Wouldn’t it be great if you could register all your valuable musical instruments and gear online, with photos, descriptions, serial numbers, and identifying characteristics? In the event of loss, theft or damage, it would make recovery or insurance claims much easier.
This is the idea behind GearTrack, a new startup company conceived and managed by the Driessen family. That’s fiddle monster Casey’s wife, Molly Nagel-Driessen, and his sister, Bridget. Molly should be familiar to a lot of bluegrass folks from her 12 years doing publicity at Sugar Hill Records.
Registration is offered for free, with extended benefits for Pro members. Here’s how they describe the free membership:
- Register up to 5 instruments (photos, specs and more) to create a catalog that can assist in recovery should anything happen to your precious gear.
- Register stolen gear to be included in Facebook, Twitter and email alerts to over 600 instrument lovers. Increase your reach.
- Peruse other instruments on the site, because you’re nerdy about gear like we are.
- Look at your instrument library. What a warm glow it gives you to see your babies there, in one place, looking back at you.
Molly shared a few words about the genesis of GearTrack.
“The site came out of the theft of my father-in-law Tom Driessen’s ’71 Gibson Mastertone banjo from his camper at Bean Blossom about 5 years or so ago. The entire process involved all the horrors you could associate with instrument theft: nice but uninterested law enforcement, insurance company nonsense, and an uncooperative new owner. Noam Pikelny actually found Tom’s banjo on Ebay and when Tom attempted to recover it, consequently went to court to get his banjo back from the new owner. It came back in many pieces. A sad tale!Casey’s sister Bridget is immersed in the internet and they came up with the idea for GearTrack, since nothing like it existed for all types of instruments. Tom felt that having proof of ownership documents, along with a way for buyers and resellers to check serial numbers easily online, could have made his story and experience a lot less painful. Bridget is a whiz, and tricked the site out with a lot of additional features and functionality. And here we are!I married into a great bunch, and I’m really loving working on something that gives back in some way to the music community that has sustained and thrilled me for so long.”
Their hope is to quickly build the GearTrack database with a plethora of information, eventually building an organized place where law enforcement, resellers, and insurance adjusters can verify information about stolen instruments quickly. They also believe that such a resource could act as a deterrent to some thefts, or at least aid in rapid recovery and apprehension.
You can find all the details at gear-track.com, and Molly invites our readers to contact her by email if they have any questions.
