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Joined:
March 2002
Posts: 15686
Location: SoCal | I saw this Elite on ebay
http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=2504986799&categ...
and you know, as much as I love my old 1537 Elite, if I was shopping for a new one, this would be pretty high up on the list of candidates.
The only time I ever see guitars like this in stores, they are high up on the wall, and when I get them down, they have dead strings. Making certain that they are in a playable spot and have strings that sound crisp would go a long ways toward selling a lot more of these. |
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Joined:
January 2003
Posts: 63
Location: Virginia | I have been wondering where one goes to buy dead strings....Ovation has obviously bought them all to put on their new guitars. EVERY new Ovation I have played over the past few months has had wretched strings. Just yesterday a salesman said to me "sounds pretty good to me....just think how it would sound with a new set of strings". "Do you think it would sound better?" I asked. If I owned a music store and I was asking $1544 (or whatever the price tag was) for a guitar....I think I would make sure it had a decent set of strings on it. According to the salesman, it came out of the box like that. I don't know if there was any truth to it, but even if it is true, how long do I want MY money tied up in that guitar before someone looks past the fact that it had dead strings and decided to buy it? I must admit, I was just kinda trolling....I don't have the duckets to purchase that particular guitar, but even the applause right next to it had dead strings. Oh well...enough ranting for now.
bd |
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Joined:
June 2002
Posts: 6202
Location: Phoenix AZ | The best thing to do is to bring your own new strings with you to the store (or buy them there). Put the new strings on the guitar and play it. If you don't decide to buy the guitar, take your strings off and put the dead ones back on. Seriously, I have done this! One day at Milano's Music here in AZ I bought a new set of strings and used them on 4 different guitars before deciding to buy none of them and taking the strings home with me. The sales guy thought I was nuts and since I didn't have a peg winder with me my wrist was pretty sore, but I did get to play four guitars all with new strings. Dave |
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Joined:
March 2002
Posts: 389
Location: RI. That small State out East | bd:
Your rant is / has been something that I've been bitching at for... To long. The big (guitar center) type stores do know that if it sounds good they will sell. I'm afaid the overworked / underpaid management teams just can't find the time to set a guitar (tune it) and have it ready to play... I spent 30 min last month tuning guitars for a house because... I had to. I do know that if you are interested in an "expensive" guitar they will put a new set of strings on. They might not for my 17yr. old but they have done it for me. I've pulled "new" broken Ovations off the wall and taken them to the Mgr. to send back or just get them off the wall.
Hell, this is my playground when I'm on the road... I guess I'm just picking up the litter someone else left behind.
Woz |
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Joined:
February 2002
Posts: 5750
Location: Scotland | I don't think it's reasonable or practical to expect every guitar in a store to have fresh strings, especially with the amount of weekend tire-kickers who invade guitar stores just to pass the time. I do think it's perfectly reasonable to ask for a new set to be put on an expensive guitar in which you are about to invest serious money. I always offer to pay trade price for the strings if I don't buy the instrument and so far nobody has refused. |
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Joined:
March 2002
Posts: 15686
Location: SoCal | Paul T.:
I disagree in that with all the new poly and nano web coatings on strings, there is no reason for guitars to sound dead. If I worked at Ovation, I would decree that all guitars, prior to being shipped, have such strings on them. It just doesn't make good sense to use anything else that would go dead at the first sign of sweat. It just strikes me as a good marketing decision to use the strings that will last the longest in the stores where they will be played by prospective buyers. But hey, nobody asked me. |
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Joined:
June 2002
Posts: 147
| Paul T.
I agree. Without getting off on a new thread about strings I would like to say I think strings are like milk. They can go bad just sitting in a box on the shelf. All the US Ovations are shipped with D'Addario EXP lights. Ovation spends the extra money to put these on because most buyers are string stupid and since most Ovations in your average guitar shop are already six months to a year old by the time they’re sold, by definition the strings are already DOA and if their not they will be after a couple of days of abuse in the music store. So it would be nice if a music store made sure to put on a fresh set of strings once a week so when I came in I’d be so happy that I wouldn’t mind them tacking on $15 for strings and labor per week times 30 weeks or $450 string maintenance onto a $1500 guitar.
Mike |
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Joined:
February 2002
Posts: 5750
Location: Scotland | Paul, some manufacturers are shipping guitars with coated strings, Taylor use Elixirs & I beleive Ovation are shipping with EXP's. Makes sense from a marketing standpoint, at least the guitars have half a chance of sounding OK when they've been in the store for 6 months. But, the wholesale price on coated strings is a least double that of US made name-brand non-coated strings, so I can't see too many stores using coated if & when they restring inventory, even though it makes sense to do so. |
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Joined:
July 2002
Posts: 150
Location: Minneapolis, MN | You can always count on thoughtful and diverse opinions here, I appreciate that :D
My niece's $250 Alvarez, and friend's $400 Ibanez, both purchased new a couple of months ago, both came with Elixir strings from the factory- with the hang tags to prove it. I agree that it makes good marketing sense for manufacturers for the reasons listed in prior posts.
It also makes sense from the string manufacturers point of view. If you agree with MSB, that most buyers are "string stupid" then it only makes sense that when it comes time to buy new strings, these same folks will walk into a music shop with that hang tag, and ask for "these" or buy them online because they'll just stick with what works. Just my two cents... |
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Joined:
October 2002
Posts: 30
| Good points. When I'm trying out guitars I'll just think to myself "she's only going to sound better with some fresh strings". It's safe to say that 95% of the guitars u pick up will have dead strings so just rate them that way with the notion that the guitar probably has more potential than it's putting out. |
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