AndyTravis

Gak’s pricing was part of the reason the other retailers complained and unofficial MAP pricing was introduced. There won’t be many other retailers interested in helping them out of this hole.

Used to cost us about £800 a day to run our shop.

Just bought a pickguard from Mark. Arrived in a box big enough for an amp 😂 Absolutely made up with it. Cheers Andy

Ah Rosetti. Now that was a wild organisation. We bought Les Paul standards for about £1160 ex vat one week, £1045 another...we’d jump on low cost prices, and a week later “buy 5 (at £1160) get one free” - absolutely mental. So some places had paid £1160, some had paid £1045, some had paid £967. All for the same guitar. They’d also have back orders in for Rickenbacker stuff, 2 years or so. They’d send them to us “by accident” and say “ah keep it, we’ll knock you 10% off trade” so we’d end up with a random 4003 bass some poor bugger elsewhere had paid for 6 months previous and they remained in the queue. As a point - when Gibson took over their own distribution, all of this nonsense stopped. It was replaced by another brand of nonsense - £50k a month buy in.

No. Really wasn’t. Id say about 2012 was the beginning of the end for bricks and mortar guitar shops. I left in April 2014, I’d done 12 years. oh well. Would love to give a specialist shop a go. But, without a lottery win...no chance. Q: ”what’s the best way to make a small fortune in Musical Instrument retail?” A: “Start with a big one”.

Yamaha - there was a point where whenever we sold one of the immensely popular YDP-141 digital pianos, we lost £20. And that wasn’t even us cutting prices. The one thing which always annoyed was that Many big suppliers used to offer retrospective discounts into the mix, so if we shifted x-hundred units of their product we’d get a kickback. Some companies factored that into their pricing, some didn’t. It’s an absolute shedload of worms...

There’s the funny old thing with Guitar/Music shops. The retailers complain about the discount merchants - so their big accounts try to resolve it. The discount merchants are in a race to make the least margin. Usually from a web store rather than shop front. The customers want top notch service and an opportunity to try before they buy...but don’t want to pay what they perceive to be over the odds. It’s a lose/lose situation for everyone. When in the trade, my colleagues and I used to tear our hair out over it. We used to have people come in and try things, ask if we’d match a price which was £4 profit on an £800 sale...was very disheartening. They’d purchase the same instrument online, and come to us when there was a problem - and then be dissatisfied with the fact that as a Fender/Gibson/Epiphone dealership, we wouldn’t sort the problems they were experiencing as warranty repair. Also that we wouldn’t resolve an issue with a Fender bought from Thomann in Germany by sending it to Fender GBI to fix...for free. The list goes on, I’m not sure that price fixing or MAP pricing is the pure evil it’s made out to be. But I’ve seen both sides.

I did a restring and tweak for a guy once, he asked for E/A to be strung through body and d/g through bridge - think it was a fender. He said it sounded best like that. it was a nice enough bass. When he came to collect...I don’t know what difference it made as he played it like he was trying to snap the bass in half. Then again, I owned a Lull 5 and the B was string through body, and the e-g were top load. So there must be something in it if Mr Lull said so...

People Help the people - Cherry ghost. I always to be about not knowing how others are suffering, an anthem for kindness or empathy.

There is a specific EMG “Steinberger” set. But I reckon you’re about £180/£200 in by the time you’ve special ordered some. I had a B2a and loved it, but they can be quite Midd-y.

The earliest Taiwan ones had the Japan surrounds etc. it was an 1986/7 “transitional model” I had an 88 white one, with the ramped pickups and it sounded brighter/less warm. the 90/91 bb1100s had slimmer bodies

Yeah - we used to use string swing (jhs) for poly finishes and Hercules for all Gibson, Ric and CS/Vintage reissue Fender in the shop.

Well...it ain’t no natural miller no more (spot Walshy’s gold leftovers)

Cozy

Just to say that I’m so glad I went with Dave Wilson rather than having a go myself. @walshy beat me in the queue. And his latest absolutely looks the dogs danglies.

Oooooh! body and neck from scratch or allparts?

@joostone that is absolutely awesome. Has a look of a sterling - you’ve done an ace job.

It’s on the bench for final prep and possible (time permitting) undercoating today ☺️

Sorry - yeah I misread tmb505 as 605, thought they’d updated the model.

Is there a 604? Don’t need a big long thumb rest 😉😂

That’s the one...🤢

Well, word of mouth, join my band and we put something out on Facebook. Our preferred studio wasn’t opening just yet. Unhelpful. And Pirate studios announced reopening but only to solo artists and people of the same household...🙄

I am.

My one skill. It used to be my job.