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Thanks to Kuba for this most interesting link to Greg Vail's site warning about Dave Gaurdala's many scams. I had heard rumours about this but had never really gotten the whole story. Seems Dave has fled the country and is running various cons on saxophonists around the world. Dave ev
en sold the rights to make mouthpieces under his name to a bunch of different people for fifteen thousand dollars a pop. He also promises large shipments of vintage horns that never arrive. Greg Vail, a fairly well know recording artist, was taken for over $20k by Dave. I also know another guy who I have sold mouthpieces to, he fell for the same scam and lost $20k. I have heard that Gaurdala is now running the same type of scam with photographic equipment.Most of Dave's scams start with an email, WATCH OUT!!
I always thought his horns and mouthpieces sucked myself.
Dave Gaurdala scam site
14 comments:
Thanks for taking a minute to post this bro! You have a nice BLOG running with good traffic. I have seen a lot of hits to the Scam site since your post - very cool.
The Scam site has my story and all the details up until I went online in February with a few little updates - www.DaveGuardala.net. The Scam BLOG has the latest stories coming in from all over the world - www.Guardala.net
Thanks again for letting your world know about Guardala Scams.
SAXBOY Greg Vail
Thank you Greg for taking the time to put your story out there. Sorry that you lost so much $$$.
I always thought Dave was a scammer. Especially when he started charging over $700 back in the early 90's for his Brecker models. Shameless price gauging and taking advantage of Brecker's name. I believe his association with Brecker probably made it easier for him to pull off his later scams.
Rule #1:
If a deal SEEMS too good to be TRUE, guess what? IT IS. Don't go for it.
Rule #2:
ALWAYS follow Rule #1--ALWAYS!!!
...a question is, if it's a real Dave Guardala...
Was it the real Dave Guardala? I have staked my whole life on that fact. If it were not, I would be in very big trouble.
I knew Dave Guardala for a decade or more. ALso, many of the other victims of these scams had known Dave since High School or since the very start of the Mouthpiece development.
Dozens of people that knew Dave really well for a very long time can not all be wrong. It was Dave. I bet my life on it.
SAXBOY
This has been a tough issue for the Sax On the Web (SOTW) site. It seems no matter how reputable the source there is always another 'reputable' source that says something else.
And then the masses, whether they know anything or not cry foul because it is hear say to them. I really don't know what to think, but I think most savvy consumers will stay far, far away from this fellow's deals.
Gandalfe,
You know what I say?
Here is Dave's contact information. Give him a call and see how many great saxes you can buy really cheap.
Dave Guardala’s Phone Number –
011-49-160-9222-5855
My Cell phone registered the following #’s when Dave called –
+49-69-2573-9704
+49-69-257-397
The number used to FAX Dave –
011-49-69-2710-3611
The email addresses I got from Dave Guardala -
dguardala@yahoo.com
DGMp1@aim.com
Dsg9727@aim.com
DGMp1@aol.com
If Dave has his way, this will not be hear-say to anyone in the world.
Call today for a once in a lifetime deal. Call Dave Guardala
This Guardala thing is pretty depressing, really. I remember Jey Clark (r.i.p.), saxophone mouthpiece customizer extraordinaire, talking about him in the late nineties. His mouthpieces had gone from something like $300/each to $775, as was mentioned on this site.
He had one that we tried out, some type of Brecker model, and it played really easily, just free-blowing but with a really bright, unpleasant tone. We basically concluded that he had something, if it would be possible to darken them up.
But Jey told me that he was a pretty strange guy, almost impossible to deal with, but that he had figured out how to use CNC technology to work on mouthpieces, something that Jey had started to investigate himself.
I guess, that, although I never really liked his mouthpieces, it seems to me like the guy had quite a bit of talent and ingenuity, and I don't really understand why someone like that wouldn't go down that path, and perfect a reasonable variety of mouthpieces and sell them for some reasonable rate.
I heard that he'd gone into pretty heavy debt with the CNC equipment and that was why he charged so much for the mouthpieces. But was it this overblown ego that caused him not to realize his potential and basically turn into the worst kind of shyster in the world??
Plus, on some basic level, he must either have an extremely idiotic side, or have cojones the size of a Montana bull moose, because wouldn't anyone with half a brain imagine that someone might have some kind of gangster relative, or just get so pissed off that they turn into someone like Robert Deniro's character in Taxi Driver and hunt him down and kill him??
Personally, no capicce, is he shooting dope, huffin' glue, smokin' ice?? It's one of the few times that I would like to just help the FBI bust his ass.
Here's what CNC is all about:
CNC Defined
CNC technology was developed in the United States in the 1950's for the US Air Force by metalworking machine tool builders. It was a major advance in the ability of machines to faithfully reproduce complex part machining steps more accurately without human intervention or variability.
CNC stands for Computer Numerically Controlled. CNC always refers to how a machine operates, that is, its basic method of controlling movement. Put another way, a CNC machine uses a stream of digital information (code) from a computer to move motors and other positioning systems in order to guide a spindle over raw material.
A CNC machine uses mathematics and coordinate systems to understand and process information about what to move, to where, and how fast. Most CNC machines are able to move in three controlled directions at once. These directions are called axes (pronounced ax-ees). The axes are given simple names such as X, Y and Z (based on the Cartesian Coordinate System). The X axis is always the longest distance a machine or a part of a machine must travel. X may be the movement from front to back, Y the movement from left to right, and the Z is almost always vertical movement (normally the spindle's positioning movement up and down).
A CNC machine must be able to communicate with itself to operate. A computer numeric control unit sends position commands to motors. The motors must talk back to the control that, indeed, they have acted correctly to move the machine a given distance. The ability of CNC machines to move in three (or more) directions at once allows them to create almost any desired pattern or shape. All of this processing happens very fast.
Advantages of CNC Production
Lower Labor Requirements
A CNC machine can eliminate several processing steps. Where once a sheet of material would move from one production machine step to another, the CNC machine can do more operations in one set-up. Full sheets of material may be used, rather than "pre-blanking" on a saw or other machine. One operator can do the jobs of several people.
CNC machines require good operators to make good parts. But once the company's part programming information (knowledge) is contained in electronic files, the craftsmanship of the company resides in the machine, not in human operators. Training for new employees relates to how the machine operates and what the company expects for finished part quality, not in teaching the operator information about basic trade skills.
Better Production Parts
No human could hope to control the movements of a machine as precisely as a CNC. These machines work with very small units of measure. A CNC is able to drill a hole at one end of the worktable, move to the far corner and return to make the same hole again with only a few ten-thousandths of an inch error. The accuracy of a CNC can be explained this way: take a hair off your head and slice it the long way six times. The sliver you have left is about the margin of error with the machine.
Increased Productivity
A CNC may also be programmed to allow for wood grain, material type and special cutter requirements. Humans are not able to balance all of these factors in a repeated way over extended periods of time. Machines may work two or three shifts per day without shut-down. The only limiting factors in CNC production relate to material availability and cutter wear.
CNC machines used to be associated with high-volume production due to the time involved in machine programming. New computer technologies, along with software advances, now allow easy programming of CNC machines for custom or one-of parts. In fact, the ability of a CNC to accept precise mathematic information to create custom parts reduces production costs by reducing potential errors.
Better, Safer Production
A CNC machine does not require any positioning of the spindle to be made by hand during production. The operator's main job is to monitor the machining process and make any needed corrections. Most machines feature at least one emergency stop button to instantly halt production should a part processing error occur.
Thanks for the CNC posting. Although I had a basic understanding of how it works, this excerpt is an elegant encapsulation.
It's the Enron of the saxophone world!! Sounds like a job for the Superfriends!!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZayWAN78150
So... After all theses posts, is it finally possible to have a true Brecker model for a reasonable price? What should I think about all that? And, if it's possible, where?
Thanks for your reply!
So... After all theses posts, is it finally possible to have a true Brecker model for a reasonable price? What should I think about all that? And, if it's possible, where?
Thanks for your reply!
They are still out there, so don't give up. Just be aware that a lot of the later models were not finished as well as the pieces from the early 90's.
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