Valentine's Fairchild Shootout

I was thinking the same thing...

There’s no need to be so mean.

I come here because it’s a super friendly respectful forum, excepting of all views and generally non judgmental.

Despite you might just stirring the pot. I must say I have a dealer who have made me do really good decisions. He refuses to sell me some equipment when he knows it will not fit my needs in the long run even though I stand there with the money in the hand. He used to advice me to save up to something real rather than make some quick money. This way I have avoided the cheap stuff out there. And I am so glad, this has actually saved me money in the long run and I never had to compromise on sound. Once when i had already spent my available dough on nice gear and wanted to add an 1176 and was thinking about a cheapo one for the time being until I could afford a proper one, he refused to sell me one and dug up a demo version of a proper one and almost matched the chinese one in price just to cover my sound palette. I happily take advice from him and it has always paid off.

The joke isn’t on you thehightenor . Ward, Eric and Bill are all involved in the manufacture, representation, and sale of gear. They get the joke and it was intended for them and are being good sports.

I think the aforementioned folks who inhabit the RGO sphere here are pretty shining examples of designers/reps of pro audio gear and have lots of hard-won valued experience to share with their customers. That is not the norm in the industry so I count myself lucky to have them here.

Most got it. It was HEAVILY a bit of self-deprecation and irony.

Yeah I absolutely understand your point. Just thought it was a good place to also present my experience of some very great dealers out there that makes shopping pleasant. I don’t usually go to random dealers for advice either, quite a few do not have a deep understanding of what they sell. And also in most cases I get the gears after my own research straight without ever talking to any dealers. But regarding studio gear I’ve been lucky to find someone who has more experience diversity wise than me and is very knowledgeable in gear. And luckily there are dealers like that out there doing it for the love of music.

Also what I’ve come across this way a few times and dodged bullets is, despite some gear being raved by on forums as “the new clone/something that beats the crap out of the original that costs 100 times more”…. And the dealer goes… yes we have them, bad consistency, a few good sounding, plenty of broken and bad ones coming back in, hard to get any spares and maker does not really carry responsibility. This info usually takes some time to get to the forums. A dealer will get the angry clients quite fast. Forums are actually not that much of value for me in general. Most of them are filled with people having a lot of opinions without ever actually using the gear or having proper references to have an opinion about the gear they have. Youtube does not differ much fron that. This forum is really an exception where you find people with great track record and you will learn they actually know their shit. So to sum it up, I think there are not too many great places to gather great information about gear you might have a hard time trying out yourself.

Warren is the best I've ever dealt with.

I cut my own hair.

I didn't think I was going to get through all of that, but I was entertained. Classy and appropriate response, I wish discussions went like this on the forums every time something stupid comes up.

I don't see any problem with spiffs. If you have worked in sales, you would know they are quite common and many times on a product that a customer can get a great value on, *if its right for them*. Everybody has to make a living and even sales people have bias, with good reason or not, towards or against certain products. Manufacturer or distributor incentives are to salespeople whats sales or coupons are to a consumer....it may get a certain product on their radar that would not have been otherwise. Hypothetically, you could have two equivalent competing products where the salesperson might be inclined to push the more expensive one (Unfairchild in this case) because the commission is higher bases off the pure sales price and markup, but a spiff levels that playing field, mitigating their bias towards selling one over the other from a financial standpoint. This would ultimately benefit the consumer.

Sales tactics are only "shady" if there is outright lying or misrepresentation involved.

That said, $1K spiff on that type of product is wild! Back in my 20s I worked in the automotive industry for a minute and spiffs on a $30K car would be $100-200 on average, with maybe the occasional roulette wheel spiff where you had a chance at something higher. Then again, music gear has 4-5x the markup of a car (25-30% vs 6% on average for a new, foreign-made car).

FAKE NEWS! Post some proof!