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maybe worth a trip to collect if it's something you really want and it's lots of pennies
looking at the prices they still don't look great...
I think someone like Andertons would be a breath of fresh air in that part of London actually.
They'd have the existing old geezers with gold cards market covered, while being able to appeal to pro musos and- crucially- tapping the extremely large under 21 market which exists and could be fostered in the London suburbs.
If they are having a going out of business sale the prices will probably only be around internet money anyway.
Also of course if you have any problems with a current seller you'll have somebody to take/send it back to as opposed to one that has gone.
It's a real shame though as I work in Richmond and was planning to take another guitar down there for a setup.
The old Richmond Music Shop in Red Lion Street went years ago. I had the old 'been here for ages and no-one's served me' treatment, so once was enough.
@ChrisRG If you want to stay local Ritz Music opposite the Red Cow do guitar repairs and setups. There's always Charlie Chandler's down in Hampton Wick of course as well.
That's really sad and I was a visitor and customer from the time of the first real shop on Sandycombe Road but the main one was my shop from the 80s until about quite recently. Doug, Paula and Charlie always looked after me really well and the latter was and still is my go-to repairer and I'm a regular at his shop (CCGX).
I remember being in there one day on a busy Saturday and Doug plugging in a kid who can't have been more than 12 and could barely play into a Carvin stack with an Ibanez Jem (Steve Vai fan) and out of earshot, I commented to Doug, ""Wow. You've some patience" but he then explained the shop's ethos that "every customer should be treated equally and fairly whether it was that boy, who's dad could end up buying that rig or he might turn out to be future Chandler customer, to Gary Moore and the like. Needless to say, I felt silly and judgmental.
The deals were always good and Paula was great after Doug departed.
When I dicked around wanting to upgrade and throw serious cash at a JV Strat, Doug just pointed me in the direction of a Tom Anderson Drop Top and said "That's what you're trying to achieve" and gave me a phenomenal deal on it which I can't see how he made money on but it was more about me truly getting what I wanted. Many's the time I came in on a Saturday afternoon to try something and Doug would say "Take it home, try it over the weekend and bring it back by the close of business on Monday". No deposit or anything, just pure trust and I'd do that and normally end up buying the thing!!!
I bought high end guitars, pedals, rack systems and gear and had my guitars set up there since the 80s. I think even our Jonathan@Feline had a stint there in his early days.
I may try and visit this week and say goodbye to Paula and Brinsley but this is sad news. 37 years of business I believe
Sounds like a really good ethos to me.
One regular sales assistant there I found okay, but one of them always struck me as rather surly and talked himself out of a few sales from me.
It was a great shop: The early days of selling vintage guitars and Schecters from the tiny shop, the move to the corner shop and not long after across the road to the bigger shop where they remained. It was the first place I saw PRS, Tom Anderson, Mesa amps and other high-end gear. Arguably the best workshop in the UK with first Charlie, then Brinsley. It became the haunt of many famous guitar names through the eighties and nineties. Never quite the same after the departure of Doug and then Charlie but still remained one of the better shops, albeit with higher prices than most.
I stopped going there after moving away in 2001 but called by a couple of years ago and it showed all the signs of a shop in decline, a similar path to the once great Kingfisher Music, so It's not a complete surprise that it is coming to an end. A shame nevertheless.
The staff I got on with there was the mad German or Flemish guy who loved Lukather. He had an uncanny knack of being able to provide me with the gear for the sound in my head!! Pete (he bought my superb, early ADA MP1) and Nigel, who went on to open his own shop near Milton Keynes, then worked as manager at Guitar Guitar, Epsom and now heads up sales at Suhr UK.
The staff from the above era were superb, helpful and kind. After that, things were ok but different.
http://www.chandlerguitars.co.uk/product_Detail.php?ItemID=5141
https://www.thomann.de/gb/vintage_icon_v100mrpgm.htm
is it crazy how saying sentences backwards creates backwards sentences saying how crazy it is?