Last night the wireless pack started acting up in the gig, except I didn’t know that’s what it was. I spent all of the first half worrying that my nylon string guitar was dying in a horrible way. It turned out it was the jack socket on the wireless receiver that was crackling from the vibrations through my amp. I don’t particularly want to buy my own wireless system but if this show goes out again I’ll have to.
Where do you buy guitar gear if you live in London? The simple answer is nowhere in London.
In the olden days Denmark Street used to be the musical hub, full of independent music shops, where you could go and dream about owning the shiny guitar in the window. Now it is a corporate run street masquerading as the independent stores of old. In fact, a large number of the shops on that street are owned by one company – Rose Morris.
My last three dealings with London stores sum up the problems almost perfectly. Firstly I wanted to buy an AER Compact 60. This is an amazing amp and should have cost about £500. I wasn’t in a rush to get it but happened to be in London so I figured I would see what price I could get it for there. The best any shop in Denmark Street would do was £600. The reason for the price difference:
It costs more to do business in London.
Now bear in mind that they didn’t have to sell me the product. I knew what I wanted and used none of the salesman’s time. They weren’t even using stockroom space to hold it as they were going to order it in. The only work they had to do was take my money and make a telephone call. Once they realised I wasn’t going to spend that money they agreed to match the other prices I had found but it was hard work.
Next I bought a guitar from Rockers. This is one of the better music stores on the street but the staff were completely clueless about the guitar I was buying – the Ibanez SV54760A. This is a modern guitar with some cool features and I would have appreciated someone talking me through but they had absolutely no idea. They had no real interest in selling me the guitar. They also had it marked up at the wrong price. The guitar was marked up at £1100, is available online at £1200 and they wanted £1400 at the till. Again, I had to argue pretty hard to get it for £1200.
Finally, and the experience that means I won’t ever buy anything from Denmark Street again, was a trip to MusicGrounds. I had ordered in an amp switcher for my G-Lab GSC-2, through speaking to the company in Poland. Unfortunately, they aren’t set up to ship straight to the person, preferring instead to ship to Music ground and deal with payment there. Now the entire effort that Music Ground had to put in was opening a box and swiping my credit card. For this they tried to charge 50% on top of the price of the goods, despite having kept me waiting an hour in the shop because they guy that deals with orders was late for work. While I was there I also saw them selling gear to people that was far beyond what they wanted, in both capability and price. They were clearly preying on the naive.
Shops in London seem to have a sense of entitlement that is of a bygone age. An age where they would know the product they were selling and would give good service. The now closed Soho Soundhouse was great for this. Always willing to do a deal, and reasonable prices to start with, I would inevitably walk out with more than I wanted and still feel that I’d had a good experience. They’ve ignored the fact that customers can easily find out what a product is worth these days.
So where should you buy gear? Unfortunately you’re pretty much going to have to go out of London. Other than Chandlers, near Putney, there isn’t a guitar shop I can think of that sells good quality gear at good prices. Thankfully for anyone in South London there is a store not to far away that seems to be getting it right.
Anderton’s in Guildford has a great range of gear at great prices. If you go to the shop you can often get a bit of a deal when you buy enough gear, but they also have a completely hassle free online store with knowledgable staff at the other end of the phone. They might not always be as cheap as someone like Dolphin, but they know what they are talking about. The department managers seem to stick around for years and really know the gear they are selling. They also reward loyalty. There are a lot of South London based musicians that have switched allegiance to Anderton’s and aren’t looking back.
One of the most important things on a gig for me is to have total control over the sound I’m producing on stage. This may sound obvious but sound guys always seem to be trying to interfere.
I’ve thought very carefully about my gear set-up. I tend to use either a Line 6 pedalboard or a G-Lab GSC-2 switcher with loads of old school effects and an amp switcher built it. This means that I can run electric and acoustic guitars from one lead and have amp switching and effects all preprogrammed and nothing can go wrong.
This is all fine until something gets in the way. On Brendan Cole – Live & Unjudged I’m on a wireless system. This sits right at the start of my signal chain. For the first three shows of this tour we just couldn’t get the wireless system to work. It was picking up far too much noise from the guitar but when I plugged straight into my rig it was all clean. It was only before the third show that we diagnosed it as using the wrong lead in the wireless pack. Now this isn’t my wireless pack – if it was I would have it checked to make sure it works with my gear. No, this was provided by the sound guys, who had never tested it with a guitar but knew that it should work. There’s a reason I tour with a 10m guitar lead in my case and I was proved right.
The other bane of a musicians life is DI boxes. I need a microphone in front of my electric amp and my acoustic amp has its own DI out. I don’t want DI boxes in front of that. DI boxes will go wrong, every bit of gear does. I just don’t want it going wrong and making me sound bad on stage. Once the sound has gone past my amp it’s not really my issue anymore and you can use whatever gear you want. This is particularly important or bass players. I’ve seen many bass players get in trouble over DI boxes being to early in the signal chain.
It’s almost time for the Summer tour with Brendan. As far as I know it is largely going to be the same show as January with a couple of small changes. We’re also getting a coach and hotels for the more distant venues, which is a bit of a relief this time. Bring on Scotland and Ireland.
One venue has fallen off the list though. Unfortunately we won’t be doing London this time. It was felt that it wasn’t right doing it on a Bank Holiday weekend Sunday. We’ll probably come back into town with it another time though.
Had a great gig last Sunday playing for a charity gala for a hospice in Woking. On the bill were Bobby Davro, Des O’Connor, Keedie, Tenors Unlimited, Paul Zerdin and more. It was the longest show I’ve done in a while, clocking in at 4.5 hours but it was a pleasure being able to do a few numbers backing Des. There’s definitely a real level of class that you get with the more established performers that you really don’t see with the new guys.
A last minute-ish gig has come in for next week. West End star Hannah Waddingham will be playing at the Menier Chocolate Factory in London in a week of cabaret shows. The shows are being recorded for a possible CD release as well. Arrangements are being done by Chris Walker and so should be brilliant. It’s a six piece band playing a range of styles from show tunes to jazz and pop.
The tour schedule for Brendan Cole: Live and Unjudged has been released. This time we’re going to be visiting Ireland and Scotland as well as the rest of the UK. Full dates are up here although not all theatres have opened up the bookings yet. Time to strap on the wireless pack again.
I’m working on updating this site at the moment. Stay tuned for news on upcoming tours and shows.
