Cant stand these places that sell gear but....

[Youngspanion]

they lock all the gear up.
I went up to 48th street today to check out the "Bass Lounge" in the old Manny's today. Everything was locked up and I had to get a salesman to open the lock on the one bass that I wanted to check out. It was one of the new American Made Fender Jazz basses. But I really wanted to check out the Ampeg micro stack. So the guy gets the bass down for me and walks over to the ampeg with the bass, hands it to me and realizes that the Stack has no power cord and no speaker cable. So now he leaves to find this stuff but gets involved with a paying customer. Hey. I completely understand and I know I'm just satisfying my curiosity. But about 15 minutes goes by and Im sitting there waiting. I realize this isn't going to happen. So I return the bass to the wall when all of the sudden one of the other salesmen come along and takes the bass so he can hang it.

Some places are not the type of places to go and just plug an play away. Some places are trying to sell nice gear to people and thats what they are there for.

My only gripe is that I see Larry Hartke chirping away about coming to the Bass Lounge and jamming away on his basses. He said "come to the bass lounge...... I've got so many bassses for you to try out and play." What a dissappointment

Matt Uminov's was nice. Lots of nice Fender's and MusicMans.
Carmine st. Guitars was cool too.

[GM60466]

I think we ought to give Larry his propers.
I was in a better bass shop recently. there was a player trying a bass that had a pubic hair size 1/2 inch scratch on the back of the instrument. Put there by a previous player. The guy thought he should get an addition $500 discount because the finish was marred. Some owners wish to protect their investment before they are sold.

[Youngspanion]

Absolutely. Hey. Guitar Center is a great place to try out gear they way you want. I have no problem with a place protecting itself. Its just that when you are encouraged to come check out something, I did not expect to be hindered by locks and busy sales people who are there to unlock things. I felt funny. Like I should not be there checking out the gear. Like only if I was spending money did I have a right to pull things off the wall. I dont' know. Maybe its just me.

[BillyIVbass]

48th St. has always been kind to me. Both Rudy's and Sam Ash. Sometimes you have to get proactive and hunt for your own cables.

I'm going to guess Sam Ash is on lock down not so much for theft, but just all the tourists. You get some little kid all hop'd up on Skittles with sticky hands running around knocking things over while his yuppy dad is telling the salesman "Yeah, I played a bit in college...yeah, we had a band, good too!"

Shoot for a weekday or before closing. I've greased up a ton of basses and amps there without any intent to buy, always something new there.

[duff beer]

They are only protecting their gear, and when you consider that you can read a new story on TB every single day about someone who lent out their bass and had it trashed by some idiot, you really can't blame them. People that trash borrowed gear go to music stores too.

[ButtUglyJeff]

You'll get to buy a better piece of equipment, because of the effort they are putting towards protecting the inventory. I doubt you'll get the same at GC...

[SteveC]

I agree for protecting your inventory and making sure the customer is getting as "new" a bass as possible, but surely there is a line between everything under lock and key and the free-for-all that is Guitar Center.