Pro Tone Payment Plan

Times are tough economically. Well, even if they were GREAT economically, I still think guitarists would be having a tough time because most of us love gear so much that it keeps us a little down in funds (or a specified section of funds if you’re good at budgeting).

It doesn’t help that boutique gear still comes with boutique prices (go figure!). I know I’ve said in the past that I wish the price of some pedal or guitar was lower so that maybe I would have a better shot at getting it, but that’s selfish and short-sighted.

An old history teacher of mine used to talk about road intersections that had four gas stations, one on each corner. People would go to the cheapest gas station and this created a price war that was obviously visible. One gas station would lower their price so in turn all three other one would lower theirs until one by one by one they all went away except for one gas station. The customers were getting GREAT deals on gas but what was the REAL cost here? Sure, you got cheap gas for a little while but now there’s only one station at the intersection and now they are free to charge what they want.

What I mean here is two things:

1) We need competition and the way to get/keep competition does not involve pricing gear so low it is unsustainable to produce or live off of for the producer.

2) We as a consumer base need to realize that there should be an appropriate level of pricing associated with whatever effect and just deal with it. Producers charge what the free market will allow because it’s their livelihood. Who could blame someone for trying to make more money at their job and better support their families or themselves? If you could do the exact same job for the exact same amount of time and NOTHING would change work-wise but now you got $5.00 more per hour, wouldn’t you want it?

But I digress.

My point is that you pay for quality in most cases and some companies are still out of reach with their prices but some companies are offering ways to make the payment more comfortable.

Pro Tone Pedals for example is now offering a payment plan. You can buy any pedal(s) and pay three monthly installments on them and after your second payment, he’ll send the pedal to you. Dennis at Pro Tone knows his pedals aren’t cheap and hopes this will help customers get what they want instead of settling for something else just because it has a lower price tag.

I think it’s genius. Pro Tone’s prices ARE pretty high, but when you split it into three payments, it’s not so bad. In the end he gets the same amount but you have an easier time paying for it. It’s the ultimate compromise. He gets to continue to feed his family, you get a smoking pedal with a payment plan that’s easy to swallow instead of plopping down a ton of cash all at once.

All of a sudden, the Jason Becker distortion doesn’t seem so far out of reach.

-Pappy