Alternatives to Amazon

For those buying CDs (posts above) I've found Discogs to be excellent.
I use Discogs mostly for rare out of print CDs, either new or second hand. As long as you stick to the sellers without grading issues, as is apparent from their neutral and negative feedback scores, Discogs is excellent, much better than eBay. You'll just have to accept the occasional disappointment.
 
I like to buy locally but (in my area at least) it's getting harder and harder to do that. Take today for example - I'm thinking of buying a new guitar early next year and when I go into this mode, I like to search for info. Here's the rub. I have to travel almost 30 miles to get a guitar magazine (I really like Total Guitar). It might seem excessive but if I'm going to spend maybe close to a grand and a half on a new instrument, it's worth finding out all I can. There are papershops locally that would order it for me but I don't want it on a regular basis, only when I have a serious purchase in mind. I wouldn't like them to stock it only for the vast majority of the time to be sent back because I only want it once or twice a year.

But I guess it's a self-fulfilling prophecy - high street is dying because of online buying so folk look online instead for what they want - which exacerbates the death of the high street.

P.S. One thing I'd never do is buy a guitar online. Always try before you buy.
 
Why not have one made specially? I paid £1,700 for Stelios Petrakis to make my laouto, for that sort of money you could have a beautiful instrument made in Britain.

Pfft... Don't listen to him. Send me £1,500, and I'll send you a CUSTOM guitar!
Bump that up to £3,000, and I'll send you the entire band's worth of instruments!!!
(between-knee cymbals extra)








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Why not have one made specially? I paid £1,700 for Stelios Petrakis to make my laouto, for that sort of money you could have a beautiful instrument made in Britain.
I'm not too confident on what specifications suits me. For example, I keep reading about all these neck variations (wide, fat, D profile, C profile) and yet when I study these necks, I don't (or can't) match them to the descriptions. I know exactly if a neck suits me once I've tried it and, for that reason, I'd rather try existing instruments and see how they fit. I know what I'm after tonally but simply don't trust my instincts on describing how it should feel.
 
In that case, you don't need to go anywhere near £1,500!
For half that you should get a beaut.
Funny you should say that - I'd been thinking Les Paul with P90 pickups - very expensive and difficult to find (and this is where the online side of things come in handy) but recently started looking at Les Paul Specials instead that have P90s but are much cheaper and more plentiful. You can save hundreds of pounds just by going for an unbound fretboard. Again, online helps because I was able to watch and listen to a Special and I'm more or less convinced. I'll still try and buy across the counter locally (well if you can call a 60 mile round trip local). I like to support real shops when I can rather than Amazon or others like it.
 
Well, that was a word I had to Google!
Apparently the word is derived from 'lute' but because very few folk play these now, perhaps the term should be Guitarier (or in the case of other stringed instruments - Violinier, or Celloier, or Sitarier...I could go on but I'll save you the pain...) :D
 
It's a little easier in the Netherlands, there's a couple of big webshops here and Amazon doesn't have a portal. You have to use the Belgian or German one.

Or you could go out into the cold and visit a physical shop. Actually found a good copy of Eye of the World in my local bookstore the other week for a good price.
 
Lute itself derives from the word oud.
I didn't know that. Another piece of interesting trivia.

As for me, I have a wonderful local alternative to Amazon - a recycling/reuse shop. It's a place where folk donate stuff they don't want and it's sold on to others that do. I get loads of hardbacks for £1 or £2 each. When I'm finished with them, I just take them back to the shop and donate for the next person. It's a great way to not only save money but help cut down on waste, and all profits are donated to local charities:)

Interesting fact - there's a massive upright stuffed brown bear in the recycling shop right now (it must be ten feet tall on its plinth). God knows where it came from and who would actually buy this:eek:
 
@Hugh ;Well, I don't see that as helping my community, even my state or country. It's helping some guy who discovered a way to sit in his underwear all day, making money for doing nothing, and then casting my money like eroded soil round the globe.

In the end, many in that chain, even the end all manufacturer feels little to no responsibility for what they sell or how they sell it... that's what makes me hold my line.

I agree, but I'd say this applies to most of the insurance and financial services industries, import/exporters, distribution companies... I think there was a lint in Firefly about most of the universe being a middleman.

Interesting stuff in here. My wife and I go back and forth on amazon a lot... I do like my kindle more than I am happy admitting, and having a toddler it's been really convenient to have staple items shipped to us rather than having to make hours-long Costco/Target trips to buy bulk diapers. Their labor practices are troubling, but I think they're more at the forefront of the future of work than anything else. EVERYTHING is moving towards "billable time" and corporate metrics and the like (in a previous sales job, it was "talk time" on your voip phone... everyone had to have X number of dials and Y amount of hours on the phone). I envision a future where anyone working on a computer only gets paid for the minutes their eyes were pointed at the screen, as determined by the computer's camera.

The trouble is the notion in the western world that humans only have value insofar as they are adding economic value. We're headed for a reckoning soon, where we have to confront that the scales have tipped and we no longer "need" most people to produce enough for everyone's survival. ALL of us will be underwear-clad middlemen.
 

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