The worthwhile dealer…
The advice to seek out a good dealer when buying hi-fi cannot be repeated often enough. Simply going it alone and assembling all the current fave-rave products from the magazines into a system guarantees only one possible outcome: unmitigated disaster. Putting together, or improving, a good hi-fi system takes more than just collecting favourably reviewed pieces of equipment. Even if you were lucky enough to settle on suitably matched and appropriate equipment, there’s more to system building than picking the right components.
This is where a clued-up and enthusiastic dealer becomes the best ally you can have. He (or she) will help you to put together a system that will provide you with long term satisfaction. When those fave-rave products have long been forgotten, their fifteen minutes of fame having passed, you will hopefully be sitting congratulating yourself on the wise choice you made when you bought your system, and thanking your dealer for his wise counsel and guidance.
Or is that an idyllic fancy?
The answer rather depends on your dealer. So before you get into auditioning your hi-fi, perhaps you should think about auditioning the guy (or girl) who’s going to be helping you choose it. There’s no point in asking the advice of someone merely because they happen to work in or own a hi-fi shop. We would all like to imagine that the hi-fi shop proprietor or salesperson shares our boundless enthusiasm for the faithful reproduction of music in the home, and that they are suitably equipped to advise and assist us. We’d like to think that he or she rushes home of an evening, switches on his or her hi-fi and finds listening to music through it a rewarding and fulfilling experience, just as we do. We’d like to think that he or she actually owns a hi-fi system. We’d like to think that he or she is interested in music. But what guarantee do we have?
None.
Let’s consider the predicament of the music lover who knows absolutely nothing about hi-fi equipment. Nothing that is except that he needs something better than his inherited radiogram to enjoy more fully his collection of records. He doesn’t know a Linn LP12 from a twin-choke Weber. A Roksan Artemiz in his imagination is probably a missile guidance system. Sexing cables is doubtless something one doesn’t talk about in polite circles. Similarly one wouldn’t mention stiffness or rigidity in his presence for fear of his thinking he was in uncouth company. A hi-fi magazine might provide some elements of useful guidance but when he tries to further understand the notion of “finding a good dealer” what will he learn?
Our unfortunate friend will discover that a good dealer has a single speaker demonstration room? Why? he wants a stereo system! A good dealer will not also sell washing machines? Why not? A good dealer will have his loudspeaker cables properly terminated with soldered 4mm banana plugs. Our friend has never seen a banana with a plug on it: why does a banana need a plug?
And the situation isn’t going to be much clearer for those who have a hi-fi already but don’t get involved deeply in the enthusiast side of the hobby: those who view their hi-fi as a servant; like a dishwasher, there to do a job, not to be investigated, tinkered with, or worshipped. Without a smidgen of insider knowledge, how do such folk get the best from their dealer? They’re not the kind of buyers who will sneak a look at the direction of the interconnect cables when the salesperson leaves the dem room. (I can hear dealers groaning now, they know who I’m talking about: the customers who insist on prodding suspended sub-chassis turntables to see which bounces the best, knowledgeably indicating to their partner which is going to sound superior according to the decay of the bounce! Every dealer has such a customer and loves him dearly!)
Again, these people – the non-enthusiasts, not the prodders – need a non-technical dealer-auditioning approach to ascertain who is best fit to serve them. And that approach is so simple and so obvious. Why does one buy hi-fi? To listen to and hopefully enjoy music. (Those who answered to impress the neighbours are reading the wrong magazine.) So who is best served to attend to the needs of a music lover than another music lover, a kindred spirit?
Let’s change our dictum regarding picking a good hi-fi dealer to “find yourself a music-loving dealer”. This is far simpler than getting involved in the argot and double talk that surrounds hi-fi itself. Anyone can judge whether a salesmen is as interested as they are in music by asking one simple question: “Good morning, shopkeeper. Might I politely and fairly enquire of your good self when did you last avail yourself of the purchase of a long-playing stereophonic microgroove record? (Sorry, I’ve been reading Bronte!) Or to come straight to the point – Bought any good LPs (CDs) lately mate? If the question isn’t answered affirmatively within seconds, leave and go elsewhere. Unless a credible excuse is forthcoming. (I have to add that!)
Any hi-fi proprietor or salesperson who isn’t to be caught with his hand in the browsers at his local record shop on a regular basis leaves himself open to two accusations: either he isn’t interested in music, or his system is so naff he doesn’t feel encouraged to go out and buy records. Either, I would postulate, is a damn good reason for shopping at somewhere other than his emporium.
I know the arguments that will be raised in objection to this idea. “You don’t have to be a housekeeping enthusiast to sell vacuum cleaners”. “You’re saying don’t buy stamps from a Post Office where the assistant’s not a philatelist”. I can also hazard a guess at the jerks who’ll come up with such nonsense. Hi-fi and music are different. People do not get emotionally involved with carpet cleaning, nor posting off their tax returns (well, some of us do!). But they do with music.
The salesman who can tell you in detail why he enjoys the music on the last few albums he bought should be able to guide a purchaser far more successfully than the idiot who only knows what the manufacturer’s spec sheet and the latest batch of reviews tell him about the equipment. Pick the chap who enthuses more about Jaco Pastorius’ bass playing, or Horowitz’ touch at the piano, rather than the amazing slew rate of the output stage of the Hokicoki Super Linear Class ABC pre-amp, and you stand a better chance of getting a system that does what you want i
