US teenagers have bagpipes seized at Canada border after competition

[DFW]

37. ALWAYS register musical instruments if you leave some country and plan to return

Just get customs to stamp a form showing a "temporary export" and you should be good when you return.

I say you SHOULD be, because ignorant assholes work for CBP as well as intelligent people who care about doing their job more than they care about making people's lives difficult because they feel like it.

I brought some of my guitars, mostly made of rosewood, to Europe in the 1980s. Most of them are still there. The year they were built is on the sticker inside, but no one can force a CBP agent to look. In Germany, a customs agent seized a Stradivari violin from a professional concert violinist from the Orient living in Belgium who was returning from a concert. The idiot stuck the confiscated instrument in a dry, non-temperature-controlled room. It took months to even get consideration for the instrument's return, so this is not limited to American officials.

My wife has a friend who lives in Vermont on the Canadian border. Sometimes, they go up to Canada for lunch. My wife invariably gets harassed when they return to Vermont because the CBP idiots at the border can never find her entry stamp from Boston or Dallas or Washington, or wherever it is she entered the country.