I am not so thrilled. While my prospective partner has a large inventory of jackson guitars with which he can partially stock the new location. I would need to invest in inventory to augment his existing supply. As well, we would split the remaining expenses 50:50. My concerns are:

• My partner and i have tried to sell his Jackson guitars as a partnership since last September. Our experience was unproductive: we sold no guitars jointly, and I sold none. most of my ideas were either put on hold, not accepted, or asked to be reworked.
• The location of this venture is the same one that my partner has spent the past 18 months explaining why it is a bad location for a store.
• I have a vision for what a music store that I am passionate about looks like. I am not sure my partner has a vision, but if he does, it is very different from mine. Or at the very least, this venture is not what i see as my successful guitar store.

So now all that is left is to explain that to my partner.

So it was with mixed feelings that I learned that the store is either as a) being sold or  b) most likely being closed and the inventory moved into another store owned and operated by the same owner.

Alas, the program did not allow me access to the website until it was complete and uploaded onto the web host. Many of the graphics that had been inserted don’t appear to like my Mac-standard Safari browser. And now I learn that if I want to include a blog, I will need to upgrade the service package we already pay for. So I checked in with two other providers, register.com and godaddy.com and neither one seems to offer a template site that includes a blog.

Since blogs are no longer cutting edge, does this mean they are already passe?

And here I thought I was the only one that couldn’t sell a guitar on e-bay or craigslist during the past 6 months.

Maybe I am just stubborn.

So I went to the store because when I have looked for unusual guitars, like the Parker Fly or the Dean Soltero, their store always comes up as a dealer. I was unimpressed by the physical retail store, but I was impressed by the employees within. I had conversations with two of the workers, and mostly spent time with the second. He was able to find a Leslie West Standard, a one-pick-up version of the Soltero for which I have been searching. We talked about guitars, the local guitar market, the market for instruments in Philadelphia, and Dean guitars.

What I learned was that Dean has quality control issues, dealing with Dean is not easy, and the Dean sales representative was given much of the responsibility for the difficulty in selling their guitars. After playing the Dean, I decided that I liked the playability of the neck. But the guitar was poorly set up from the factory, and required some adjustments to the pickup, so it wouldn’t contact the high E string. The guitar was strung with 9′s, and while they certainly were easy to bend, the guitar had a thin tone that might have been caused by the strings. Or it might have been caused by the fact that it was a $600 single-pickup guitar. But I didn’t learn of the price until I was home, because nobody could find out how much it cost! I agree that Dean should provide their dealers with enough info that price should never be an unknown, but it was.

I plan to return to the store, perhaps next week. They have a Dean Soltero, American made, two pickups, in their NJ warehouse, and plan to get it to their store so I can play it. I’ll be interested in its tone, and hearing how much of a difference the second pickup makes in the variety of tones I can squeeze out of the Soltero. In the meantime, it was a nice way to spend an hour this morning. Its just a shame that parking in Philadelphia set me back $13.50 for 90 minutes. Ouch!

That was about 2 weeks ago. I’ve not heard anything from him. And at this point, I don’t expect to. Its a shame, as the info on these guitars available on the internet is confusing, at best. I’ve posed questions to sellers on e-bay, but their answers make no sense. So its one more guitar that I won’t be buying any time soon

The last time this happened, I was i the market for a Michael Schenker autographed Dean Flying V, but wanted to see one before spending the $2K+. I had the same result then. In the past, I’ve attributed it to the store owner. But perhaps the Dean sales representative may share in the blame. Except that if the store owner was truly responsive, then he should call me to let me know that he was unable to get me the information.

I think this is taught in customer relations 101. Or Retail Store Management 101. It certainly should be, if it isn’t. its this type of behavior that makes me think I could riun a store better. But I still can’t make the economics work.

One of the problems with Safari is it won?t allow paragraph breaks.

And other formatting is also not an option.

Hoping to stave off the inevitable, I stopped by Springfield Music. Springfield Music is owned by the owner of Swarthmore Music, about which I’ve already written too much. The owner himself was in today. I asked about the Soltero, and he indicated that he thought he might have heard of it. Then he said he had some Deans at his other location, and called to check . Then hung up. A good 5-10 minutes later, he called back to find out if they had any. So this “inventory check” took between 10 and 15 minutes. I tried to walk out twice, but he stopped me both times with promises of things to come. Finally, he took my name and phone number, and wrote down what I wanted to know into a computer that must have been 15 years old. It shouldn’t have been hard, but I had to repeat it several times:What is the difference between the $3500 model and the $400 model ($3100, said the keyboard instructor overhearing our conversation).

So now I’ll wait and see if he calls me back. I hope he does, so I have some reason NOT to spend the $3500 on the expensive version (which has a beautiful figured maple top and is made in America).

The next step is to visit the surrounding large chain stores. Around here, that means Guitar Center and Sam Ash. When I did this looking for a Fly, none of them had any in stock. Although they both did have examples of the new Parker Strat-like guitar that has been reviewed well in magazines, but has a bolt on neck and other significant differences from the Fly I was after. So no sale.

I will shortly start to make the rounds of Guitar Center and Sam Ash. My daughters are on vacation this week, so running out to look at guitars is more problematic than usual. Still, it is the next step.

In both cases, it is about this time that I start wondering how important it is to play an instrument before buying it. I am an intermediate level player (on a good day) so some of the subtleties between individual examples of a particular model are often beyond me. But not always. But if I tell myself this, then I can start also looking on e-bay.

In the case of the Parker, I quickly concluded that almost all Parkers on e-bay, unless new, have a chip somewhere in the carbon fiber body coating. Some are pretty bad. And the new ones all cost the same. After several months of watching, I was able to find an example that had no chips, and had been rarely used. What’s more, I was able to get it for a fair, but not great, price. I’ve been very happy with the Parker.

But the Dean is a new guitar. It hasn’t been made long enough for gently used ones to start showing up on e-bay. As a new instrument, I also feel a greater need to play it before buying it. While I may not be able to notice certain subtleties, I also know there are some guitars that just don’t work for me. Surprisingly, a genuine Gibson Les Paul does nothing for me, but I have no such problems with Epiphone Les Pauls (go figure!).

And again, it is the difficulty I experience finding an example of this guitar to play that leads me top the conclusion that there is an untapped niche of guitar players in the Phialdelphia area that must be having the same difficulty as me. Surely others are interested in playing a Dean Soltero guitar. but are there enough? And if they find me, and play my Soltero hanging on the wall, will they go home and order it off the internet?

Wish I knew the answer…