On a similar subject, does anyone know if there is a place you can go to to look at or try out any of this type of equipment? It's taken me a few years to save up for some recording equipment and I don't want to send off for something random online, I want to work out what is the cheapest thing that meets my needs, to try and compare the performance of some products side by side. I put in a search for a stockist and it came up that the nearest one was 202 miles away.

Or any forumites in Scotland who would show me theirs?
Doesn't need to be Olympus brand, any equipment, preferably but not necessarily portable, which will record a performance well enough that you can be confident that when you listen back to it that is what you sounded like.
Thanks.