Another day, another Facebook post that begins: “My guitar (fiddle/banjo/tuba) was stolen from my car last night. If anyone sees…”
My first thought is, “What was your guitar/fiddle/banjo/tuba doing alone in your car?”
Here are the typical excuses:
Excuse: “It was only for five minutes.”
Reality: That’s about four minutes longer than it takes the average smash-and-grab thief to break a window and run off with your possessions.
Excuse: “It was hidden under a pile of coats/newspapers/old McDonald’s wrappers.
Reality: Thieves actually can move things around and look for hidden treasures pretty quickly.
Excuse: “It was in the trunk.”
Reality: A lot of trunks are accessible through the back seat, or just with a crowbar. Trunks are safer than back seats, but they aren’t a guarantee against theft.
Excuse: “My banjo/guitar/tuba is too heavy to schlep around.”
Reality: It may be. Are you happy with the potential alternative? Have you considered taking up the piccolo instead?
Of course, even with safeguarding your instrument, it can still occasionally be vulnerable to theft. Here are some things you can do:
Hide a tracker in your case.
There are two types of trackers available – bluetooth and GPS/cellular. GPS trackers type will tell you exactly where your case is at any point, but frankly, they don’t have such great reviews at this time. They’re large, since they’re mostly used to track automobiles, and thus hard to hide in a fiddle or mandolin case; the battery life is short; and the cellular service can be expensive. (Of course, if you have a valuable instrument, spending on cellular service for tracking may be a good investment.) There may also be a new generation of them on the horizon; I’m keeping an eye out for future advances.
Bluetooth trackers operate with a short local range–often just a couple hundred feet. Obviously, this is not very useful for something that’s taken a long distance away. However, it will show you the last place it was known to be (according to my tracker, my fiddle was last seen at my house–I trust it’s still there). One tracker in particular, called Cube Pro, operates on crowdsourcing to find lost items. That is, you can send out an alert to the Cube community, and ask them to track a lost item for you. If someone is near your instrument, it will show up on their tracker and then they notify you of the coordinates where it appears to be. It’s not a perfect system, but it’s better than nothing, and affordable.
Keep the details of your instrument in a safe place.
First, good clear take photos of your instrument. Also keep records of anything you know about it: maker, year, dimensions, materials, appraisal records, etc. Keep all this information somewhere that you can access easily — whether it’s paperwork kept in a safe or safe deposit box, or online records you can access quickly. Don’t just keep digital records locally — put them into cloud storage. Hard drives and laptops have ways of failing, or getting stolen themselves.
Make sure there is identifying information in your case.
Sometimes thieves, not knowing what they have, or fearing getting caught, will abandon things they’ve taken. (“What, some crummy old violin? I thought it was going to be a laptop…”) Be sure that there is information in your case that will make it possible for it to be reunited with you if a good samaritan or the police find it. I put an i.d. tag on the handle, and information inside my case as well.
Get insurance.
This is, of course, an after-the-unhappy-fact option, but should the worst happen, at least you have some means to get another instrument. The rule of thumb seems to be if your instrument is worth $5,000 or more, it should be insured. Some homeowners’ policies will not cover instruments; if you aren’t sure if yours does, it’s time to check. Some will cover an instrument only if it’s inside your house, but not if you’ve taken it out to a gig. Again, check with your agent about the specifics. You may be able to request a rider to your current policy, or buy a separate one.
If you are a renter without insurance, or your homeowners’/renters’ insurance doesn’t cover your instruments, Heritage Insurance, along with several others, will. Strings magazine’s online site has a detailed article on how and where to insure your instruments. The benefit of insurance, beyond compensation for theft, is that if an instrument is damaged, you can be covered for repairs as well.
So, there you have it.
I trust you wouldn’t leave your kids or your pets in the car. Do me a favor, will ya? Don’t leave your instruments there, either.
