so I went to GC, and this is what the sales rep said... is he right?

[bassthumpintwin]

so I went to Guitar Center yesterday to help my girlfriend pick out a starter bass for her little bro. I found a used Ibanez GSR100 but there wasnt a tag on it.... so the sales rep goes to check the price and I went and got it and played it for a while..... not bad overall, but there was some definite fret buzz in the upper register.... I pointed this out and the guy is like "oh, thats just the roundwound strings..... people put those on cuz they like to slap with them....blahaalbhalbahlbhalbh" "put some flatwounds on and you'd take care of that"

then he's like "let me plug it in and test her out for ya.....

so he plugs it in and plays some fast blues scales and moves up and down the neck with his "impressive" little runs and then he does some slap line with a bunch of hammer ons and double slaps to make him sound like a real bass player (dont get me wrong.... it was ok, and I probably couldnt match it, but his finger style was a little sloppy anyway) and he's like "this bass is actually set up pretty well...."

 

ok, first of all, FRET BUZZ is FRET BUZZ regardless of the strings... am i righT? and he said "any bass with roundwounds will buzz"

but I've played many basses with roundwounds that didnt have fret buzz.........

 

and second of all, i've been playing bass for over 5 years... heck, i built my own from scratch! and this guy is trying to tell me about basses like i've never heard of them.... sales reps irritate me sometimes......

[sunburstbasser]

Roundwound strings will always buzz...if you have sloppy left hand fingering. Since you said his fingering technique was a little sloppy, my guess is he never learned to fret properly either. Flats buzz too, its just less noticeable than with rounds.

 

Consider him an assclown, and tell him I said so.

[bassthumpintwin]

oh, by the way, we ended up buying it for 150.... I took it back to my girlfriends house and loosened the truss rod a touch.... this improved the buzz quite a bit, and i think her brother should be pretty happy with it.....

[sunburstbasser]

Sweet. Those basses are oft-recommended as start basses on this site along with SX and Yammy.

[bassthumpintwin]

Originally posted by sunburstbasser Roundwound strings will always buzz...if you have sloppy left hand fingering. Since you said his fingering technique was a little sloppy, my guess is he never learned to fret properly either. Flats buzz too, its just less noticeable than with rounds. Consider him an assclown, and tell him I said so.

 

well, you can't pick up the buzz with its plugged in, and you couldnt hear anything with all the wankers at GC anyway, but I'm just sayin, this guy is prettending that I'm an idiot for thinking roundwounds arent the sole cause of this fret buzz.... then he masks anything that could be wrong with the bass by playing all these fast licks so you cant pick anything up. he was trying to "impress" me into buying the bass....

and i cant stand when sales reps talk down to me...

[beav2k2]

If I ever asked to play a bass and the "salesperson" decided to show off before handing it to me, I would leave right then and there. Then again, what can be expected from the adverage GC rep?

[sunburstbasser]

 

Originally posted by beav2k2 If I ever asked to play a bass and the "salesperson" decided to show off before handing it to me, I would leave right then and there. Then again, what can be expected from the adverage GC rep?

 

 

The average one?

 

"I played guitar once."

[12StringThunder]

as a sales rep ( not at GC but at a small indipendantly oned store) the last thing I do and I prefer not to do it at all is play an instrument for a customer. If they are a beginner and dont know how to play at all I will demo it for them but not with any flashy playing, just usualy some slow jam type stuff on guitar or bass, or " O Susanna" with the mandolin ( its the only song on mandolin I know).

 

also if an instrument has any fret buzz ( which I admit some of ours do at any given time there are only two of us working there and we have over 100 fretted instruments at any given time so some will need adjustments) I offer to adjust it then for them if we aren't too busy.

 

I always hated sales guys who would take an instrument from me and play it.

 

also a good sales guy doesnt talk down to anyone, you are supposed to beable to judge your customers and talk on they're level. not down to them that just pisses them off.

[Perfessor]

Shoulda tried Sam Ash?

[MageZ]

Typical assclown.

[Mudbass]

I dunno. Compare it to the other 500 GSR100's the Guitar Center has hanging on the wall and see if they all buzz. If so then it's normal.

[baracuda2004]

i had a rep try to show off in front of me then try to tell me that this 300watt GK bass full stack they have is so much better than my PEAVEY CLASSIC 400 all tube bass amp which i knew to be wrong cause it had almost no features no power and they were charging $400 over what i had seen on Musicians FRIEND so he hooked up a PV CIRRUS to it and did a little scale run, so i took a cheap ass SQUIER and hooked it up to a little 25 watt IBANEZ bass amp and made him look like a retarted 1 armed 4 year old so up he went to the manager and tried to get him to come in there and talk to me about this amp and bass and what a combination they were so i bassicaly acted like i knew nothing he hooks up the same combo(CIRRUS and GK and i decided to show him up with the little SQUIER i also played everything he did plus more, and at the end i stood up told him i think i'll buy my 6550 tubes somewhere else and as i walked off i said be a musician not a sales-person and he bassically tried to get a word in and told me not to comeback cause he didn't need harrasment, so i told him that people like him are the reason {censored}ney Queers and Pristina Gaguilera sold 1 million records and he stood there as if he was asian and i had just disgraced his family(cause he's a metal head) i felt so good but the only thing is now i can't go back in there and they had good prices on their tubes.. now i just get them from the net

 

 

sorry this is so long but my story has got to be heard......

[Oingy]

Originally posted by baracuda2004 sorry this is so long but my story has got to be heard......

And punctuated!

[bassthumpintwin]

Originally posted by Mudbass I dunno. Compare it to the other 500 GSR100's the Guitar Center has hanging on the wall and see if they all buzz. If so then it's normal.

 

well, that's not the point.... he said "ALL BASSES BUZZ if you put roundwounds on them...."

besided that, this was the only one they had

we are talkin abount FRET buzz here.... not the way roundwounds sound when you thump and slap them....

[illidian]

Roundwounds don't buzz themselves. They may accentuate some buzz (whereas flats may do the opposite), but they won't create any.

 

My bass buzzes if I use enough attack. I guess all basses would do that (theoretically), though.

[ZeroGomer]

 

Originally posted by baracuda2004 sorry this is so long but my story has got to be heard......

 

 

You probably didn't handle that in the best way possible, but... they were obviously idiot salesmen that don't deserve your business. You're right for not going back. Tell all your friends.

[TwYzTyR]

Originally posted by baracuda2004 sorry this is so long but my story has got to be heard......

 

[el_duderino676]

 

Originally posted by baracuda2004 i had a rep try to show off in front of me then try to tell me that this 300watt GK bass full stack they have is so much better than my PEAVEY CLASSIC 400 all tube bass amp which i knew to be wrong cause it had almost no features no power and they were charging $400 over what i had seen on Musicians FRIEND so he hooked up a PV CIRRUS to it and did a little scale run, so i took a cheap ass SQUIER and hooked it up to a little 25 watt IBANEZ bass amp and made him look like a retarted 1 armed 4 year old so up he went to the manager and tried to get him to come in there and talk to me about this amp and bass and what a combination they were so i bassicaly acted like i knew nothing he hooks up the same combo(CIRRUS and GK and i decided to show him up with the little SQUIER i also played everything he did plus more, and at the end i stood up told him i think i'll buy my 6550 tubes somewhere else and as i walked off i said be a musician not a sales-person and he bassically tried to get a word in and told me not to comeback cause he didn't need harrasment, so i told him that people like him are the reason {censored}ney Queers and Pristina Gaguilera sold 1 million records and he stood there as if he was asian and i had just disgraced his family(cause he's a metal head) i felt so good but the only thing is now i can't go back in there and they had good prices on their tubes.. now i just get them from the net sorry this is so long but my story has got to be heard......

 

 

 

HAH!! If the bitches at my local store (not GC) ever pull some {censored} like that on me, I will have to do something like this. It doesn't matter, I don't buy anything from them anymore since they {censored}ed up the wiring on my bass when I took it to them to be fixed.

 

Anyway, if that assclown toalked down to you, you should have took the bass out of his hands and popped him in the nose with it.

[Craig Vecchione]

No. Roundwound strings do not buzz.

[B-Bottom]

Their are a few things that I've learned from my time on this planet. The first is that the 2 out of 3 people don't know what the hell they are talking about. The second is that the ratio is raised when it comes to the majority of music stores