diatribe from a working tech (SOAPBOXY)

[axpro]

I have to agree, I too feel like my parents
"DANG KIDS TODAY!!!!!"

My first guitar was a non working POS, that i got from a buddy for $20. it had 2 strings, and bad tuners, and the output jack was broken. I spent my first summer of guitar playing fixing it.

My second guitar was much nicer, i paid a whopping $65 for that one (while visiting my great uncle in Independance MO.)

My third guitar was my first 2 guitars cobled together (added the extra pickup fromm y first guitar to my second) Since both of my guitars were crap 60's sear guitars from junk shops, they had one pickup each. now i finally had a guitar with 2 pickups!

My FOURTH guitar, was my first real one, a squire strat from Japan. (it was a "contemporary" model) I loaned it to a buddy and he got drunka t a party and smashed it... for payment, he gave me his guitar and amp, some crappy "Series A" Tele clone and a 10 watt practice amp.

If i listed all the guitars i had for my first 6 or 7 years of playing, you'd be reading all night... thing is, I had to LEARN to fix the damn thing. I bought a new pickup and had to LEARN how to wire it. I sneakily got an uncle to add me to his Stew-mac account, just to get the catalogs (and the repair/wiring advice columns)

By the time i was in college, and the internet became a "thing" i had been fixing guitars for a long time. mostly learned through trial and error and endless nights with a soldering iron wondering why something didn't work.

I "busted knuckles" as a "shade tree guitar tech" for a long while, and earned my skills. I was similar to these kids... i wanted more gain, i looked into pickups. but i learned how to wire them, what wiring tricks worked for what i wanted, what pickups did what. and researched all i could. I didn't like my amp and had almost no money, Steve A to the rescue! my classic 30 had a horrible life as my first test bench for ideas.

The newest generation as a whole (i am sure there are some good ones though) just wants instant gratification. When i was "junior tech" at my store, and learning the ropes, we had a kit that spent over $1000 to heavily customize a mediocre american electric to be exactly like his idols... same pickups, custom wiring, aftermarket neck, new hardware.. and he had already started with a good donor guitar and paid for custom paint.

He could have bought a really good guitar for that $2k in total investment. instead he had a custom painted kramer body, a nice neck and all new electronics.

Its just that so much seems to be "I want the same guitar as X " with no research into why that guitar works for him or her.

Of course my grade 13 half year art project/essay" was an examination of guitar designs form the "golden age" to current time, with a heavy bent towards function of design versus appearance.

I guess i am just a nerd.

[jrfrond]

I guess i am just a nerd.

That's cool. The world is full of us!!!

Let's face it, the world needs idiots as a baseline reference for intelligence.

[Mark Hammer]

1) I stand by my assertion that as the amount of choice goes up, the tendency to rely on superficial "information", rather than real understanding of what matters, increases. No one has time to learn about everything....at least not without making sacrifices. While there is a plethora of technical information easily available these days, and there is no shortage of magazines on the stands with competent explanations, you will notice that what gets sold as "buyer's guides" tends to consist of simply lists of things, stuffed between pages of snazzy advertising, with scantily clad women on the cover. No big surprise that many customers make largely underinformed choices. A great many of them are somewhere on the order of kids wanting puppies who have no idea that such animals ever eat, poop, get bored, or die.

2) Contemporary music technology and gear has an increasing reliance on highly cost-effective production techniques - whether CNC body-shapping of guitars or wave-soldering of SMT boards - and inexpensive Asian labour. One of the consequences of that is the capacity to generate a LOT of product at low prices. One of the consequences of that is to create a lot of competition among brands and stores. And one of the consequences of THAT is to rely on selling more. The Best Buy / Musician's Friend approach to music sales that comes out of that emphasizes minimal engagement with the consumer. Minimal contact, in turn, begets minimal interest in understanding what it is they sell, on the part of sales staff.

3) Nice to know we have one conscientious person working in the GTA. I hope I run into you sometime.

[FunkyKikuchiyo]

In addition to the buying quotas, I'd also say how dealers are forced often to buy in on gear they don't want. The more flooded the market gets, the more consumers need a sales staff that can help guide them to the decent products. With the high sales of home theater equipment I'm seeing a slight return of skilled people who will walk people through everything they need and helping hook it up, a good guitar salesman offers the same sort of guidance. I'm not saying they should be putting "personal tone consultant" on their business cards, but that is sort of what they should do!

I hear you jfrond..... that is what we used to call "qualifying the customer" or "educating the customer"... you can't just hang out and talk gear all day, that isn't profitable. Genuinely helping people doesn't just mean entertaining them on their lunch break. Especially since you'll end up ignoring the serious customer with questions because a wanker wants to talk forever.

I still don't mind customers not knowing much about gear. I like customers who worry most about their playing and let me (the professional tech) help them with the gear. That is my job, it is what I am here for. I may know more about guitars than most players, but no one is paying money to hear me play because of that. I do appreciate customers who feel okay asking questions. I won't chastise them for asking a stupid question. But so many people (men mostly) will just refuse to admit that I know more on a subject because they did so much "research" with the magazines and Harmony Central reviews, which makes it difficult to help them. You have to trick them into learning stuff... haha.

[axpro]

... But so many people (men mostly) will just refuse to admit that I know more on a subject because they did so much "research" with the magazines and Harmony Central reviews, which makes it difficult to help them. You have to trick them into learning stuff... haha.

Yeah, a little knowledge is a dangerous thin.

A little research isn't so bad. I think harmony central and magazines are a good place to start. but EARS are so important.... And realizing that any review you read should be taken with a grain of salt. Gear buying is an emotional response. I am sure that all of us have a time in the past that we really liked a piece of gear, then later, without our rose colored glasses realized it wasn't so great. Hell back in high school i thought a red knob twin would be AWESOME! now years later i try one every few years and just shake my head.

When i used to borrow the redknob twin from my high school i would have said it was an AWESOME amp. I fell in love with my first marshall, my first Soldano, my first Mesa... and i don't have ANY of them any more, and i don't think any of them would work for my sound. but it took years of trying every amp available, to hearing some great and not so great amps. trying out probably thousands of guitars (working in a shop does have its privelages) all comping together to my current gear knowledge... so when a 15 year old kid comes in and says "Les Pauls Suck." (when i worked on the floor) I really was at an impass. You could complain about fit and finish on their standard series instruments. You could complain that their QC has been sliding in recent years. You could have a lively discussion about their refusal to use quartersawn wood int he necks, increasing stiffness and reducing the chance of headstock breakage. But an emotional "that sucks" without a qualifier is just stupid. but it IS emotional. so when that kid tries a les Paul, he can log onto HC and add a review to their Les Paul Standard saying "It sucked ass- I rate it a 1" and that is as legitamate as the other reviews.

and again, it leads me to people coming in wanting the same guitar as "artist x" instead of trying all sorts of guitars (spend your lunchbreak playing 1 guitar! a different one each day!) people get a "little knowledge" and figure they know everything.

Of course this is all a Moot point, since when they bring the guitar back for new pickups in a year or 2, or different tuners or whatever, they are paying my salary, and helping me live my dreams.

[FunkyKikuchiyo]

My best gear purchases have been the ones I haven't over thought... they've been the ones that I've played and said "I like this"... I always try to encourage other people to take the same approach. I think the intuitive choices are the best, to be honest. If we overly intellectualize things, that's how we end up with weird modern designs. We decide that strats are too bright and need humbuckers, and ignore the coolness of an all original strat. We worry about a telecaster's intonation and put strat saddles on, etc. I think the kids like your les paul hater (not sure if he is real or not, but certainly could be real) have thought too hard about it without playing it. Personally I'm not crazy about LPs, not enough dynamics acoustically, but I've picked them up many times wanting to like them. I like them when other people play them, but I don't really like to play them myself.

I just hope all us guitar techs don't turn into the group of arrogant *(#&*% sorts that you find in say, violin shops. I don't know how many times I've been asked to work on a violin because someone was scared out of the local violin places by being talked down to and insulted. So someone doesn't know everything there is to know about violins but they want new strings on it... give 'em a break.

[axpro]

WAITASECOND.....

I can talk down to my customers!?!?!
YAY!



I think you nailed it. it's all about playing a guitar and saying "I like this"

One of my buddies who used to work in the store with me could never understand why people didn't do that. and in the same idea, why they wanted a "new one in a box" He used to try to explain that the new one might not play or sound the same, and if they really liked the one they played they should take it... people always got mad, figured he was trying to get them to buy "old floor stock" but he had a point. I have picked up Les Pauls that just had a beautiful singing quality, even with old strings... and then unboxed the "new one" for the customer, and it is lifeless. let alone the quality/tone difference in imported stuff in the entry range.

I guess if we all just spent our time playing guitars and finding the one we liked, we'd be better off.

and THEN, once you have a guitar you like, you come to me and have some nice Sperzel tuners put on.


Luckily i don't deal with violin shops myself. But i also don't work on violins... except for the ultra rare emergency string change.

[FunkyKikuchiyo]

I'd deal with violins more if A) I played - I don't think a person should work on an instrument he doesn't play, and B) I've just run into so many arrogant violin people that I'd much rather hang with the way cooler guitar people. Seriously, I got into an argument with a violin tech once (something about tone woods) and the guy had absolutely no opposing argument for me except that violins were too complex for any guitar tech to understand. He didn't elaborate on WHY they were more complex or what it was about them that made them so dramatically different, just simply stating that it was beyond my comprehension. Obviously not worth wasting his violin genius to explain to a neanderthal like me, I guess. And that was just one instance.

The descriptions I get from clients about their dealings with violin shops sound an awful lot like guys in comic book shops. If you aren't a complete nerd and obsess about everything they obsess about, they see you as a waste of time. Well, that is probably insulting to guys in comic book shops, I'm using a stereotype of their profession, but I think you know what I mean. I never want to be that kind of professional. Ever.