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being refused when waning to try guitar effects

R

reubmister

Mar 30, 2011
91
0
Adelaide, Australia
#1
Today I asked to try an effect pedal that is 'made' for guitar on bass in a music store. The sales man told me that it was a guitar pedal not to be used on bass because that was not what it was designed for and did not let me try it. The pedal was ha way huge green rhino which i have heard on bass and wanted to try out. have any of you had a similar experience and if so ow did you deal with it

thought about where to put this thread and decided on here if anyone has any objections let me know.
 
#2
The salesman clearly lost a potential sale for his store.
You might want to write to the store owner or manager.

He was also a moron - you won't break a guitar pedal by playing a bass through it. But - morons abound.
 
#5
I went to the GC near me the other week to try out a envolepe filter i also saw some DBA stuff so i was like hey ima try it...I started talking to the guy and noticed the supersonic fuzz gun and ima sucker for OSCING fuzzes so i asked to try it he told me, "Well yeah but we gotta be careful might blow something we had it plugged up yesterday and it was going crazy" I just told him something along the lines of crazies my middle name and away we went to fuzz heaven. The supersonic fuzzgun didnt work to well with bass but the soundwave breakdown did
 
#7
naruki said:
I tried a Green Rhino in a shop before. With my Bongo, 18V preamp.
Click to expand...

Oh No! It must have exploded right before your eyes!:D

half the fun I have when practice is over is switching pedals with my guitarist and my guitarist hooking up his axe to my effects. They may not sound real pure but it sure doesn't damage them in any way.
 
#8
I've only had that experience with amps, and if you give them a hateful look, they'll back down. I'm lucky that not only do my GC salesmen not engage in such behavior with pedals, but that they also know me well enough to let me have free run on any pedal I ask to try, so long as it isn't in use. That said, their pedal selection has been, of late, woeful. In fact, everybody's pedal selection has, save for the CME, for which I won't uproot my entire day, just to play with pedals.
 
#9
I guess I'm really lucky. The guys at my local GC and Sam Ash pretty much let me do anything I want. Probably because I know way more than most of them do and I'm not afraid to let them know ;) But they do hire some guys who really know their stuff. Apparently they have standards in Orlando, although one guy at Sam Ash tried to push Monster cables on me a ltitle too hard once. I set him straight on that!
 
#11
You could ask them their return policy, buy the cheapest 'guitar' pedal they have, walk it over to the bass section. Break your pedal with the awesomeness that is the bass frequencies, then walk back and return a perfectly functional pedal.

Then tell them to suck it for your trouble. :bassist:
 
#12
My brother-in-law, father-in-law, and I took a trip to a small strip mall music store in Middletown Delaware. They actually carry the higher end stuff like a Steve Bailey fretless, stuff I'm not used to seeing in my local GC.
Anywho, I perused the bass section for about 5 minutes and started jamming on basses. A younger sales guy set me up on an SVT CL on a SVT 4x10, awesome. Now I was doing quite a bit plugging and unplugging for different basses and I made sure to turn the gain down before unplugging, and if I was to walk from the amp for a while I put the amp on standby.
So thats when the older sales guy, prolly the owner (who was over my shoulder like a hawk the whole time), reaches over and pulls the 1/4" out of the amp input half way while I was changing basses. As if just turning the gain down wasn't enough?
He knew I could play and I treat every piece of equipment like it's my own. I tried to make conversation with him over basses and amps but he acted like I was more of an inconvenience and that he'd rather be doing anything else.
Sucks for him too because I planned to buy a SansAmp BDI from him that day.
 
#13
reubmister, that....is....ludicrous!
Sorry you had to experience that man! :spit:

Yeah, dude was a moron.... I agree with kesslari, if it were to happen to me, I'd immediately ask to see a store manager/owner and explain how his employee drove a sale away with his ignorance. Seriously, what is the criteria for hiring sales staff...

On a happier note, I have a music store by me that keeps an almost full line of EH and BOSS pedals, and a decent selection of MXR pedals. Now I'm not a fan of EH or BOSS, but since I go in there fairly often to 'relax' and look at their wares, they offer their pedals to me (and other such customers) for 'check out' or 'try before you buy'. I just give em my credit/bank card #, tell em how long I want the pedal for (or two or three pedals), take em home, play with them at my leisure, and bring em back with my impressions of them; or call em up and tell em to run my card if I like it. Its like an EH and BOSS library for me. Yeah, I'm not a fan, but its still fun to take a Pog2 home and mess with it for several days.

Really, all they ask of me is 'So, how'd you like it?'. They use the information to help other customers with similar gear/taste as mine. I've paid full price for a few pedals there due to their customer service. Granted they won't do this for any jack-a-lope off the street; but because I'm a repeat patron (I only make a purchase like 10% of the time I visit them, at most), they are happy to accommodate knowing that if I try from them, I most likely will buy from them. And they match online retail prices (I still pay tax, but hey, nice that they do base price matching). In this way, I can try all the EH, BOSS, and many MXR effects and know for sure which of them I like, or don't, without having to buy em or hook em up to gear in the shop that is different from my own.

Its a shame other store owners don't realize how important customer service is to business. And repeat business from satisfied return customers is the backbone of most business. I mean, 20% of your customers will give you 80% of your business. That's basic commerce. :rollno:
 
#14
Totally bizarre!

None of my pedals are bass specific, and anyone who knows anything about effects at all would never say something that stupid.

I would try to make it known to the management that they are losing sales because their staff is lacking in basic knowledge, without being specific on who it was, unless he was rude about the whole affair.
 
#16
A decent store assistant/clerk/whatever, would have told you that guitar effects might strip the low end from your bass sound (and you wouldn't know it until you get in a room with a drummer). At least would have been helpful, this guy sounds like a total dick.
 
#17
Someone came up to me at my job today. They just had their keyboard repaired and wanted to try some effect pedals on it. I told him I did not know how well it would work because they are guitar pedals going through to a keyboard.

Regardless, I spent over an hour with him, as well as the dude at the pedal counter giving him a number of pedals to try out.

My findings... distortion pedals for guitar and a keyboard do not communicate well... Something gets lost. (We tried several distortion and fuzz pedals)

He ended up leaving with a discontinued Marshall Rg-1 Regen pedal at like 1/4 of its original cost since it had been discontinued.

I hate to toot my own horn, the horn of my place of business.. but most of us will go very far to help our customers, and this shows through our reputation.

People travel almost 2 hours to come here, leaving behind major chains. This store has a branch of two others. I do not know what year, but within in the past 5 or 6 generated of over 40 million. 40 million, and just three stores (two of which are decently small).

So yeah... it is my belief that if you cannot get good help at a music store, then that store sucks.
 
#18
I don't expect everyone to know everything about all the products in their store, especially when they are only 20 years old. The problem is there is almost NO training or education when people are hired at a guitar store (or pretty much anywhere at that) so what else do you expect? I usually give them a break, especially when they are pushing some BS on me. My favorite was "i don't think we can take in trades on used gear- why not buy the new one?" Anyways, i digress...

I've had GC salespeople shoot me down when i ask to play a guitar head through a bass cab with a bass. I will politely explain that I have been doing it for years, it doesn't hurt anything, and if they'd like I can purchase a new head at another store. Even if they have to go ask their manager's permission (which has happened) i've only had one sales guy freak out on me for doing it. Sometimes people need a little education, and why not present them with an opportunity to get schooled in a nice way? Remember, not everyone spends 10hrs a day on internet forums learning all this stuff ;)
 
#19
I tend not to try stuff out if I don't intend on buying it at some point. In other words, I don't just play something to play it because I'm bored. If I were interested enough to purchase it (If I liked it obviously) I would have gotten a second opinion from someone else in the store. If the same result happens... I doubt I'm going back.
 

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