Although many home contents insurance will include some basic cover for guitars and other musical instruments, as with all insurance it's worth reading the small print in the policy.

Below is some typical wording relating to contents cover under the heading "What is NOT insured".

It can easily be seen that many potential scenarios that might be of concern to guitarists are not covered. Examples are...

• Your dog or cat scratches or chews your guitar
• Your guitar falls off its stand and gets dented or scratched
• Your guitar warps or splits due to dry, hot weather

It isn't the most exciting thing to be spending your money on, but taking out guitar insurance may save you a lot of upset and expense if your instrument is stolen or damaged. Whether you play as a hobby or as your livelihood, you need to be sure that you can have your guitar repaired or replaced as quickly and easily as possible if you need to. Read more »

If you but or sell a guitar, are you sure that it is fully insured in transit?

What if it never arrives at it's delivery address? Will the insurance cover the full value of a collectors or vintage guitar? What about damage to the guitar's hard case, but the guitar is intact?

If you've got one or more vintage guitars, then having "new for old" insurance is bad news!

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Most of us have home contents insurance, but do you know what it covers? If the worst happened and you suffered a flood, fire, theft or other disaster would you house contents insurance cover your precious guitars, amps and effects?

Most homeowner’s insurance policies cover musical instruments up to a certain limit. This limit is usually less than $2,000 total. So if you have a single guitar, amp or other bit of music kit valued at more than this then you should consider special musical instrument insurance. Read more »

Sean from Seattle writes:
I wanted to add my opinion on this topic, because this year we had a house fire and luckily, I had most of gear covered with an policy extension for my gear.
As part of my home owners policy, I added an extension covering most of guitars and recording gear. I hadn't been very good at keeping it updated, as I've bought & sold some gear since we aquired the policy when we bought the house. A couple of the more important stipulations of the policy extension are based on the following (which may differ depending where you live): Read more »