[Mycroft]

Most of the time we will often see wingeing abut unsatisfactory experiences with some company or another's customer service. When possible, I like to report the exact opposite.

The builder of my incoming Baritone Weissenborn, Mark at Rayco, strung the beast up yesterday and sent me a couple of sound clips and a report. (Deep. Very deep, it was.) He reported that when tuned in Open A (151351) the low .068 string was pretty floppy, but when up a step to Open B it is fine. I should have expected that from my own experiences on a baritone guitar. However, I think that I would rather be tuned to Open A than B, as B is a bit of an unwieldy key.

Now baritone strings are not exactly a dime a dozen, even on the internet. I also wanted Phosphor Bronze over 80/20. I finally found .070 Phosphor Bronze singles listed on the Breezy Ridge website, but no dealer who had them

So finally I called...

What a friendly and helpful woman answered the phone. After explaining what I was looking for, and why, we had a long discussion about what strings might work and why. She was obviously very knowledgeable about her strings, and I was obviously not the first person with weird needs to have contacted her. We not only discussed the low string, but what other custom set I might want to ultimately put together. The website listed the .068, .070, .076 and .080, but she also told me that she had a .072 PB that was not on the site. That also interested me, as it might allow me to tune both to Open A but to Open G, both more useful keys.

Unfortunately they probably won't be here before Wintergrass this weekend, but I will live.

Anyway, a tip of the fedora to Breezy Ridge: customer service done right.

TW