Guitar Center (music)
It was a lot smaller than the other Guitar Centers I've been to, but it was still an amazing selection, and they had some amazing opening-sale prices. Like Fender Squiers for $90 (normally $175). Which annoys me because Squiers are way better than the crappy Hondo II guitar I got for $80 a week ago. I might go and pick up a Squier and try to return (or resell, more likely, since this guitar was sold "as-is") the Hondo to Music Go Round.
Anyway. I looked at longer guitar cables a bit, but they're way overpriced as usual, and so while Paul was perusing drum microphones, I was perusing keyboards.
I am now in love with the Korg Triton LE 88key weighted model, and I think that will be the next bit of studio gear I purchase, as soon as I have a studio again.
I was previously considering the Casio PS-20 since that's what Spud had when I went to Seattle last summer, and although it has a somewhat more realistic keyboard action, the Triton LE has WAY more instruments, and an awesome arpeggiator, and other stuff which makes it perfect for an electronica wanker like me. It also has the best patches from the M1 series (which includes the 01/W, which was originally named the M/10 until a project manager saw the binder umop-ap!sdn), so if I were to get a Triton LE I'd probably sell my 01/W. The great thing is that the 01/W is now "vintage" and so I could probably still get $500-ish for it (not bad considering I originally paid $720). Though its backlight is worn out, so I'd want to perform the LED-light hack on it first (and fix a couple of sticky buttons while I'm at it).
Anyway, it's nice to know that Guitar Center salespeople are haggleable — while I was playing with it, a salesguy came up to me and asked if I was interested in it, and I said yes, and I wish I could afford one, and after it became obvious I wouldn't get a Guitar Center credit card (even with the 12 months 0% interest deal) he took that to mean that I'd buy it if the price were lower. So he offered to knock it down by $150.
But, in 6 months when I am actually ready to buy something, the price will probably be lower anyway (it's $1800 now), or maybe there'll be yet another even better "budget" Triton out by then.
They also had the Roland Fantom line there. I am still rather underwhelmed by the Fantom; it feels like a toy to me, like how all of Roland's stuff always has. It's hard to take a professional synthesizer seriously when it looks like a $50 Yamaha PSR (with all of the artistically-flaccid "automatic accompaniment" stuff to match), and its "neato cool" gesture controller doesn't seem nearly as useful as the nice bank of knobs which Korg uses these days. (Though I think the Korg Karma also had a similar gesture controller, but the Karma was a synth which just reeked of trying to compete with the Roland Fantom in every way — including looking, feeling, and performing like a toy.)
After that, Paul and I parted ways, and both ended up wandering into the same used videogame store. I had no idea my NES game collection was worth so much! Yay! Paul was mostly looking at Gamecube stuff, and is likely to buy one before the day is over; he preemptively invited me over to play later. So, cool.
Then I headed to Radio Shack and bought some instrument cables for way less than what they'd have cost at Guitar Center. Sure, they're not as heavy-duty, but you can get a 6' cable + 25' extender for $11 total, while at Guitar Center and places like that a 30' cable costs more like $30. Of course, Musician's Friend has exceedingly cheap heavy-duty cables, but you have to buy a lot of them to get decent shipping rates, and even then it takes like two weeks to get there.
I also got some phono to RCA cables for an experiment so I can use the SIDstation as an effects processor when I perform with Cosmic ReBop next Friday. Woo.
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