Fender Strats at Allans.
Yesterday I helped Richie buy his first electric guitar.
Richie’s a great sax player (he used to play for Watussi) but lately he’s been playing a bit of accoustic guitar. On his birthday a month back I cheekily bought him a wah wah pedal so all he needed to do was go out and buy his own guitar + amp, and that we did yesterday.
Richie had a decent offer from the guys in Bondi Junction on a standard Fender Stratocaster (USA made) with amp but he wanted to head into the CBD to visit Allans. I didn’t expect Allans to move so much on a package, they’re inner city (rent must be insane) and the shop feels almost corporate. We waited a while before we got served but the guy was helpful, the deal was OK but the vibe just wasn’t right. We blew $25 on parking in a carpark ($25 for under 1hr, it’s a crime) and we set off to visit Billy Hydes.
The range of guitars at Billy Hydes was superior, the sales guys were passionate guitarists themselves and the service was awesome (no ego, just great guys). Jeff looked after Richie and I and Richie scored a killer deal on a brand new USA made standard strat with a nice sunburst finish and rosewood fretboard. The guitar came with a Fender strap, a Fender hardcase (great quality flight case too) a lead and the deal included a great Roland Cube 30 amp with built in effects, a guitar stand, 2 extra leads, a guitar service kit and some decent headphones too.
Richie’s a happy man! I’m happy for him too, what an awesome 1st guitar, should last him a lifetime.
On another note, the other night my iPhone’s keyboard played up on me. For some reason I couldn’t get the “Q” key on the keyboard to work, that functions as the “1” key too which stopped me from entering my password into an application, mega frustrating.
I hard restarted the thing a few times, updated the software and it was still bung so I then hit Google. It turns out that there were many cases of dead touchscreen issues with the last iPhone and Apple were quick to replace these phones. My phone’s a new 3gs one though. I posted this up on Facebook and a couple of guys chimed in on having issues with their new phones, and that they had taken their phones into the Apple Centre which solved the issues they were having. One guy said he’s had a few problems but he still loves his iPhone… that smells like brand loyalty to me (hey I’ve been there before).
So when Richie and I were in the city I thought I’d drop into the Apple Centre on George St. I hadn’t checked it out in any case.
We were greeted by an uber geek who, once I told my problem, instantly assumed I was stupid. Despite confirming that I have restarted the phone multiple times he restarted my phone, then he proceeded to praise how awesome the new (broken) 3gs phone is because it started up so fast. After playing with the phone, wasting my time and recognising the problem he finally said I had to speak to an Apple “Genius”, they are the guys wearing the Orange T’Shirts.
Great?! So off I went to the 2nd floor to find a guy wearing an orange T-Shirt, one greeted me right away. I had to tell and show him the problems on the phone and he said that there was nothing he could do for me until next Saturday at 6pm.
I have to admit I’m pretty angry about this. I used to be a HUGE mac geek and I’ve only converted to PC’s in the past 5 or so years. This phone’s the first Apple product I’ve bought since then and 2 months in it has crapped out on me and all the crap experiences I had all those years ago in Apple Centres came flooding back to memory. I’ve never had a mobile phone crap out on me before, nor have I ever spent so much money on one. /Vent.