As some of you may know, I am a keen, if not very skilled musician. I play a wide variety of instruments and it is always good to find a music shop that is a) not too far from home, b) staffed by very knowledgeable and friendly people and c) doesn't charge over the odds for their equipment.

A shop that fits this description can be found in the otherwise dull town of Dorchester.

In Trinity Street can be found the premises of Harmony Music. Not only do they sell from these premises, but they also maintain an eBay shop.

To give an example of why I like them, I visited the shop last Thursday and asked for advice on the purchase of a new amplifier that is more suitable for my new guitar. The owner was adamant that I needed a valve amp, rather than a solid state transistor-based amp. The trouble is that, being mostly hand built, Valve (or tube if you are American) amps are somewhat more expensive than solid state.

Undaunted, I asked if I could try out some amps and was invited to bring in my guitar and spend some time playing in the back room on a variety of different amps.

The next morning I arrived, guitar case in hand and was led through to the practice room, where I was allowed to plug into a wide range of different equipment, from classic Marshall 100 Watt stacks to combo amps by Peavey, Indie, Fender, Vox and so on.

After putting up with my poor playing without comment for over an hour there was no pressure put on me to buy anything. Having checked prices on line the night before I could see that Their prices are very competitive and I had no hesitation in buying a 30 Watt Indie Tuberider Pro combo amp, which, at £150 was £70 below RRP and £30 cheaper than the cheapest on line price I could find.

As well as plenty to satisfy the electric guitarist, they stock a full range of brass, woodwind, string and percussion instruments and are fully capable of demonstrating all of them.
I noticed that they even had sets of bagpipe drone reeds for sale, something that you don't see everywhere south of the border.

A new guitar often needs to be set up properly before it is at its best, Harmony Music will do this for £25, you could expect to pay anything up to £60 in a city centre music shop.

Update 28 12 08

When I finally had time to spare last week I visited Harmony music once again, this time with my guitar in hand to get them to improve the setup. The setup of a guitar is the tricky art of getting the string height right, low enough to play easily but not so low that they buzz against the frets, setting the curve of the neck using the truss rod and setting up the bridge so that the intonation of each string is correct. I usually do this for my other guitars working on the assumption that it doesn't matter too much if I make a mess of them, but the Gibson is too great an investment to take any risks with.
Accordingly, I left it with them on the Tuesday morning before Christmas and went off to do the few jobs I still had on my list.
The shop was inundated with people getting last minute Christmas presents and the staff were very busy.
After my first job I called the next one on my list who asked that I leave them until after Christmas. I worked down the list, apart from one call they were all on the point of going home for Christmas. thus it was that I found myself back at the shop by 2 pm to ask if they had managed to complete the work. Despite their huge workload they had managed to complete it and, after a quick chat I was on my way. The guitar? That's great. it now plays like a dream, even better than it was before.