Adventures with the big GC

So many times in this past month I've thought, "that would be great to blog about." But alas, I am so exhausted by the time I get in bed that I never end up blogging about my experiences and thoughts. Sad I know, but I hope to have some more new stuff up soon.

One event I decided would be blog-worthy is an experience I had with Guitar Center, so I'll start with that. Lately I haven't had the best of luck with purchases. For instance I bought a snare from an ebay seller last year that had a nick in the bearing edge, so I had to send it back to Mapex to have it re-cut (under warranty of course). It turned out to be a great snare; but still, what a pain! Then I also bought a sweet new tweed Blues Junior with Christmas money, and since I wasn't comfortable with the first one I took it back to exchange it for another the same day. You may remember this ordeal from a previous post. There were a few other mishaps with orders from various vendors, but I'll leave it at that and progress to my current story.

I don't have many cymbals, but I do have high quality cymbals. I have this plan for my life where I try to be extremely patient and only purchase musical things that are quality that I will want to keep or can easily get my money back from. Because of this I have very nice cymbals, but only one crash. I like to consistently peruse Guitar Center's national used equipment lists because sometimes stores will list a cymbal for way too cheap. I don't know why, maybe they get it for too cheap from someone and just want to unload it. I found one of these 2 weeks ago at a guitar center in Maryland. The item was an 18" medium Zildjian Avedis crash. I've been looking for a heavier crash to complement my glassy 16" hhx evolution, and since I have been quite the low spender for quite some time now I decided to purchase it, especially since it was listed for a ridiculous price of 50.00.

So, a week went by...no cymbal. I called to check and was told it had in fact gone out, and should be there in a day or two...day 10, no cymbal. I call back and am transferred to the warehouse where a very friendly guy searches, puts me on hold, searches some more, tells me he'll call back, then calls back and says he doesn't think it ever shipped but he won't be able to find it until Monday. No problem, I'm in no hurry and he says he'll next day air it to me.

I don't get a call on Monday, so I call around 3 and work my way to the guy I talked to. Turns out they have no clue where the cymbal is. Someone remembers packing it up but they think they might have shipped it to someone else that ordered some other cymbals, they are really not sure. So I get my money refunded and am back to 1 crash for a while. I kinda felt like complaining some, but seriously, what could I gain? The cymbal simply doesn't exist anymore, and it's not like they'll sell me another nice cymbal for that ridiculously low price. Sometimes I wonder if it was just a cover-up because they realized it was too cheap.

So anyways, when the cymbal arrived I was going to start this sweet series where I went through all my random musical equipment with pictures and fun stories from past memories, but now that will all have to wait. I know you're sad, but at least it gives you something to look forward to. Who knows, maybe it will randomly show up at my house...we can only hope.