wharf rat
Roadie
- Messages
- 252
+1These are my loose rantings about big gear retailers:
I know the manager of a local GC and I've been surprised that he seems totally fine throwing around 20% discounts on anything and everything to me and my bandmates if we go in during his shift. But I don't like to deal with the other GC employees. They seem to be like flatulent bulldogs exuding a constant stream of misinformation, aside from the Roland rep. And they take an inordinately long time to do stuff. It feels like a used car dealership trying to tire me out so that I'll just buy their crappy guitar and leave.
Sweetwater has overall been a positive experience for me but they don't seem to be good for preordering hot items. I always end up getting them somewhere else due to various delays. They've been good at fixing their mistakes. Once they did a bad job with a setup on a new guitar and were quick to refund it and pay for part of my local shop's work to fix the issues when I complained. And they do give out discounts but this seems "sales engineer" specific. The quality of info I receive from them seems hit or miss, but better than GC. Right now I still prefer to order from SW if I can't make it into GC in person during the right hours.
I haven't dealt with MF much, but I'm not strongly compelled to shop there unless I have a discount coupon. I did eventually get a coupon to work on the Stadium but this appeared to be an error. Several reps told me that the coupons were never supposed to work. My take is they should've run with the discount and eaten the losses. They could've pulled a bunch of disgruntled SW customers. Customers that are willing to preorder an expensive modeler are probably worth attracting.
I bought a limited edition guitar from American Musical Supply once after Sweetwater borked my preorder. I remember being pretty nervous about it but they were pleasant to deal with in the end. n=1, but wondering if they're a viable option.
I definitely think that MF inadvertently (or intentionally) stole a small market share of serious people who otherwise defaulted to SW.
It's funny: I'd have imagined it would be refreshing, but it's actually kind of annoying.