Two stories into one.
I've got a guitar that's hard to find information for. Running internet searches on it offers little to no help, even the last time I looked a few months back. It's an ESP-LTD M-252. I bought it used for $127. It's 25-1/2 scale length, H-S-H with a FR licensed trem with no bar, but with string locks at the nut. I've had this guitar since sometime in early 2008.....I think.
I changed the strings in it over the weekend which really surprised me. The installation procedure was one I had not done, but did recognize. My earliest record of this guitar is in my maintainance spreadsheet that I dropped the tuning to a dble dropped D in June of 2008. I do remember thinking that the strings could stand a change when I got it, but were not sounding too badly. Fast forward to the end of last week and I dropped the whole thing 1/2 step and felt the strings and it was time. First string change on this guitar in at a minimum of 29 months.
So, new strings on, I figured out the new to me procedure and had it all set to go. I started doing my little number that I set out to do to begin with and decided that I wanted a trem bar for one bit of it, like it had when new I'm sure.
So I go into national guitar and music store that's not named GN and sign my $127 jewel in so that I could find me a trem bar to match. The young lad that decided he was going to be my expert for the day got to me before I could get to the trem bars. He bounces his little energetic, high on his own expertise way back to where they stock all three trem bars. He goes to the first two first - the Strat ones - and decides that neither were right. I told him which one was right before he grabbed them, but I stood there patiently.
I repeated my thought about which one it would be.
"No", he said, "That one will not work on this." Hokey dokey. How about doing just a neat little incision in the packaging and letting me try. "I'll tell you what", he said, "Let me take this back to the tech". A tech? Sunday afternoon, late? He grabs my guitar and not the trem bar that I told him would work. He re-appears in 5 minutes with the tech and my guitar and the tech does a brief explanation of why the trem bar in my hand will not work. My wife was with me, of course, and I didn't feel like getting into a shouting match. I calmly interupted his expert dissertation on what it would take and ask the energetic one, again, if I could make just a little slice in the packaging. Fine, he said, and commences to shredding the packaging all up and hands me the bar with all the packaging dangling off the area that screws on to my bridge.
So while the techie was still offering his most eloquant description of the modifications needed to make it work, I got the bar out of the packaging, unscrewed a blark part from the trem and screwed what was left onto my bridge. Done. Their jaws hit the floor. I said, "Can I pay for this now and go home, please???"
Roy
"I wonder if a composer ever intentionally composed a piece that was physically impossible to play and stuck it away to be found years later after his death, knowing it would forever drive perfectionist musicians crazy." - George Carlin
Nice story...sadly, I'm sure it won't be your last encounter of this sort. The world is full of these guys... :roll:
This is why I usually try to buy everything off of the 'net that I can, but in your case, you needed to "try before you buy..."
I was amazed at the very little information that was displayed with guitars when I got into playing. I am quite sure that this guitar hobby has required more research than anything else I've seen. But that's just the way it is. Nowadays there's a bit more on the tag. Still,....
Oh well.
Roy
"I wonder if a composer ever intentionally composed a piece that was physically impossible to play and stuck it away to be found years later after his death, knowing it would forever drive perfectionist musicians crazy." - George Carlin
So you're saying that, if your wife hadn't been with you, you would have gotten into a shouting match with these guys? ;-)
Yeah, me too. One of the reasons I try to take her with me most places...
Glad you got the whammy you needed.
Ande
My wife has a technique for dealing with the "know it all" salesperson like that when she knows what she wants or needs.
As the salesperson blathers away, she picks up the item she needs (if they're between her and the item she moves them aside as gently as possible, with a polite "excuse me"). Then she walks away with the item to the cashier and pays for it. Any protests are soundlessly met with an icy stare. It's a wonderful thing to watch.
Playing guitar and never playing for others is like studying medicine and never working in a clinic.
That story made my day! :mrgreen:
"Work hard, rock hard, eat hard, sleep hard,
grow big, wear glasses if you need 'em."
-- The Webb Wilder Credo --
Moonie, that's classic. The stare. Oh know!!!! Runaway!!!!!
So you're saying that, if your wife hadn't been with you, you would have gotten into a shouting match with these guys?
Not any more, I guess. I'm getting old and shouting hurts like the dickens. :cry:
I do want it to be known that I always more of an instigater. I'd give someone a break, saying something like "I know on some sort of program where you need to push product X or that management has at least trained you in such a manner, but I do not like product X and would appreciate it if you stopped trying to pish product X down my throat." The good ones always appreaciatte the candor and normally got some sort of sale. That bad ones..... it's really hard to continue to treat someone with respect when they so blatenly do not respect you. I've grown older and I leave. That's not always been the case.
Roy
"I wonder if a composer ever intentionally composed a piece that was physically impossible to play and stuck it away to be found years later after his death, knowing it would forever drive perfectionist musicians crazy." - George Carlin
