Anti-rant

I can rant about "unfriendly" music shops and the people in them until the cows come home, get fed, mill around and leave again. But instead of launching into a full-blown missile-launching stream of nastiness... I'm going to have a say about my local shop.

I love these guys. There's two guys, sometimes three, but it's very rare that they're all working at the same time. They are the type of music shop that lets the parents know that they can get away with their child learning on a budget classical guitar for quite a while. They're honest about quality. They maintain a list of local teacher's numbers and give teacher numbers out when they sell an instrument. They know which books the local teachers prefer to use, and make sure there's a good stock of them at this time of year, when school is starting again and a lot of parents are taking the my child should learn an instrument path.

So you have to hassle them for some things. They know me well now. I stop in, hassle, have a chat and come back again a couple of days later to hassle again. I recently had to do this with my bass amp. For a total of two replacement models after the first purchase, they rang Behringer to find out what was going on every time I dropped in. But they probably wouldn't have if I didn't remind them by dropping by.

And while I'm on equipment - they're more than happy to let me take an amp to a gig to try it out. Or just borrow one. I done play much electric guitar in public, so I've only got a little practise amp at home - getting bass amps has been a higher priority, since that's where the gigs are - but when I've needed a guitar amp I've been able to ask them.

They run a good, customer based business, and that's the way it should be.