MiltyG565

Amazing news! I'm glad you kept your hopes up on this.

I once sold a pedal, met the guy in a lay-by to do the deal, and a few hours later he messaged me to say it wasn't working. It was only £20 and he said he would like his money back and he would throw the pedal in the bin. Absolutely not - If I'm giving the money back, I want my stuff back. I had no idea there was an issue - there wasn't when I was using it. I drove out to his and picked up the pedal and gave him his £20. We talked for a couple of hours about gear and music etc, he was a decent fella. I took the pedal to a local tech and he immediately found that some of the plastic sheath on one of the tiny wires inside had gotten pinched, and the wire was shorting on another component. A bit of electrical tape solved the problem and it was as good as new. I had no issue with the buyers experience, and I had no idea there was an issue with the pedal - stuff like this happens sometimes. A couple of years ago when selling an amp, it blew up as I was demonstrating the amp to the buyer. These things happen sometimes, and, if we're honest, they're much more likely to happen with used gear of unknown provenance. The systems that we operate on as a society are largely built on trust. For the most part, we all engage in these systems in the way they're intended, but there are people who will take advantage. It's never wrong to satisfy yourself that everything is above board, and if you have any doubts whatsoever, it's probably best not to go any further. There is as good as no protection for buyers in second hand markets, and it's your cash at stake. In the OPs case, it sounds like the seller might simply not have been aware of any issues, and I think that's reasonable when talking about an amp, particularly if we're talking about a hobbyist and not a professional musician. The fact that amps are high-powered electrical devices means that somebody isn't likely to take the cover off and go poking around for any reason (and nor should they unless they have all the necessary skills/experience and equipment, and it seems like it wasn't immediately apparent from how the amp sounded that there was an issue as you only knew of this after it was serviced by a technician. Who knows how long the amp was in this state for, and how long the previous owner had it - perhaps he bought it in that condition too, and, none the wiser, didn't see anything wrong with it, just like you didn't. I can completely understand your frustration, and you are quite right in saying that it's important to do all the necessary checks before parting with cash, but unless there's more to the story you haven't told us, I'm not satisfied your characterisation of the seller is completely fair.

Golly, sorry to hear that! It sounds gruesome! It might sound like it's easy for me to say (and that might be because it is), but don't lose faith. The human body and mind is very resilient. Make sure you rest well, eat well, and even get some exercise, as you normally would, and redress the wound as often as the doctors tell you to, along with anything else. It ain't over until the fat lady sings, as they say. As far as playing bass or anything else goes, you're only limited by what you believe you can't do. I had to learn how to walk again after a bout of cancer about 11 years ago, and there have been many times in that 11 years I've told myself I couldn't do things, and I was wrong. I've climbed mountains, walked long distances along coastal paths, sailed more times that I can remember, driven a racing car, and so many other things. Self-limiting beliefs are the thieves of joy and achievement. Where there's a will, there's a way, you just need to have the will. Anyway, that's a bit further down the line now. All the best for your recovery!

Most of the worst offenders are driving used, ex-fleet models because they can't afford new ones 😅 Worse still are the ones driving ones that are 10 or 15 years old. The brand attracts some of the worst people, and I'm sure the salespeople in the dealership probably get on quite well with them, as many car dealers themselves are dead behind the eyes, and solely motivated by commission. Funny thing is, VW and Audi belong to the same parent company, and both dealerships were probably part of the same complex, meaning that your money likely went to the same places it would have done anyway.

Posties are the reason the system works. I was talking to a friend that is an IT consultant in data migration and has spent the last 25 years talking about databases and that kind of boring nonsense. Several projects he has worked on have been to do with addresses. A not insignificant number of addresses in Royal Mail's database are wrong, or simply don't exist on it, and yet people still get their post, because the posties have worked it out.

I have a few things for sale on Discogs at the minute - pretty niche stuff, so they've been sitting a few weeks. Got a nibble yesterday, and somebody apparently purchased one of the records. The order had "ADDRESS VERIFICATION" on it several times, and a minute later I got an email from Discogs saying that the person trying to buy the record has now been banned, and I should ignore the order email. A few minutes later, I got another email from Discogs saying I had sold another record. Given that these have been sitting for a while with no interest, it seemed unusual that I would sell 2 so closely together, and this right after a scammer tried to buy another one, so I held my nerve. I then got an email, supposedly from Discogs, using vague terminology again (dear seller, etc) saying that I needed to verify my account, with a link to a place where I can easily hand over all my information. I sat on it again, and a few minutes later, Discogs emailed me to say that this buyer had also been banned. So that was my little drama yesterday evening.

For the most part, if they unceremoniously left me and my band mates up a creek with little to no good reason, it would be difficult to justify to myself, let alone the rest of the band, a good reason to have them back. However, relationships are complicated and messy, and people can change; how much and in what ways will be dictated by themselves. I suppose what I’m saying is it can be hard to disregard the human element. Typically, most people will put up with somebody that’s not overly impressive for the fact they get along well and they are reliable, over somebody who is breathtaking good but is always late/drunk/cancels last minute/a pain in the arse etc. Remember, all the stories of big-name bands full of arseholes that couldn’t get along and were the most unprofessional people to ever grace earth - they’re the exception, not the rule. Most bands like that never even make it to recording an album, I would reckon.

It's not the wrong lyrics, is it? Edit: shit. Just as well, I always thought the next line was "it's a fruit de mer on a stone cold plate".

You did well, Alanis! Nobody really thought it would be a Danish bloke arguing about the merits of music theory on a pokey little bassists forum in the UK. It's like rai-e-ain on a summer's day!

I really do wonder what you hope to achieve in this discussion. I started this thread merely to say that I respected and admired the deep technical understanding others have of music, and that I someday wished to possess even some of that level of understanding. Your contribution appears to be that it is not necessary because the theory describes the music, not the other way around, ipso facto to use theoretical knowledge to help write a piece of music is putting the cart before the horse and, therefore, wrong, and that it's much better to use intuition when writing music. This is very "what came first, the chicken or the egg" territory. In reality, it doesn't matter. I could spend hours trial and erroring my way to something that sounds good when actually somebody already did the trial and error years ago and somebody is able to explain why the result of that works well, and had I just applied that technical knowledge sooner, I could save my self several hours. That is not cheating, it's not incorrect, and it is not less musical. You may prefer to fumble around with your ears and experience in some false sense of musical purity, that's fine; don't let me spoil your fun, but have the respect to not tell people they are wrong or less musical for applying their theoretical knowledge to a real world situation; that's precisely the point of learning theory.

Unforgivable. As I said before, strings are cheap, so it's worthwhile carrying at least a small variety of them! When it came to bass, we stocked Rotosound, D'Addario, Elixir, and Ernie Ball, with a good "mainstream" selection of each brand, and a couple of something more exotic, like flats/half rounds, steels, NYXL, etc. If a small place can do it, it should be the easiest thing in the world for a chain to do it! My personal preference is D'Addario XL steels, but it's not the job of the shop to dictate to their customers what they should string their instrument with, although I would occasionally have discussions with customers about what they liked in a string and made suggestions based on that.

Do you think if a Sitar player were to write a solo on anything that it would comply with western music theory, or would it, perhaps without the sitar player knowing any music theory at all, comply with traditional Indian music theoretical concepts? Do you think if you played a sitar, would you play something that sounded western, or something that sounded Indian, assuming you have no Indian musical background? As another contributor said, you pick up things like in the English language that we speak, you don’t need to know the theory behind it all to intrinsically pick it up, but we all apply the concepts the same way. That is unconsciously internalising the concepts and redeploying them. The fact that most of us couldn’t explain why the language has these rules doesn’t matter, it does, and we all apply them without realising. And it’s the same with music.

You literally did when you replied to MacDaddy saying he would write a better solo if he didn’t use his knowledge of music theory.

I’m going to suggest that “intuition” is nothing more than unconsciously internalising music theory from decades worth of music consumption, performing, and writing. No doubt what you would intuitively play would be theoretically possible.

Oh cripes, I thought this might happen. Wanting to learn music theory does not negate one’s musicality or expression. I know it isn’t necessary to write great music, I’m not suggesting it’s a precursor to writing or performing well, I’m just saying I would like to understand it. Equally, many great musicians and composers through the years have had at least a firm grasp of music theory and have used this knowledge when writing their music. Whether you enjoy the end product or not is somewhat irrelevant as, again, it’s art. It’s a completely false dichotomy to suggest you either do or don’t need it to write music - nobody is suggesting that’s the case. I do not need to understand how a car works to drive it, but I enjoy learning and understanding it, and this is something I do with my primary interests.

In this video, David breaks down the theoretical concepts which make the iconic Creep chord progression work. The lesser educated among us (i.e. me) would play Creep and think "That's weird that it does that, but it sounds cool" and just forget about it, but learning about the technical and theoretical concepts behind it really is very interesting to me, and I truly wish I possessed this in-depth understanding of music theory. Same goes for Jacob Collier; as unique an individual as he is, I wish I possessed his truly frightening understanding of what makes music, music. Some day I will get around to actually learning theory. I also was not aware of how many different places the chord progression was used - I thought it was almost unique to Creep.

I have to say quite bluntly that if this is the fashion in which you intend to continue with your contributions, I don't think I want to be part of the discussion any longer. There are people here who have contributions to make based on various life experiences, and I don't think we're ranking them based on whose is most relevant, much less taking each other to task on their knowledge/experience. Broad generalisations about the work and experience of somebody that you don't know really isn't fair. But, for what it's worth, give me somebody degree educated with 20+ years of experience any day over somebody that was a mod on a forum when they were 17.

I have withheld my business from places for lesser transgressions than this. From a film hire company owner saying, sarcastically "That's a great car for carrying gear" about my Jaguar XE. I'm not saying he was wrong, he wasn't, it just was unnecessary, and I didn't like it, so that was that. It may be petty, but luckily I get to choose who I do business with.

I feel that basically the only thing setting music shops aside from online retailers is the service. If the service isn’t there, then why would you bother spending half a day getting there? In a world where you can buy online and have it at your door in a couple of days, and it’s cheaper than the shop, why wouldn’t you do that if your local shop can’t even offer you good service? This is what I mean when I say all businesses are competing globally now. It’s not really the other shops they need to worry about, it’s differentiating themselves from the online marketplace, and perhaps taking a slice of that too. For many consumers, being local is not what matters to people, and I am always frustrated when small local businesses can only say “support local business” as an argument to give them my custom. Why? You need to have a better reason.

*On a set, somewhere in Hollywood, Paul Rudd is surrounded by computers in a darkly lit room, his friends Squabbling* Director: “Aaand ACTION!” Rudd, pacing around, frustratedly: “….GUYS! We need to stop fighting. Can’t you see!? This is exactly what the scammer wants! United we stand, divided we fall! We need to focus and find a way to stop him!” Meg Ryan: “You’re right, Paul (or whatever your character’s name is)! We need to find a way to stop him! But how…?” Keanu Reeves: “Why don’t we block his IP address… but this time… we simply don’t care about the unintended consequences?” Rudd, gleefully strutting towards a whiteboard: “You’re right! We shouldn’t care!” *scribbles some nonsense on a board while quickly talking about technical components of a network* “…and it might just work!” Generic computer whizz teenager, glasses, 17 screens arranged in a globe around him, furiously typing away: “I’m into the mainframe!” Everyone: “what?” Rudd: “Mate, you didn’t need to do that, just fkn block the IP address, and then let’s get a pizza” Whizz: “but anybody could do that, what’s my contribution?” Ryan: “You are the heart of this operation” They all hug, go for pizza, and then never think about how many people couldn’t access their website ever again, amen. *scene* *end credits*

I think you're right. It's hard to justify pouring thousands of pounds into stock that's likely to sit for months, or years, with little to no interest. However, as with most independent retailers, you can usually ask them to order in some specifically. Even small shops will be working with about 10 different distributors which represent basically most major brands and probably all minor brands in the UK market. They might even be willing to cut a good deal on it if it's a quick turnaround and quick profit for them. When it came to strings and stuff like that, we carried quite a varied range, because they were cheap and I was in charge of it, but I'd always be happy to order in something special on request. The fact is, though, most people don't know a lot about strings, and so the best selling strings are always the bog standard Ernie Balls, D'Addario nickel wound, and Phosphor Bronze for acoustic guitar. Occasionally somebody would ask for a set of Nashvilles or something (and I kept a pack just in case!) but not really often enough to justify really keeping any significant quantity on hand. Bearing in mind though that this was a small shop in a small market town about halfway between really the only 2 major cities in Northern Ireland (i.e. not close to either of them).

Are you in Belfast/Belfast area? Matchett's carries a good range of guitars and basses, helped by the fact that they are a Fender dealer. Also, multiple locations in the city centre helps to be able to speculate on carrying a broader range of goods.

Very sadly, even with warnings and alerts and attempts to stop people arranging a sale off the platform, people still do it. Be it naivety, hubris, or casual disregard for the risks, it still happens, and that is because scammers are convincing, and sometimes the allure is too great. Try as they might, they're unlikely to ever truly stop scams, as every step they take towards that goal, the scammers will adjust and get around it. That doesn't mean we shouldn't try - of course we should, but for the time being, it seems like the best way to stop scams is to simply have your wits about you and recognise the signs. Many of the additional measures which have been introduced to prevent scams have been helpful, but have also caused greater inconvenience for consumers, and it very much feels like the problem is being tackled from the bottom up, not the top down. And that's not even touching on the very many other forms of fraud that exist, such as counterfeit goods, misrepresentation, etc.

I was referring to bank transfers, but this is also absolutely not true. Of all the PayPal disputes I've seen, not a single customer has reported that they can no longer use PayPal as a result of disputing the matter with a third party, and, in fact, I've disputed transactions myself with my credit card company; PayPal simply said they won't open a dispute themselves if somebody else is looking into it. PayPal Ts&Cs do not supersede Ts&Cs, regulations, or laws elsewhere. If it's in their terms of service, I suppose they aren't enforcing it.

They could claim it was fraud to their bank, who sends a report to the receiving bank. Given the number of genuine cases of fraud that do not result in money being successfully recovered though, I doubt that a false report would fare better. Having said that, your bank will need to discuss it with you before debiting your account in any case. In most cases, by the time the bank looks, the money is already gone, though. Do what couriers do now and just take a pic of the person with whatever you are selling them. Should cover you if they do make any nonsense claims later.