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Gswitz

By Gswitz
in The Coffee House

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Bapu

Bapu

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We have a local shop that is here in Thousand Oaks and the owner has another store (same name) in the city Ventura. I shopped there exclusively in 80's and 90's and was twice named "customer of the month" in their (actual printed on paper) newsletter.

With online shopping now it's more of place to pick up strings and cables on the quick, but I still get 20% off the sticker price on just about anything I do buy (when I buy from John, the newbies don't know me).

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Bapu

Bapu

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Speaking of which, I recently got an email from Guitar Center for their "buy used gear day" and took some used gear in to get some walking around money. 

As I waited for the appraisal I was looking at the stock of basses. The area designated for basses was about 40% empty (wall hangers with nothing in them) . All they had were some Fender and Ibanez basses. Slim pickings and very sad. I remember the days when there would be at a Lackland or Alembic or two plus some Gibsons in that area.

Edited by Bapu
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Starship Krupa

Starship Krupa

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4 minutes ago, paulo said:

This is the nearest one to me....

If that's not enough for you, they also serve bacon sandwiches.........

 

 

I thought this thread was going to show a photo of a woman at a Rush concert at first.

Wow, Absolute Music is a retail palace, innit? Really happening drum department. I need a new pair of  Vic AJ3's and there's nowhere to get them.

I was hoping the camera would, uh, follow...keyboard lady around the entire place, but following main guitar room lady around was nice, too.

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paulo

paulo

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4 minutes ago, Starship Krupa said:

Wow, Absolute Music is a retail palace, innit?

Yeah, it's definitely best to leave your wallet at home 'cos they're very accommodating and will let you play with anything you like for as long as you like with zero pressure. Whoever set the place up really thought about it. In the cafe area (to the right of where you walk in at the start of the video) there is also a small performance area for open mic type things and there are also fully equipped / serviced studios for hire.

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paulo

paulo

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3 minutes ago, Bapu said:

Do they sell plugins?

Some, but in terms of all that is available, no not really. I think they pretty much leave that side to T&S which I was told is where they get them from anyway. I bought Komplete from them because I wanted the HD version (which is a total waste of time & money) and it suited me to go and collect it myself.

They're also not very good (polite version) at responding to emails, but once you're actually in the shop it's all good.

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Bapu

Bapu

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@paulo When I was first starting out (1969) we would drive from a city called Mar Vista to Hollywood where the singular original Guitar Center shop was, on Sunset Blvd. It was a tiny shop. Maybe 50 guitars on the wall, a few basses, a drum set or two and an amp room of course no synths and TBH it was too small house a Hammond B3 anywhere. Maybe I saw a Rhodes or a Wurli there every so often.

It was tiny but it housed major brands that we could look at as opposed to our local shop that had mostly knock offs.

 

If I ever get back to the UK I'm going to make it a point to try and get to that shop for sure.

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StudioNSFW

StudioNSFW

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In the Bay Area we have Starving Musician and Guitar Showcase - both are great stores.  Starving gets a lot of ordinary used gear but sometimes weird gems can be found there.   Showcase is the place to go for crazy rare vintage stuff, or shiny new pro level gear.  ,   Used and new all mixed together.  My '69 P Bass came from there, as well as my ex Martin Bass. ( Never pick up a Martin if you are not prepared to fall in love, it was the best sounding acoustic guitar bass I've ever played by a long haul).  

There's a  little independent music store here in town that manages to combine the worst aspects of a small mom and pop store with a big box retailer (Extremely limited selection combined with salespeople of questionable knowledge but asking high prices compared to anywhere else).  I've tried to go there a few times for things like strings and cables and they usually don't have what I need in stock "But we can order it and have it here in 3 days"!    Of course the answer is "Well, *I* can order it and have it here in three days too, or drive over the hill to Guitar Center and have it in an hour".  

Why would a music store bother to stock flat wound bass strings in a standard gauge and scale anyway?

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Bapu

Bapu

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47 minutes ago, StudioNSFW said:

Why would a music store bother to stock flat wound bass strings in a standard gauge and scale anyway?

I only have two of my nine basses strung with flatwounds (Squier Fretless Jazz and Hofner).

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