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Adventures in Table Shopping

At nearby Goodwin's High End recently I was turntable shopping (My Linn Basik/Akito is getting a little old but still works great) and the "Turntable Expert" there (older, distinguished looking dude) who was assisting me first utterly ignored my query about a Pro-Ject "The Classic" table I was thinking about (really…like I was speaking Mandarin), and was only interested in pushing a Rega P3 with a Funk Firm arm and a Hana cart. Sends the unused Rega arms to Sota he said. Fine. He gets a Funk arm for me to look at and doesn't notice it's just a Rega and not the Funk arm and fumbles it back into the box, noting he doesn't have the Funk arm. Oh well…he lopes  off to help somebody with a speaker (no biggie)…at some point notes that he is a huge Linn user, has 3 modded and "special" ones, loves MC cartridges, and says you shouldn't use them with metal platters (Linn freak…aluminum isn't magnetic…weird again). He's busy to some degree (and there's literally 3 customers there) and I ask him to write down the model of the Funk Firm arm and I'll look it up later…he writes it on his card and off I go (although I had wandered around the store for a while to look at the exotica…sweet…). I get home and when I try to find the arm, the model number for the arm doesn't exist anywhere including the Funk Firm site, and realized this person is the poster boy for what's wrong with high end audio. I now doubt that Goodwin's will ever see any of my cash, and, hopefully I'll never see that dude again. Lame, but not totally unexpected. I had a better experience there a couple of years ago, but they didn't have a Linn belt to sell me and weren't very interested in getting me one, so, again, meh...
wolf_garcia

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simao
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I've had some wonderful experiences with audio store owners/employees. The most positive one was with Don Hoatson, the owner of The Listening Room in Baltimore. He was my intro into the hi-end world and he was patient, listened to my tastes and experience, and never once up-sold me anything. In fact, he cautioned me away from several more expensive components, saying my room (at the time) and listening habits didn't warrant them.

On the other end was a nameless employee of another hi-end store in the Balto/DC area, this one closer to DC who, on one slow Wednesday afternoon when my fiancee and I were the only people in the store, reluctantly demo'd some pieces from Boulder, Wadia, and a few others, each time emphasizing how much they cost and how expensive the speakers other customers had who had bought them. He brushed aside my existing Maggie 3.6R's as "good for beginners" and urged me to upgrade my Blue Circle pre-amp to something "more in the world of hi-end". 

I'm not making those quotes up, btw. Total tool.

I'm meeting with Steve Deckert later on this month to audition Decware amps. Anyone have good experience with him? Apparently he's quote accommodating and friendly. 

Full disclosure: I'm no longer in the DC area.
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