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Adventures in case shopping #1: I'm moving houses soon and need to store my guitars savely, so I'm looking to find about three more cases. I found a case on reverb and asked the seller about measurements. He asked what guitar I have and I sent him a picture. He answered very aggressively I was an idiot and even a blind man could see the case doesn't fit. To me, it looked like a perfect fit and the guitar is veeeeeery unusual. There's no way he knows anything about it. I then found out he's the infamous ebayer from Cologne who has horrible broken shit listed on ebay for years and is well known in several forums for his terrible behaviour and crazy prices.

Adventures in case shopping #2: I found a case for one of my acoustic guitars which has sort of an unusual size and doesn't fit in common cases for steelstring acoustics. The case is listed for auditorium size which might fit. It's in Utrecht, Netherlands. Asked the seller about measurements. He answered (very politely) I should best come to his store and see if the guitar fits. Utrecht is over 300km away from my place, the case is listed for 50€ and is repaired with duct tape.

Adventures in case shopping #3: I asked a seller in Berlin for measurements. He said he doesn't have a tape measure but all of his guitars fit. I asked what guitars, he said a steelstring acoustic, a classical guitar and a small electric. I said these guitars differ widely in size, couldn't he borrow a tape measure from the neighbours. He said his neighbour is an asshole but maybe the other one has one. Turned out the other one does not. He lives in fucking Kreuzberg were you have at least 20 neighbours in your house!

What's going on???

i don't even try with cases that don't list measurements. it's particularly relevant because i have some hard-to-fit guitars; the Guild Jetstar won't fit a Strat case though a Jazzmaster case works, and the Kalamazoo Oriole is almost too deep to fit a parlor guitar case. also, what functioning adult doesn't even have a ruler or a tape measure?

I used to live in Kreuzberg, too. I'm not sure there are any functioning adults at all, to be honest...

Reading some of the older comments about varnishing a tweed case... Years ago I shellacked a Fender knockoff tweed bass case, and the results are okay but not great. It came out with a very slight olive greenish tint. It looks blotchy, with variations in the darkness, possibly due to variations in how much adhesive there was underneath certain areas (maybe limiting how much shellac could be absorbed?) The shellacked tweed also doesn't resist scrapes, and just with normal careful light usage, the case got marked up in a few places where a hard plastic case wouldn't have blinked an eye. Also, the brown leather trim looks kind of weird now... brand new leather next to faux aged tweed. I heard you can use shoe polish to age the leather as well, but I decided to top putting more time and effort into the relic attempt. I don't remember exactly what shellac I used - I did this like 20 years ago - but I followed the online instructions that people were using to age a Tweed Fender Bassman combo reissue. 20 years later the case looks slightly better - the scrapes make it look older, and the color variations look like maybe the case got rained on. I also stopped caring what the case looks like. Relic results may vary based on who manufacturers the case? But you shouldn't expect a home-made tweed relic to look as good as a factory tweed relic.

It's good to read that another application of shellac might fix any scrapes or dings. Maybe someday I'll do that.