rates, you’ll be vastly overpaying.
Dimensional Weight
One thing you wish to stay in mind, particularly after you ship musical instruments that are larger, is that your shipping costs are also calculated supported Dimensional Weight. This suggests the shipping cost is predicated more on the quantity of space the package would take informed a truck instead of its actual physical weight.