rant: Guitar Center force feeding Reason!!

Johnisfaster · Post by **Johnisfaster** » Mon Aug 28, 2006 8:18 pm

the reason I started ranting about this in the first place is my buddy was telling me about his brother going into guitar center planning on spending a shi* load of money that he got when one of his songs kinda hit it big for like 3 months and then the band dropped off the planet, so he's got money, and he goes into guitar center talking to them about native waves plugins and they try to sell him reason and he says "I don't need that, I'm recording bands and using protools" and they just pushed and pushed and he said "look, I was planning on spending like 4 grand in your store but now I'm planning on leaving" and he did. later he spent his 4 grand online.

the point is if you say "no" then you mean "no"

NO MEANS NO

I'm to the point where I just plain don't talk to those people when I go in there, if I don't know exactly what I want then I research online before I ever walk into guitar center. so I can just say "go get me the ****" and they run off and come back with it and all the sudden they are calling me "sir"

the sir thing kinda pisses me off too. the second I let on that I'm gonna pay for something my name becomes "sir"
f***ing douche bags.

Sales Dude McBoob · Post by **Sales Dude McBoob** » Mon Aug 28, 2006 8:19 pm

kb420 wrote:Hey Johnisfaster,

Exactly which GC are you referring to. Let me know. Give me their phone number so that I can call there and harass the shit out of them. I'm bored right now, so I have nothing better to do.

Karma karma karma karma karma chameleon...

kb420 · Post by **kb420** » Mon Aug 28, 2006 8:21 pm

Culture Club?!?!?!??!

I really find this all a bit odd. The GC in Cherry Hill New Jersey is great. I usually know exactly what I want before I go in there, and no one ever tries to sell me something that I don't want, so I can't say that I have ever experienced that.

That why I want to know which GC you are talking about.

Johnisfaster · Post by **Johnisfaster** » Mon Aug 28, 2006 8:22 pm

kb420 wrote:Hey Johnisfaster,

Exactly which GC are you referring to. Let me know. Give me their phone number so that I can call there and harass the shit out of them. I'm bored right now, so I have nothing better to do.

don't got the number handy, but it's the guitar center in sacramento california. theres only one of course.

kb420 · Post by **kb420** » Mon Aug 28, 2006 8:26 pm

A friend of mine has been trying to get me to use Reason for over a year now, and I just don't see the point. I have an individual program that will do everything that all of those different racks can do already. I just don't think I need it. Maybe I'm wrong, but I don't know what it can do that I can't do with the software I already own.

smutek · Post by **smutek** » Mon Aug 28, 2006 8:37 pm

Martyn wrote:
forge wrote:reason is a toy!

<ducks>
It's not a toy dammit! When you spin the rack around, the wires bounce about and look just like the real thing, makes me feel all cozy inside.

njh · Post by **njh** » Mon Aug 28, 2006 8:41 pm

Martyn wrote:Those salesmen probably just have a big commission on sales of Reason or something.

i used to work at guitar center there commission is almost non existent
you have to sell around $1,000 a day to get a commision at the end of the month. most employees are just making the minimum wage (and doing so at the skin of there teeth). if you are unable to sell a certain amount within 3 months a guitar center you are fired..
also the sales people are pushy know it alls that actually know very little.
this is pretty much guitar centers policy to treat the customer as an uninformed piece of meat in order to sell.
during training at guitar center they give you the whole run down on how to do this. as an employee its your job to act like a moron who is up on all of the childish slang. here is the prefered way to great a customer, this is coming out of the sales hand book.."hey dude hows it going, nice boots are those snake skin?"
"wow that sounds great have you ever played a squier before?"
"( sales man)hey whats up man can i help you find anything.. (customer) no im just looking... (sales man)" looking for anything in particular?" "we have a great deal on these guitars here try this let me get you a pick"

this is why i quit.. i do not feel right forcing junk products into peoples hands and making them feel like crap just so they will buy something..
most people DO know what they want and DO NOT need a salesman in there face through the whole buying proccess.. guitar center does not get this. they feel badgering a customer is just good customer service.
eventually i see them going out of bussiness do there rediculous sales tactics. they seem to think it is 1978 and every good employee will have a used car sales man ethic and a doped up skater personality.

Machinate · Post by **Machinate** » Mon Aug 28, 2006 8:41 pm

kb420 wrote:A friend of mine has been trying to get me to use Reason for over a year now, and I just don't see the point. I have an individual program that will do everything that all of those different racks can do already. I just don't think I need it. Maybe I'm wrong, but I don't know what it can do that I can't do with the software I already own.

Sonar 5.2PE, Sampletank 2.1 XL, SonikSynth 2, Rapture, Dimension Pro, z3ta+, Battery 2, Motif ES7, MPC 3000, Trigger Finger, Remote 37 SL, and now Live 5.2!!!!!!

Uhm, yeah, you looked to be up to your neck in software

mbenigni · Post by **mbenigni** » Mon Aug 28, 2006 8:46 pm

I'm to the point where I just plain don't talk to those people when I go in there

Next step: you don't go in there at all.

I got so fed up with those idiots misleading me (intentionally or otherwise) and wasting my time, I finally realized that it's more effective to just order the stuff online while I'm doing the research. I can usually get stuff shipped to me in a day - two max - with no shipping charges and no tax. How can I justify driving even 30 minutes to one of these stores to deal with ignorant sales staff, noise, lines, limited selection, etc? I can't.

njh · Post by **njh** » Mon Aug 28, 2006 8:47 pm

another thing just incase no one seen me say this..
there is nothing in guitar center that has a set price..
you can get all you purchases for ten percent above what it cost guitar center.. how do you do this... tell them you want the ten up price..
this price is almost always 30 percent below the price marked on a product..
with guitar cables mic stands strings and pics the price is always way below 50 percent..

Johnisfaster · Post by **Johnisfaster** » Mon Aug 28, 2006 8:49 pm

Sonar 5.2PE, Sampletank 2.1 XL, SonikSynth 2, Rapture, Dimension Pro, z3ta+, Battery 2, Motif ES7, MPC 3000, Trigger Finger, Remote 37 SL, and now Live 5.2!!!!!!

Uhm, yeah, you looked to be up to your neck in software

[/quote]

yeah seriously, with all that gear why would you possibly need reason? I mean... yay you have a new program that you can't use battery and z3ta and soniksynth and rapture.... wait...... why did a buy a program that can't use all my plugins?

you can rewire it yeah... but why you gonna waste system resources running 2 programs when you could just load a plugin and be on your way. I like the sound of reason to a degree, but I don't think it offers anything that you can't get using quality plugs.

djadonis206 · Post by **djadonis206** » Mon Aug 28, 2006 8:51 pm

It's like someone trying to sell you TRUECOAT when your car doesn't need TRUECOAT <-- shout to Fargo

Sucks people keep trying to push reason down your throat though, on the real

Personally I love Reason - granted now I got the Chunkware Vanilla compressor Reason hasn't been touched

but if Imhaving trouble getting the sound out of one of my $200 + synths, I crack open REASON and well I know how to make it happen

Example of what I want to start getting into more @ www.soundclick.com/djadonis206 SUNDAY SAMPLER - I used to rely on REASON for compression but now things are changing

so

SUNDAY SAMPLER made with Ableton / 3rd party vst's
ROCK THE SHOW made with Abelton / REASON instruments

see which one rocks harder www.soundclick.com/djadonis206

Personally I can't tell the difference only cause whether I'm using REASON or 3rd party VST's I twiddle till it sound right, know what I mean

anywayz -

peace

Adonis

Johnisfaster · Post by **Johnisfaster** » Mon Aug 28, 2006 8:51 pm

njh wrote:another thing just incase no one seen me say this..
there is nothing in guitar center that has a set price..
you can get all you purchases for ten percent above what it cost guitar center.. how do you do this... tell them you want the ten up price..
this price is almost always 30 percent below the price marked on a product..
with guitar cables mic stands strings and pics the price is always way below 50 percent..

I've tried this. it didn't work for me. you guitar center former employees keep telling me of the deals I can make them give me but I'VE TRIED.

a friend of mine used to work there he gave me this price without me even asking. but ever since then I can't get them to drop any more than just tax.

kb420 · Post by **kb420** » Mon Aug 28, 2006 9:01 pm

Machinate wrote:
kb420 wrote:A friend of mine has been trying to get me to use Reason for over a year now, and I just don't see the point. I have an individual program that will do everything that all of those different racks can do already. I just don't think I need it. Maybe I'm wrong, but I don't know what it can do that I can't do with the software I already own.

Sonar 5.2PE, Sampletank 2.1 XL, SonikSynth 2, Rapture, Dimension Pro, z3ta+, Battery 2, Motif ES7, MPC 3000, Trigger Finger, Remote 37 SL, and now Live 5.2!!!!!!
Uhm, yeah, you looked to be up to your neck in software

Well, I guess you have a point. It's not like I bought all of that stuff in one day. A little here, and a little there, and before you know it, I have all of this software. I don't see myself buying any more sounds, but I am thinking of upgrading to Sonar 6 when it's released.

sgx · Post by **sgx** » Mon Aug 28, 2006 9:58 pm

Reason is pretty rad, I think. It is true that a lot of its popularity is due to it being sort of a big name brand in soft synths (kinda like everyone buys iPods even though there are plenty of very competetive non-apple similar mp3 players out there). Reason WAS one of the first great soft synth workstations. Correct me if I'm wrong (I started playing with software synths around when Reason 2.0 came out), but Reason was basically THE software to use if you wanted electronic sounds without hardware back then. It was pretty groundbreaking. It deserved its success back then I think, but development has been so slow and other software has caught up or surpassed it by now. The asking price ($400 or whatever) for Reason is pretty stiff now in my opinion, especially with good stuff like Cakewalk Project5 2 going for $199 now.

I still love it though. It was great to learn on - simple, easy, room for sound design creativity with all the routing and CV curve stuff, absolutely 100% stability, and amazing cpu efficiency. I still love its drum machine, the nnxt is a nice sampler, the reverb is nice, scream distortion is great, and as someone mentioned before the browser is awesome - you can load and preview patches without closing the browser. Combinators are something that it looks Live 6 is imitating now. Reason also comes with a pretty complete set of synths and sounds to start out making electronic music. Lots of good stuff in Reason.

The sequencer is pretty crap though, that's why it is great to use Reason as a slave in Live.

I can imagine why someone who's been using Live and vsti's for a while now wouldn't be interested in picking up Reason, but I think if someone began with Reason then wanted to go to Live for audio recording and vsti, they would be happy to keep using reason as a ReWire instrument. I am.