PIRATE.COM - Rehearsal Studios Reviews 817

BEWARE - low hourly rate is subsidised by parking fines.

You register, you get a code to exit the car park. So the car park can't be used by anyone but those using the facilities, right?

No, apparently they need to have a separate system to register your car details so they know you are a customer. If not, parking charge notices, debt collectors letters, threats of court action.

Not only are the studios clean and equipped with state-of-the-art equipment, but the customer service support is (if not the best) I've experienced. Can you guess how long it took them to answer when I had technical difficulties with a mixer? SECONDS, my guys. Not even Amazon has that.

Terrible place. Rented studio 7 for 2 hours just for a small recording session. One of the headphone outputs on audio interface was totally broken. We cannot even work normally as just one person can hear what’s happening.
+ there was a big mess when we came, and terrible smell.
Very bad place

Absolutely AWFUL!!! Useless person on reception, full of attitude all coz i "interrupted her social" to check in. Booked 3 hours, lost 2 of them with faulty untested/unmonitored equipment, had to be moved twice. The staff whatsapp were not replying to my messages for 10minutes at a time. As soon as I called them they tried to get me off the phone and get me on to whatsapp. Only refunded me for one hour when i clearly lost 2. Awful awful place. Vile!!!

Went yesterday,I had a small issue and the technicians Jez and Dan went above and beyond, solving my issues and really did the extra mile.
Thank you guys, I will coming back!!@
Really recommend!!!!

More than one piece of equipment was faulty - a regular occurrence. Then you have the joy of trying to fix the issue yourself practically in the dark because of the poor level of lighting in the studios. You can call the team to get replacement equipment but it’s a faff when you’re on a tight schedule. No care in terms of overall customer experience.

Soundproof was advertised and it wasn’t at all. Can hear every noise outside of the room nevermind privacy for your audio. People in the corridors just listening. Weird.

After years of being a customer and probably with more than 200h spent in pirate studios i have to say that the situation in Berlin studios is unsustainable. Equipment is broken and they continue renting the studios. Even after you just cancel your booking after arriving to the place and realizing the speakers are broken (distorted and broken bass). Prices are always higher, and with the current quality of the equipment makes no sense to continue using pirate.

All faders are loose, mixer filter is broken, knobs are replaced by plastic bad ones, air conditioned/heater is broken, humidity and water dropping from the roof ( in tempelhof), headphones outputs doesnt work etc etc etc. BUT the worst, the pioneer speakers are already kaputt and they dont replace them.

I know most of users are 18s youngs doing parties and taking G and smoking vapes with their friends playing crazy loud ass emo techno. BUT COME ON, just put a limiter on the volume, just use the security to control these situations. Pirate is used also by lots of professionals that we just cant play anymore loud at home due Berlin gentrification.

Yesterday after 45 minutes trip me and my collegue had to cancel the booking because a speaker issue and no other studios were avaiable. PROBABLY MY LAST TIME TRYING PIRATE Already looking for the other alternatives, BYE

It’s dismaying to see some people’s negative reviews.

Take the person from Glasgow for example who said he couldn’t record because he could hear the band next door. Did this person book a Rehearsal room which I highly suspect.

They should have booked a recording studio, Pirate has both.

Do you really expect a block of rehearsal rooms to completely block out the noise of loud bands.

Maybe you know turn your own amps up and practice, record when you are in a Studio not in a practice room.

If we didn’t have Pirate studios musicians would have to pay huge amounts of money to rent professional studios out and bands would have to pay exhorbitant fees for rehearsal rooms.

Just record in your bedroom the guy from Glasgow said, maybe instead be a bit more sociable and join in the fun, accept everyone’s creativity is different but still legitimate. Everyone is at different stages with their music.

If you seriously prefer your bedroom then Pirate isn’t for you ha!

Absolutely awful.
I went into a Pirate Studio in Glasgow to do some recordings of vocals and acoustic guitars. I couldn't record anything at all because all I could hear was the terrible band next door murdering Smells Like Teen Spirit amongst other kiddy-covers.

The studios are not sound treated - they're only made to look like they are. I could honestly hear the band in the next studio almost like they were playing right next to me.

Pirate Studios might seem like a good deal, but you don't actually get anything for your money. My spare room is a much superior recording studio and it's barely sound treated at all.

It seems they are quite used to offering refunds if the studio isn't up to scratch, but make sure they pay you for your transport to and from the studio if you find yourself in the same position as me.

If you want a studio experience that's more than just messing about in a pretend studio, go somewhere else.

Avoid at all costs and use your bedroom instead. You could live in a warzone and still have a quieter experience than at Pirate.

good concept but very poorly executed and a virtually non existent customer services and site managers are very poor at their jobs. after having issues with a speaker i was told its blown and to move studios. in the rush of moving i left my laptop charger behind. i contacted live chat who told me to fill in a form and the site manager will contact me. i filled the form in a month ago and no one has contacted me. terrible customer services, even non existent. been here twice now and ive lost time on my booking due to technical issues and access door issues, its a shame this concept is so poorly run

I went to rehearse with some friends, and honestly the place was never hoovered and was smelling. The toilets were in terrible state as well. I cannot understand the logic of just getting a space, throw an old drums in and some speakers and just expect to get paid without ever giving a thing again. If you want to have a business, then take care of it.

I find them unwilling to help out or break away from their rigid policies when a customer needs support. Not very human, empathetic or kind customer service. I’m put off by ever booking there again as they have done nothing to help me in both customer service chats last night or this morning.

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.

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.

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.

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 they dont help if you stuck with anything