"Greenwich Pirate - room for improvement!"

Greenwich Pirate - negatives: 1) Poor lighting is a pain when setting up. 2) Only one mic, stand and cable. There was a 2nd broken mic. Couldn’t get a replacement as not allowed to borrow from unused studio and nothing in the spares room. 3) Large studios are not large - ok for 6 piece band maybe but not the 9 people they say. 4) Toilets are absolutely disgusting. 5) Studios are not soundproofed by a long way. There’s a lot of bleed.

Positives: 1) PA / amps were decent 2) Parking is very good. 3) Close to Sainsbury’s / M&S if hungry. 4) Location suits my spread out band!

Overall, we'll probably use again just because the location suits & parking is good. If it were cheaper I'd be less bothered but actually the price is no better than other, better rehearsal studios we use.

"Really awful lost property experience"

The studio itself is fine just DON’T leave anything behind- if you do, you’re not getting it back, as I found out the hard way. Left a pair of headphones in the Leeds studios and filled out a lost property form same day, after 5 days of silence I messaged again, and found nobody had even been to check. Went to check myself and the headphones had been stolen. Don’t recommend- would go somewhere with a proper front desk/staff instead.

"Top Räumlichkeiten !"

Top Räumlichkeiten !

"Last experience really bad, can't rely on Pirate"

I've used Pirate studios a few times and while I've had some good sessions, I've also had a lot of problems with equipment and room. I'd say about half of the PA systems only have one channel working but it's such a faff to report on the app it's a waste of rehearsal time. I've also had faulty amps and air con not working (with 7 people in a room that was horrific but we simply had to rehearse so we had to carry on). My last experience was really bad though and this is what I wrote: I arrived 15 minutes late for my booking, my bandmates got there on time and were setting up but by the time I’d arrived it took me and it took me another ten minutes to get set up and when I did I found the bass amp provided in the room was faulty - it was too quiet and distorted. I called the number on the wall and spoke to Marco but he said I’d have to put it to customer support on WhatsApp. By the time I’d done this it was getting on for 17:42 and it took another 20 minutes of back and forth for the person on the phone to agree I had a problem.

What I wanted was a working amp - we were set up and had limited time and didn’t really even want to decamp to another room, but I was told there weren’t any spare rooms available and there weren’t any spare amps I could have and there was nobody available to help. This is really not acceptable. You had a complex completely booked out and you didn’t have anyone onsite? You don’t have a kit room with, say, a snare, a guitar amp and a bass amp in case of failure? All it’d take would be a cupboard and a code on the door for goodness sake.

Now, this isn’t the first time I’ve been at a Pirate space when kit has gone wrong and I’ve had to change rooms, I’ve also used spaces where the the air con isn’t working and that’s absolute hell when you’re 7 people in a room, but this is the first time it’s happened with MY booking and I’m not prepared to accept this level of customer service. Here’s what I’d like:
A credit note for last night’s booking - a 20% discount is an insult. I’ll give you one more try but after yesterday I’m not risking paying for it.
Employ more humans for god’s sake. When you’ve got a facility totally booked have a person onsite, even if you need to charge a bit more I’d pay it for the security of knowing there’s help available. And make it so your team can solve problems when on the phone instead of just by WhatsApp text - it’s infuriating and has never solved a problem when I’ve had issues at Pirate
Have some spare backline, even if it’s in a remote-locked cupboard - you can just give people access when they need to swap over faulty kit and monitor it with CCTV.
They responded saying the the bass amp sounded loud enough on the WhatsApp message. This is ridiculous - phones compensate for audio so you simply can't tell by listening to an audio clip that's been shared in this way how loud it is. They also said it'd be too expensive to employ people - this isn't creditable as I've used plenty of rehearsal rooms that have actual people onsite and they're around the same price. Pirate also said they'd had equipment stolen when they'd given access to the store room, but surely they could build cupboards with a single piece of kit in for situations like this? Just big enough for a bass amp or guitar amp or even snare drum? I find their approach very much exploiting the fact that when you're at a rehearsal you can't really do anything other than put up with the situation and that's why I'm leaving this review. By all means, use Pirate but know that if anything goes wrong (and there's a good chance it will) they won't be able to do anything about it.

"Best avoided"

Probably the worst rehearsal place in Glasgow. Mediocre equipment, awful sounding rooms, no real isolation between rooms. So if you’re rehearsing you are hearing every note of every other band around you. They also have ‘production rooms’ which are as much of a joke - what’s the point in recording in a space where you are just going to record the sound of everyone around you? If they were cheap maybe it would work but they really aren’t. There’s loads of other studios in Glasgow with Actual Human Beings running them, go use them!

"be carefull the service is very bad and…"

be carefull the service is very bad and they dont help if you stuck with anything

"Booked a session"

Booked a session, it gets cancelled 4 hours later no explanation, no credit refunded, then told it cant be refunded to card. Told it is a security issue with studio, then something else, then told those that made the decision work mon-fri 9-5 yet the booking was made outside this session. The support team unproductive and very little help regarding SAR or any other data protection for people with special needs or learning difficulties. Not happy at all

"DO NOT USE THIS COMPANY!!"

I’m extremely angry to have received a parking ticket from Pirate’s parking supplier Parkingeye. Pirate’s has a policy apparently that whoever is sent the confirmation email with booking details has to tell the rest of the band and singers (if they remember to), that their vehicles have to be registered. Instead of having decent and well displayed parking signs expressing this information, they would rather punish you for using their studios.

Notting-hill Pirate studios!!! i have been hit with a unfair parking fine. When i called pirate studios, they said there was nothing they could do. But i had to do all the leg work and get the details of the original confirmation email from the person it was sent to. The thing is I’m a session musician, i don’t know who it was sent to and there was about 25 people in that session. I only know the artist’s name Its a terrible policy and completely unfounded. There were no signs displaying this and if there was i would have NEVER parked on Pirates
premises. It was a late session, dark, and poorly lit area anyway. Parking registration signs needed to be places somewhere more obvious (like the front gate before entering), what you are currently doing is scamming people out of their hard earned money, who are trying to have the escape of music and provide your company with business! Only for you to kick your customers in the teeth with a parking fine. Disgusting!!! The decent thing to do is to cancel my ticket and get parking signs up and stop hiding that registration requirement!

"Pirate studios rocks"

Everyone is always so helpful when I use the pirate studios WhatsApp chat! Thank you for always accommodating me. You guys rock.

"You get what you pay for… unless that’s credit"

For the most part the studios I have visited have been okay. As mentioned in a lot of reviews here, the gear is sometimes faulty - but that’s what you get with unmanned spaces so to be expected to a certain extent.

However, I (accidentally) double booked a session due to a glitch on the website and could only refund this in the form of credit. I don’t use pirate often but figured it would come in useful in the future. Just logged in to use it and I have found out that they wipe any credit you have in your account after only 3 months!! Considering musicians are hard up against it as it is, this just feels opportunistic. Incredibly disappointed and for this reason I won’t be returning.