On April 23, 2009, ace guitar slinger Rod DeGeorge was having another normal night, gigging with his band Burnt Sienna at the Deer Park Tavern in Newark, DE. Rod's instrument of choice this evening was his prized XOX Handle, a $4,000 guitar made entirely of carbon fiber and composite materials by Italian guitar maker XOX Audio Tools. Since starting to play the XOX handle, DeGeorge has talked a lot about his affinity for the new guitar on the Internet with his many fans, and has even published XOX demonstration videos.
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However, in the blink of an eye, DeGeorge's evening came crashing down. As the crew was packing up his equipment, his prized guitar disappeared, taken right off the stage. A review of the security tapes showed a night club customer clearly walking out the door with the guitar. DeGeorge was devastated. “I was totally stunned that it happened…that this guy could just pick up my guitar and walk out, passing security and customers without getting noticed was beyond belief.”
I felt that if we could get the word out sufficiently to the guitar community, and the thief tried to sell it, there was a possibility that someone would notice.
DeGeorge returned home and started notifying people about what had occurred, including posting a message to his MySpace blog, along with pictures of the thief, asking for help in making an identification. Immediately, his more than 28,000 MySpace friends sprang into action and chatter about the theft began appearing across the Internet in articles, forums, blogs, Facebook and LinkedIn guitar groups, Twitter tweets and more.
One such MySpace friend, Jim Basara, who also owns Guitar Affair which rents and sells XOX guitars, also pitched in. 'I became familiar with Rod's playing because he uses an XOX Handle, which is one of the guitars we carry. When I read what happened, I felt there was a chance to catch the guy because XOX only recently started producing these guitars and shipping them to the states. There are only a very small number of these high-end instruments in circulation and they haven't hit the used market yet.' “I felt that if we could get the word out sufficiently to the guitar community, and the thief tried to sell it, there was a possibility that someone would notice.”
Basara placed an article along with pictures of the thief on his web site, and then set out to notify everyone possible. 'I participate in well over a hundred forums and groups in all corners of the Internet and I went to most of them to tell people about the incident and asked them to keep an eye out for an XOX Handle on the used guitar market. I know that there were lots of Rod's fans doing the same thing, and I was really gratified by the response.' Basara says that the concerted efforts of DeGeorge fans generated a significant amount of discussion and emails from people committed to helping to recover the stolen guitar. The coverage even spawned newspaper and television coverage on the theft, again complete with pictures. 'It was really great to see. Guitars are very personal things, and I believe everyone instinctively knew how they would feel if their favorite guitar was stolen. It was like the entire guitar community reacted in a very positive way. '
Clearly, the efforts of Rod DeGeorge fans had a huge impact. DeGeorge was contacted by the thief who wanted to arrange to meet with him to return the guitar. 'He was apologetic, said he was drunk and regrets his decision. He also said that he wanted to contact me sooner, but didn't know how. I believe all the coverage made him decide to return it. He did reach out to me however and drove a couple of hours to return it, so that did take a lot,' reports DeGeorge. “I'm just really happy to get the guitar back. I'm also very grateful to all of the people on MySpace, Facebook and elsewhere who helped spread the word.”
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