Reviews & Stuff

I am always ready to talk a deal through on a used guitars.

2013 Acoustic Guitars DEALS Ask in Store.get

See first page Googles 360 Look around The Store

Still looking to buy more used acousticsguitars.

Bungalow Bills Tee's Black White & Grey variations on Logo.

Web Review Listed in: Second-hand shops in Auckland .

http://www.yelp.co.nz/biz/bungalow-bills-auckland

Julia N.
Auckland

10/3/2013
I like Bungalow Bills. I like the name. I like the logo. I like the things in the window - polycarbonate (but legit) saxophones, hand-painted ukuleles, even their very own Bungalow Bills t-shirts. The window is what first drew me in, and upon stepping in and admiring the walls plastered with instruments old and new, big and small, out steps Bill himself from the backroom where he was watching tv, eating baked beans from a saucepan. I like that. I bought a ukulele. Sadly not the Beatles-decorated one though. He also has a really really good website - I strongly suggest you check it out. Good colours, good moving gifs, great text.
I'm a big fan of supporting small businesses, and Bill knows his stuff and is passionate about it. You go to Bungalow Bills, and you know your money's going straight to Bill to fund his baked beans... go anywhere else, and off your money floats into the ether of Big Corporate Business. Go in and check out the shop - you'll probably get talked into buying something but you definitely won't regret it.

Listed in: Second-hand shops in Auckland .

Review From the Garden Magazine.01/5/2013

Bill Lattimer - Bungalow Bill's

I grew up in Newcastle, in the North East of England, in the 50s and 60s. I studied people, life. I always had an interested in music, and I always had an interest in technology as we know it now, which was recording. I have a little recording studio as well, which is 30 years old now, down in Mt Eden. So, if I studied anything it was that. I didn't study anything formal though, definitely not accountancy or anything LIKE THAT.

My family always loved music. We always had music on in the house. I think I even remember, just vaguely, a wind-up thing when I was two or three years old. We always had a love of music. I've got some vivid memories from when I was a kid. I have a love of foreign music, eclectic music, and that came from when you were a kid you went to a barber shop—they were quite bleak sorts of places, but they always had the equivalent of National Radio on. They always played Latin music and real eclectic music, and I think that's where I got my like for that sort of music. So the barber's to blame for that side of things.

When we came to NZ I was on a contract for three years with an electronics company who brought me and my wife out here, and when that finished I wanted to pursue the music thing more and more. So I went to work for Jansen. Jansen was a local manufacturer of guitars. They made NZ guitars and amplifiers. So I went to work for them as a general anything—drive a van, fix guitars, you name it. I didn't care because it was work in the industry. So to condense the story, that's how I got into it more and more—started working with the manufacturing side of things and delivery and stuff, and then this shop in the City said, ‘You wanna come and work as a salesman?’

But because I was running my little studio, I just decided that I needed a better income, and I thought if I can put a little shop together as well, that might help me get through it. Because we were pregnant—well I wasn't, Pam my wife was. Then I saw this shop on Symonds St. So my shop used to be down there but it was a big old brick place with studio in the back . I was trying to work it out the other day, I think [Bungalow Bill's has been in Eden Terrace for] 28 years.

I get a lot of overseas visitors. They like the oldness, they like the funkiness of the shop, and I think they like that I talk bollocks a lot and tell a good tale . I track every guitar that I sell to somebody who's come from overseas, a lot of German people, French people, Brazilian people. We also get the occasional group who's traveling through town, Wilco, White Stripes—Jack White bought this really old thing that he used on a record. Is that something on the floor? Yes, I've just dropped a name.

I reckon what makes [Eden Terrace] special is. It's just its own entity, a cool ethos and I kind of like where it is at. It's eclectic,. It's just got a great feel, it is what it is,

A Nice Place To Be.