So – I could probably write a fair amount of negative things about instrument shops I’ve worked with. Negative reviews about my experiences, or negative experiences about how I’ve seen others treated even when *I* was just fine. Whether it’s watching how Heather gets treated by a guitar salesMAN or how I was treated (especially when I was younger), about how attitudes change the moment it’s clear you are (or are NOT) buying something. Going into a guitar shop by myself is vastly different than going with Kristen, and that’s different from going into a shop with Rowan or Joey.
And that gives me all the more reason to be positive about the one instrument shop I’ve worked FOR.
My OX is in the shop. I didn’t buy it from House of Musical Traditions. Looking at my gear right now, actually, very few of my instruments were purchased at HMT, and I’ve learned to regret a fair amount of that.
My first bass, a Lyon, was bought at a massive music shop in which I had to fight to get anyone’s attention and even then I practically had to wave money in someone’s face to get them to talk to me. (Maria still hangs on the wall and has seen a lot of Life, I pulled the frets out in college and she’s my home-made fretless and still a joy to play) My second bass, an acoustic Washburn ordered through a local shop that no longer exists was a LOT of back and forth – at first it came with a case, then it didn’t come with a case and I was accused of lying about it, then it came with the WRONG case, and several weeks later I finally had the full package. Mackay’s Life continued to be fraught, and unfortunately I allowed her to be borrowed by someone who later claimed it was stolen, then lost, then last I heard “actually, it was broken but I was too embarrassed to tell you, do you want the pieces?” – I said yes but have never been able to get in touch with this individual again…
My first electric guitar, a Yamaha Pacifica (since sold to Rowan) was bought from a shop who’d cornered the local market of students and charged my credit card three or four times, overdrafting my account and giving my college kid’s bank account a conniption. Perhaps foolishly (but again, cornered) I went back and bought my first acoustic guitar from them, a tobacco sunburst Oscar Schmidt – probably one of the few transactions of instrument-purchases that I remember being painless. “Cole” was given away to a young girl who wanted to learn and the shop’s out of business as of the past couple of years. Looted and dead in Baltimore.
Do you want the whole story? It’s interesting to probe this, for myself at least. Buckle up. You’re getting the whole story…
At around this point I discovered Takamine through Music and Arts Center – and through them I bought my red one (I think my old friend Tyler now owns this?) and the blue one (Heather had this one for a while? I’m spacing on whether or not it’s still in her collection) and the black one (I sold this through House of Musical Traditions) – Music and Arts Center also sold me my red Peavey Predator – an awesome electric guitar that the salesperson had been hiding for himself, and only brought it out reluctantly when the stuff on the shelf was “almost, but not quite”.
My six-string Ibanez bass was purchased from a second-hand shop, and then traded in for a five-string SSD that still hangs on the wall and is one of my favourite things. I’ve since determined I was ripped off rather viciously. But I Love the instrument. What’s $500 more or less 15 years later?
Around this time we were probably looking at the third year of touring? Maybe? No – second year because I bought my Seagull the year I was a finalist at Kerrville (2005) and cleaning the Seagull up to play tonight is what got me thinking about all this…
I was looking for a serious guitar but had a constrained budget, probably around $600 including pickup. Shopping around, I ended up at a well-respected shop where I’d been treated pretty poorly before, but voila, I was talking about pickups and cash and suddenly they were all attentive smiles. I describe and demonstrate my playing style. I talk about the sound I like. I talk about the pickup I want. I’m pointed to a nice acoustic Seagull with the rich-sounding (and purportedly sturdy) wood combo of cedar and cherry. I Love the sound. We negotiate the pickup, we talk about the install… they keep the case to stay under my budget and I break the guitar a couple of months later on stage in Cambridge.
I’m laughed at by Seagull when I report that I bought it SPECIFICALLY because it was supposed to be so sturdy. The original shop will look into working on it IF I can get it back to them in the next week – I’m in Massachusetts, due in Texas… can’t happen. As I grow in knowledge about guitars and the selling there-of, I see how easily the sales person just told me whatever I wanted to hear to guide me to the priciest thing in my stated budget, with no concern (and blatantly lying) about whether it met my needs (cedar is actually the softest wood that a guitar top is ever made of). I also came to realize that the pickup was damaged during the install, that I’d been treated really shadily.
The Seagull limps from repair to repair and eventually literally folds up in Illinois. The next guitar is a beautiful violin-top Alvarez that I purchase from a now-dead shop in Reisterstown. On the one hand, I get a great deal and I Loved this guitar (now in the hands of Acacia Sears) – on the other hand when looking into trading it at one point I’m taught about what the “x” means on the serial number – that this is a factory second with very little trade value… something not mentioned when I was purchasing the guitar.
Something HMT always puts on the tag.
Somewhere in here I purchase a couple of other things, all from House of Musical Traditions – instruments that I adore but for various reasons tend not to be my stage beasts. (“various reasons” = “not regular guitars”). A five-string Good Time II resonator banjo (an incredible banjo, one of the best out there, sold to Dan Zimmerman) and my baritone acoustic / electric Thunderhawk Tacoma Baritone. This had been sold to Brennan, and I recently bought it back. It’s an amazing guitar. There’s a Yamaha 6-string my mother bought me to go to Mexico with after my father died. There’s a 60 year-old Kay banjo my friend Jason gave me. There’s a 90 tear-old tenor banjo that I bought from an old barn and a “Sloppy Black Johnson” mandolin that slowly (and eventually explosively) died waiting for me to be interested in playing mandolin.
I’ve got other things lying around. An old Dean that my friend Janna gave me that’s served as a slide guitar, a junked 12-string Alvarez that was built the year I was born that I experimented with “baritoning” briefly (while the Tacoma was out of my hands). A frame drum. A ukulele. A melodica! Gosh. A lot of STUFF that makes noise.
But I’ve wandered from my point. All these shopping experiences have hammered home how very RARE it is that there’s a shop that cares about what YOU want to buy more than what THEY want to sell. It’s the only reason I stuck with working at House of Musical Traditions. I can’t imagine most any other shop I’ve been to arguing about the morality of their rental provider. I can’t imagine most any other shop pointing to another store as a better fit for what the customer wants. I’ve never seen any other employees so willing to really try to understand what a customer needs. It’s a shame HMT isn’t a HUGE shop – with a massive inventory – they could truly serve every customer far better than most stores, simply because they care. But in most stores WITH a massive inventory, it seems like the employees are simply there to take your money, and leaving with the right-for-you product is generally a happy accident, not a collaborative effort.
For those curious – I bought my Composite Acoustics after first encountering the brand at a fingerpicking (and harp guitar) workshop. I REALLY fell in Love with. Played a couple more at a trade show and shortly thereafter was convinced to pull the trigger rather swifter than I’d meant to after it was intimated to me that CA was going out of business and the guitars were soon-to-be off the market. I scrambled for the money and bought an OX through a company in Seattle after exploring a couple of local and not-so-local-but-more-local-than-Washington options. I didn’t fully appreciate the fact that a “Lifetime warranty” doesn’t mean shit from a company folding before your eyes…
And so House of Musical Traditions is once again where I’m coming back to with an injured creature, because I TRUST them. Maybe I’ll be buying a new guitar soon. I hope not. I’ve got a wedding to save up for. Maybe I should return to wood? Then I can buy from HMT. But we all know what I do to wood guitars. On the other hand, none of them have had the BRIDGE leave the BODY of the fucking INSTRUMENT. I really do Love some of the Breedlove Oregons.
Okay. That’s more than you ever wanted to know. Gotta play more gigs. Guitar’s broke and so am I! (not really, just way too much outlay over the past couple of weeks…)
