Best Place To Buy New Gear, Regular Music store or internet? Options

[Nels]

Hey guys and/or gals,

Hoping some of you out there will shine a bright light on the subject of buying on-line.

Every piece of gear I own,(guitars, amps, recording gear, etc.) I've gotten at a local music store.(Sound Post, Guitar Center, etc.) I'll be getting some more gear in the near future and so I was wondering.....if anyone could comment on their experiences when ordering on-line.

Can anyone comment on their experiences with the likes of Musiciansfriends.com, ..GuitarVision.com and other such places?

Would it be safe to order a large, fragile and very expensive piece of equipment, like the Triton Studio, for example?(That's a lot of money to be gambling with.) ....And what about the return policy dilemma?

As with most of you, I've had some good and not so good experiences when buying at a regular music store, but the one thing that I just can't knock is that... ...if needed, you can return the piece of gear to the regular music store and not have to wait anxiously for a replacement. ...And generally one can check the gear out before ones buys.

Any thoughts, I'm sure would help others as well.

Thanks,
Nels

[Dimora]

I've gotten almost all my stuff from Sweetwater.com. They are slightly more expensive than zzounds (by a few pennies most of the time) but now they run competitively with them since they use free shipping on most items.

They have excellent customer service and tech support. Everytime I've called Sweetwater with an issue it got resolved within the hour.

They also have a wider selection of products. Even though I do most of my shopping with them, I cross check at zzounds and a lot of times zzounds doesn't have what I'm looking for. Also, if you buy their MIDI cables, they have a lifetime warrenty on them and will replace them at any time with no questions asked.

I would say that the only beef I have with Sweetwater is "backorders". Albeit it's not exactly their fault that the manufacturer hasn't made enough of the product yet, but sometimes I have to end up waiting a while for something to come in (like my Triton for example!), but when it does get shipped it's very timey (they do use Fed Ex)

Happy Shopping!