This past Friday I got a call from my local Guitar Center that my GC exclusive Pelham Blue SG Standard '61 in Pelham Blue arrived to the shop by FedEx and I immediately dropped everything and drove over to pick it up. They brought it out still in the shipping box from the back and we opened it up together right on the front desk, and the employee immediately yelled "OH NOOOO!" That's when I saw that the vibrola arm shifted positions in shipping right over one of the knobs and crushed it to pieces. Unfortunately, the knob pieces got pushed into the finish of the guitar and there is some damage going through the clear-coat into the paint, but not all the way to the wood. It is not really bad as you can see in the photos and if this were a used guitar I would have looked right past it. That said, on a guitar like this, at least for me, it should be mint coming from the factory. To the store's and employees' credit they immediately offered to get me a new one and told me I could take this one home in the meantime (45 day return period FTW) while I wait for the replacement to come in. Any blame here can be pointed to FedEx or the way Gibson packs their guitars 😄 GC has been great throughout the process!
I've been hesitant to play it much because I want to return it in the same condition it left the store, so it only has a few hours on the couch so far and I will wait for the replacement to play with my band. It plays and sounds great, though it does have some tooling marks that are typical on bound Gibson necks.
Here is an offer for anyone looking to buy this guitar that is also within drivable distance to eastern MA: Since it is still unclear of how many of this guitar will be available from GC or even if/when they will hit stores, I am offering to hand this guitar off to someone here once I exchange it back to GC for my replacement. You'd have to buy it directly from GC, but I am happy to arrange the day/time I will be exchanging it so someone could be right there after me to buy it from GC once my exchange transaction is completed. DM me if interested!
You can read more about how I ended up buying this guitar and more info on it here: https://www.reddit.com/r/Guitar/comments/1snoeim/comment/ohcr5a1/?context=3