Merry Christmas, Guitar Center

November 24, 2007 - Leave a comment...

Once again my local Guitar Center has made a happy customer out of me.

MOTU UltraliteA couple months ago I bought a little portable studio called the MOTU Ultralite. I’ve always been a big fan of MOTU products and this little thing is pretty much a studio that runs on Firewire power. Same functionality as the unit that powered both Beer & Coffee and Goodbye Planet Earth. I have used it as a live interface on tour a few times too, running all the keyboard sounds at PodCamp Boston.

Unfortunately, the latch that prevents the mic cable from coming unplugged worked. Very well. In fact, it latched onto my mic cable and decided it never wanted to let go.

Guitar CenterEnter Guitar Center in Nashville. Granted, the department manager gave me the “30 day warranty” line, but the guy behind the desk contacted the store manager and told him the story. Just a simple latch malfunction. On the busiest shopping weekend of the year, I think he had a little perspective. A short conversation with him left me with a new Ultralite, this one with a functioning latch.

This is why I shop locally for a lot of my equipment, and managers like that will keep me coming back to Guitar Center. Thanks guys!

[tags]Matthew Ebel, piano rock, Guitar Center, MOTU, Mark of the Unicorn, Ultralite, warranties[/tags]

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  • Zimmie

    Yeah, I’d get some MOTU gear, but it’s *way* expensive for someone like me who doesn’t do this stuff professionally. As it is, I’m looking at a PreSonus FireBox. They seem to have decent capabilities and quality-of-construction.

    If you haven’t already, you should play around with OS X’s “Audio MIDI Setup” application. It’s in /Applications/Utilities. Among other things, it lets you create aggregate audio devices from multiple discrete hardware interfaces. For that matter, I was just fiddling with it and discovered that in Leopard, the C2D MacBooks seem to have 24-bit, 96 kHz audio hardware that I don’t think was shown under Tiger.

  • http://matthewebel.com Matthew Ebel

    Zimmie-

    I’ll see your high-resolution audio (which has been there for a while, by the way) and raise you the fact that Garage Band can now do 24-bit AND that all Mac audio outputs are also optical. That’s right, even on the Mini. Hit Guitar Center and ask ‘em for the cable you need to hook your Mac up to any optical gear you’ve got, trust me it works.

  • Zimmie

    Well yeah, I knew it would do optical. We’ve got Savrin’s iMac hooked up to our 5.1 system with a 3.5mm-to-TOS-link optical cable (one I got with my AirPort Express) and to the projector with a Mini-DVI-to-DVI adapter and a DVI-to-HDMI cable. Kind of more of a hack than I’d like, but it works pretty well. I just didn’t realize that it would do 24-bit, 96 kHz over copper.

  • Danny B.

    Hey, I work for GC. I’m a District Manager. Great to see you were taken care of. Hope the gear is working well for you? Have a nice Christmas!!

    Regards,
    Danny

  • jermainelee

    At first I was a real huge guitar center fan. But recently I purchased the roland MC-808 online. The add says 199.99 a month. But they messed up the initial payment and took out a extra 120.00. I complained and the sent an email apoligizing and the 120.00 will be included deducted from my next payment. So here we are a month later and they did it again. They didnt take off the 120.00 they so happily TOOK out of my account. COURT!!!!!!!!!!!

  • Anonymous

    At first I was a real huge guitar center fan. But recently I purchased the roland MC-808 online. The add says 199.99 a month. But they messed up the initial payment and took out a extra 120.00. I complained and the sent an email apoligizing and the 120.00 will be included deducted from my next payment. So here we are a month later and they did it again. They didnt take off the 120.00 they so happily TOOK out of my account. COURT!!!!!!!!!!!

  • jermainelee

    At first I was a real huge guitar center fan. But recently I purchased the roland MC-808 online. The add says 199.99 a month. But they messed up the initial payment and took out a extra 120.00. I complained and the sent an email apoligizing and the 120.00 will be included deducted from my next payment. So here we are a month later and they did it again. They didnt take off the 120.00 they so happily TOOK out of my account. COURT!!!!!!!!!!!