A quick update: The Ninja Standing Desk I mentioned in a prior post is now available to pre-order via their Kickstarter campaign here.
Tag Archives: buying
What Do Others Think About that Guitar/Amp/etc?
Many online music stores (as well as Amazon) include user reviews of gear they sell, and that’s certainly a place to start when you are considering a purchase. But also visit this one-stop site containing years of reviews, especially if you are considering buying a used item that is no longer sold new:
http://www.harmonycentral.com/
Since the review format is uniform and detailed, you may get more information than the frequent Amazon “I bought it 3 weeks ago – it’s awesome!”
Also see my post about determining a fair price for used gear if you missed it.
Buying Gear From Guitar Center
If Guitar Center is the only brick and mortar game in your town for buying music gear, keep in mind that their in-store prices tend to be significantly more expensive than many web stores. However, with a little effort you can work around that and still get a great price on gear you can physically check out.
This is because GC has a price-matching policy – any time within 30 days of your purchase if you find the same gear for less elsewhere they will refund the difference plus 10%. However, if you don’t want to make a 2nd trip back for that, do your research:
- If you know exactly what you want to buy, go first to the GC website and get their price, then search other sites for better (note that they only match legitimate authorized music gear sites, e.g. music123.com).
- Print out the web page showing the price including shipping (which they count for the total price) and URL.
- If you do not know exactly what you want to buy, GC usually has an in-store terminal where you can look up prices on websites and print them out once you decide on your gear. Alternately you can search on your smartphone and give the URL to the sales person.