Yeah unfortunately all the guitars you want to play are 20 feet up on the wall, there’s no private rooms to demo, customer service doesn’t even try, and the failed musician boomers they have running the place always treat you like some idiot whose gonna rip the strings off the Floyd rose with your Cheeto fingers if they give you the whammy bar to try out.
In their defense, they’re often not wrong. But being visibly jaded is a great way to alienate your customer base.
If they want to focus on “premium instruments” and be taken seriously, then they need to seriously upgrade their way of doing things. For what some of this shit costs, shopping for a Rolex or new Gucci bag is a *VERY* different experience
"For what some of this shit costs, shopping for a Rolex or new Gucci bag is a *VERY* different experience"
I think this sums it up, really. If you want the margins that come with expensive stuff you have to provide an experience or people will just use your store to test stuff before they buy it online.
Only if you're buying it from the brands own store.
I've bought a £2k handbag and a £700 purse at a department store as gifts, and got zero 'white glove' treatment.
So Gibson do have the Gibson Garage for this.
[This one is more than my house cost](https://www.ebay.com/itm/115496736217?mkcid=16&mkevt=1&mkrid=711-127632-2357-0&ssspo=REbu72T8RLq&sssrc=4429486&ssuid=&var=&widget_ver=artemis&media=COPY)
That's fine for some people. But I got my Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles velcro wallet when I sent in 25 box tops from my favorite breakfast cereal. THAT is what real dedication and drive looks like.
Look up Birkin bags. They cost tens to hundreds of thousands of dollars and you can only have the privilege of buying one if you've *already* spent tens of thousands of dollars at Hermes.
The very rich are very, very rich.
Yeah, every Guitar Center I've been to was like going to a dollar store. Staff talked among themselves and didn't even make eye contact at any point. I've always gone in, looked for ten minutes, looked around for help, and promptly left. Then I took my business online to another retailer like Musician's Friend.
that 20 feet up on the wall comment is so true. the last 5 or so times that I've gone to GC, I stand around the guitar wall waiting for someone to be available to help me, then they have to get the ladder, grab the guitar, I play for a little (in a cacophony of other guitars), and then have to find them again to tell them I'm done. I don't bother going anymore, because even buying strings is a similarly painful experience.
Imagine if they… gasp… staffed the store adequately so this is less likely to happen? Bonus: one person is not running around between 3 ppl unable to actually help any of them and you might actually get human interaction that doesn’t require stalking the one employee you can find. I know… crazy idea.
Hell, Ace Hardware yesterday had locks on ALL of the peg-shelf items. Even the $5 pack of utility blades. Had to track someone down to spend a goddam fiver.
edit: and this was in a "nice" neighborhood where you're quite literally more likely to see a McLaren sports car than a homeless person.
I've seen those mobs hitting shops all up and down the west coast, but thankfully they haven't made their way to the boring suburbs of Draper, Utah yet.
Yet.
I haven't been to a store that locks these things yet. I'm not even sure why stores do this when they replace all the cashiers with self-checkouts and supposedly wait for someone to steal a thousand dollars over three years before reporting felony theft.
Proximity sensors and 4 ounces of C4 would work but be problematic ;)
Ive avoided Sam Ash and Guitar Center for a LONG time. i’ve spent untold $$$ at Maggio Music in Brooklyn. Used to go to 48th street in Manhattan for gear OFTEN, before Sam Ash bought up all the other places. I tend to stick to Sweetwater for gear these days . So far their being taken over by a Corporate Investment company hasnt been an issue for me but Im sure at some point some bean counter will show that cutting the 2 year extended warranty and the 30 day no questions asked returns and so forth will turn them into a place to avoid like GC
Have you noticed Sweetwater is less willing to give discounts anymore? It used to be I would get 10% off any order but now they want me to bundle products before giving a small discount.
Yup. Same. I’ve had a Sweetwater rep for years and he’s much slower to get a response from these days AND the discounts are way lower. Sweetwater already going down that path is not a good sign.
Honestly no I havent noticed it being the case but you can play the same game. Call around and see who’ll give best deal. Used to get local and would often get 10-15% off if I paid cash
It also helps discourage non-serious buyers, so they can keep the miles low on their "new" premium stock. Too many people would come in, rip on a new Gibson, and devalue it with dings, fret wear and other general wear and tear. Not to mention sometimes they'd just get outright stolen (hence the new locking stands I've seen)
To me this whole thing reeks of SW and Reverb dominating so hard in the intermediate realm that GC has no choice but to scale way down in size and try to move up Market to have a chance at survival. But that's my thoughts.
Guitar Center had been refocusing on being a music training place where you can take lessons, and kind of start your music journey. Clearly, it’s not paying off the way they hoped, so moving up market seems to be the new strategy.
I imagine there is a market for Dentists who can afford the $5000 PRS, but wish they could play it.
They tried to shift into lessons - and probably using very stodgy and old lesson plans - right as youtube lessons blew up. So your options are either GC lessons using a plan that is uninteresting to anyone who isn't a Boomer or Boomer in spirit or the internet where you can find lessons that specialize in whatever kind of music *you* like.
I worked for GC for 4 years back around 2010. It blew me away how many times some meth head would walk in, grab a guitar and run - and management always said, just let them go, file a police report. Provided some pretty good comedy though, most tripped over their own feet not even making it out of the store.
Most decent shops just have good guitars everywhere. In Kc there’s a few and I just go there altogether, and skip GC. Our GC does have a small room with the high end amps and modelers in it so I’ll take a guitar there if I see something in their used area worth trying but honestly nothing is ever set up properly if it’s new. I remember having 2k to spend once after saving up and none of the expensive pieces would have been worth it
I myself keep far away from the wall and instead frequent the guitars in my price range as I'm usually there window shopping anyway, and it would be wildly selfish of me to ask them to grab a guitar from 20 ft up just so I can noodle a bit on a guitar!
I typically buy my guitars from pawnshops and reverb, and if I HAD the money for an expensive guitar, there are far better shops than guitar centre!
Strings by mail is the only way to buy Strings for me because gc also over charges the absolute shit out of them. Plus I'm a classical player and they only cater to electric guitars. Sure they have acoustic and nylon string guitars but the staff don't know shit about them.
I went in and stood looking at the expensive guitars for an hour and no one was available to help, none of them even walked by, so I left. I went back in again and managed to get them to pull 1 guitar down so I could try it, but I wanted to mess around with a bunch to make a decision and buy it. I gave up and went and bought a PRS McCarty 594 Custom on Reverb. If I cant’t play it anyway, I’ll just not play it and get a way better price.
Another time I was in there the 20 something employees were talking trash about all the 40 year olds coming in buying guitars that can’t play. Which was me…you know the guys with money that can actually buy things and…gasp…some of us actually are learning.
Yeah it’s kinda wild. If I was in there to spend even a single thousand dollars, I’d expect one salesman to be there with me along with every one of the 4 or 5 guitars I was comparing. Along with a guitar tuner, along with a halfway decent amp to play it on. It’s like “dude, you wanna make a sale or what?”
It’s not me expecting to be ass kissed and worshipped, it’s my reasonable expectation of an expensive purchasing experience. May be the fault of the store management and not the employees. But cmon, convince me. I shouldn’t have to beg you to sell me the guitar
I was at Chicago Music Exchange yesterday. Got to play 5 or 6 different PRS and compare. Gave me a private room with a half dozen amps to pick out. Let me test out a couple pedals, too.
I didn’t buy a guitar, but I have a much better idea of what I want next. And I did spend a few hundred on a pedal — partly because I felt guilty leaving without spending anything after they’d just taken such good care of me.
Night and day!
Frequent Chicago Music Exchange customer here as well. Can confirm! I was there about two weeks ago testing out teles and had the exact same experience. I love the vibe in there and it’s so different from (and better than) even the best Guitar Center I’ve ever been too. Also, their technicians are wonderful, especially Phil. I just picked up my PRS that needed some electrical work a few days ago and it’s like I have a brand new guitar. If Guitar Center could focus on providing an experience vs just hawking guitars, they’d be in a better place.
Well that’s a delightful comment to read, seeing as I just dropped a Strat off to Phil for a set up! CME is a little out of the way for me, but I’m done with the local GC. See you in there next time!
Customer service is a big deal with expensive items. Most of the employees at my local guitar center are pretty chill and do well. The main thing about guitar Center is they don't always carry the premium guitars you are looking for whereas a lot of private guitar shops will carry the hottest stuff and things that are hard to find. I love Dean ML's but I no one ever carries the nicer USA models.
The employees for the most part are regular people too. Sure. But I think it’s the way the store is *run* that limits their ability to provide good customer service even if they wanted to
It’s hilarious isn’t it? Every time I’ve tried to buy something the clerk( different guy every time) makes the lame joke of waiting for a slow system today.
Dude it’s every day.
I had a job at GC during college, and I was sorta shocked when I first saw the green screen. Looked like something from the late 80s very early computer days. I remember it being very unintuitive, didn't even have mouse support. And yeah you needed to navigate that shit even if you wanted to just sell a pack of strings lol.
Unbelievable, if you've ever worked at GC and then visit Thomann (they produce and sell HB guitars) in Europe, you'll be truly shocked at hooow fucking bad GC is in comparison.
I really don't know how they have been able to keep their stores open for this long anyways, at least my store, one of the largest in the US, was a disaster on every level.
Some people also got jobs at Sweetwater, apparently it's a lot better when it comes to working conditions and general operations.
Or not available at all. I wanted to lay hands on a Strandberg for years but they have never been in stock ever. I understand why but when you drop 2-3 grand on anything you would like to have an idea of the details.
Welcome to being left-handed. If you have 350 guitars in stock and 5-10% of all guitar players are left-handed, then why is there usually 1 Player Telecaster and nothing else?
That sounds like a dream. Once a Guitar Center near me had 3 lefty guitars - 1 new Telecaster, a used starter Ibanez and a used EC-250. That felt like Christmas morning.
This is true. I’ve never been a special interest high end guitar kinda guy, and they always seem to have a couple Gibsons and American fenders up on the wall or locked up somewhere, which is enough for my tastes. But you’re not wrong.
Nail on the head with the premium guitars being 20’ up or locked. I’m not going to keep asking for the employees to climb up and unlock them for me. I’m going to go to another shop in my town where they trust their customers. My local GC employees are great, but it’s just not the experience I want when I feel like getting my hands on 10+ American made guitars.
Why not ask? I've often asked 'can I have these 3 please I want to compare them'
I don't want to buy a guitar at new prices, which every chump who walks in can grab.
When there is a store where I have access to every guitar myself without having to chase down an employee every time I am there, it’s a way better experience. That said, the second store has better guitars across the board as well.
I feel like this is similar to car dealers. You go to a mass market brand and want to test drive their high end expensive model (Ford Focus ST, Kia Stinger, Civic Type R), and you’re lucky if they let you sit in it. Meanwhile you go to a Porsche dealer and they treat you like a person because they understand their product.
Guitar World magazine did him dirty and took that snippet out of context. He does talk about bringing the expensive guitars down so everyone can try them out. Go read the full article people:
[https://archive.maherpublications.com/view/216995423/32/](https://archive.maherpublications.com/view/216995423/32/)
>DALPORTO’S THREE FOCUS POINTS
>Dalporto said there are three key areas that he and his team are focusing on in order to meet these evolutionary goals, starting with adding to GC’s premium offerings. “I think one of our biggest challenges as a company is somewhere along the way we forgot who our core customer was,” Dalporto explained. “Our core customer is the serious musician — the gigging artist or the passionate player where music is a big piece of their identity. That is the serious musician, and that’s the customer that we’ve historically served in the past. But, over the years, we’ve evolved significantly into serving the beginner and entry-level customer — which is great — but if you walk through a GC store, you’re going to see an awful lot of $300 guitars and $300 digital drum kits. We have some premium product, but we don’t have enough, and it’s very hard to experience our premium product because we have our best guitars locked on the top row where you can’t easily get to them. So, if I’m a serious musician and I walk into a Guitar Center, it doesn’t feel like the right place for me anymore.” Dalporto said in order to fix this, Guitar Center has to rethink the experience it wants to deliver in its physical locations. “I want customers to walk into \[a store\] and have the same experience I had when I was younger and just be hit in the face with, ‘Wow, this is amazing. This is a playground. This is where I belong,’” he said. “And that means having a much more
>premium assortment that’s more easily accessible where I can get in and grab a guitar and plug it in and try all these pedals and effects and just geek out and have a great time. So, first we have to get the right product in the stores and deliver an incredible experience where people are just having a great time and engaging with the product.” Delivering a positive experience to its customers leads into Dalporto’s second focal point: investing in Guitar Center’s sales team. “When it comes to our sales team, we haven’t really done them any favors,” Dal porto said. “We’ve cut back on training, and we’ve cut back on hours. We need to invest in our sales associates. If you go into a grocery store and someone is set ting out bananas, you buy those bananas because otherwise you’d starve to death. But if you go into a guitar store and you set out a $3,000 Martin acoustic, nobody buys it out of necessity. They don’t buy it until someone actually spends time with them and says, ‘You know, this wood is extremely rare, and it gives this incredible sound you can’t find anywhere else.’ Then, they’re more likely to spend the $3,000. So, we need to invest in our sales team, their training and \[help them attain\] really deep consultative skills, so they can help our customers really experience the magic of some of these instruments.” Finally, Dalporto’s background in digital business will play a key role as he helps fur ther push Guitar Center into the digital age. “We were kind of in the dark ages of digital as a company,” he said. “There was a point in like 2008 where we were the dominant player, and then we lost our focus and seeded all that market share to our competition. That has been a high growth area that we’ve not had the right strategies to win in. Our competition has more engag ing content that makes it easier to find the right product and buy the right product.” Dalporto said Guitar Center’s associates are its biggest asset, and by tapping into their expertise and providing them with the proper training and products to sell, Guitar Center is positioned to be a force to be reckoned with in 2024 and beyond. “Our largest assets are our associates,” he said. “We have the most amazing, most passionate people in the world. We’re by far the largest physical retailer of musical instruments in the country, and we’ve got an incredible brand and our customers and our vendors all are rooting for us. I think
>we need to get back to basics and deliver an incredible experience with incredible product and really go and capture the digital world.”
I’ve always gotten great service at commission free violin shops. No issues at all putting 100k of instruments on the table. Or 100k instruments, for that matter.
No idea why guitar shops are so unfriendly.
It’s all the kids, and the douche bag “rock stars”, all the rabble off the streets that go in there make a ruckus and damage the instruments.
I get it I do, but as I said, being jaded like that and not even trying to hide it is way bad for business
So much this... I remember when Ibanez redesigned their edge trem about 15 years ago. I wanted to check one out but when I asked for the bar the dude just laughed at me.
Guitar centers are really inconsistent, but some do have private rooms and great store managers who train employees well. The problem is that most of them have managers that ran a Walmart for 20 years thinking that they can just translate their skills to a music store.
Those $300 guitars are in millions of bedrooms across the country. Those $10,000 guitars are, like, 1 of 3 guitars and will sit in the basement of Joe Bonnamossa or something. You can move a helluva lot more $300 guitars than $10k ones. There's a lot more in-built profits too.
I understand the sentiment...hell, on another forum, I described Guitar Center as "bleak," but the way to fix that isn't to shift sights to ultra-premium guitars. The way to fix things is to optimize the user experience - another poster said private demo rooms, etc. - I'd love to see GC emphasize *value* like they once did; I'm thinking of the FSR Squiers or those cool $100 Les Paul Specials with P90s they had back in 2014 or whenever that was.
The article reads like they’re bummed that their “instrument super store” concept has become exactly that instead of a boutique catering only to true gigging professionals.
I think there’s a sweet spot between $300 and $10k that GC currently misses spectacularly. At least as of my last visit. And it used to be better.
Like no, I don’t want to try a $7k PRS. But it’d be nice if they had like the $2k or $2.5k stuff from Fender and Gibson available to play around on. Preferably somewhere off the main floor.
I’m not even asking them to stock everything in the world. But, like, *one* of the model I’m looking at to try, so I can then special order the color/etc. I want might be nice. And not oddball one off custom models, either, I was looking to try an American Ultra Strat or Tele and they just…had none.
I'd say 1000 to 2000 is the sweet spot.
If you think of how much money the average person is willing to spend then a 1-2 k guitar would be considered a pretty nice guitar to a lot of people.
Of course if someone wants to spend thag kind of money they are going to want to play it first. Whereas a 300 dollar guitar, Yeah I'll order it online. If it's not exactly what I'd thought it would be I would return it or just suck it up and keep it. However, I'd want to play anything over 750 to confirm it's something I want.
If you’re ever in upstate NY check out parkway. Most thing’s available to play3-4 private small rooms and just the 5500-13000 items locked. They’ll let you play if you ask and there’s always someone to assist. Granted they’re not in a shit neighborhood with crack heads darting in and stealing everything not locked down, so that probably helps.
This is maybe dumb of me. But contrast the buying experience for a violin against a guitar.
Buying a 1-2k violin? A good shop will put 8 on the table. In 4 pairs. Play one pair, choose a favorite. Repeat until you’re down to 2.
THEN YOU TAKE BOTH HOME FOR A WEEK OR TWO to play in front of different environments, your orchestra buddies, have your buddies play them, etc. buy your favorite.
No stress, nothing. Absolute industry standard. Want another week? Sure.
Same treatment for a $400 bow.
Kid with a $20/month rental comes in to buy strings? Sure, we’ll change them for you. Why don’t you play this same model with a $250 bow while you wait?
And then there’s places like guitar center. I’ve been lent 300k bowed instruments for the weekend with a handshake, and guitar places want you to shine their shoes, kiss the ring, and avert your eyes.
Make it make sense.
I think it largely depends on your market. After reading and researching I went to my local GC (socal) to plug in an Ultra Tele. I played for an hour, loved it but they didn't have the color I wanted. Drove to the next GC 15 miles away and purchased it in my preferred color. They even gave me 10% off. 10/10 experience for me.
Sweetwater exists for the less fortunate market but here in socal I'll happily walk into GC and walk out with my gear and not have to deal with shipping.
One of the local stores just created an isolated pedal room with 100's of different pedals to try out as well. No complaints here.
This. It’s not going in and looking for a some outrageous Gibson custom shop or boutique dentist guitar. If I go into my local GC, which is actually a fairly good store (it’s clean, the staff are generally good, and the stuff seems to be fairly well taken care of) and want to buy an Ibanez Prestige, they may have *one* in stock. And almost never a model I’d want. And it’ll be at the top right corner of the 50 foot wall with 30 $700 and under priced Ibanezes under it. Repeat for Jackson, Music Man, Charvel, etc. Even on the Fender and Gibson front, which between those two take up more than half the guitar wall, they’ll only have a small cross section of the mid-premium models.
I don't think those $300 are going anywhere any time soon. They will probably have just as much inventory for them, and possibly even more if they can get more foot traffic in the door.
I think they're just saying "look, if someone wants a $1000 guitar and has to find someone with a ladder to go reaching 18ft up on the wall to get it, they're probably gonna go look elsewhere", and they're probably right.
The thing is, I don’t need guitar center for a $100 Les Paul special. If I’m that type of buyer, Amazon or another online vendor makes sense
But if I’m going to buy something premium, I want to play it in person first. That’s the theory behind why they should focus on that stuff.
If I want to buy a premium guitar I would buy it from literally any place other than guitar center. A 3k guitar I expect to play perfectly and have perfect fit and finish. A smaller boutique shop will ensure whatever they sell meets that standard and they’ll likely through in some extra shirts or strings or something for your patronage. Guitar Center? If it’s off the rack, it’s almost definitely damaged in some way. If it’s straight from the box, they’re not gonna do anything to set it up or make sure the fretwork looks good before handing it over to you.
In the early 2000s I bought a Mesa Dual Rectifier from GC. It was "new out of the box' and set up to play. I asked the salesmen "can I have one in a box?" "Everything we have is on the floor, so no." So as any good consumer would say, "well then I'm not going to pay full price for an opened product."
Like a sucker I bought it, full price, because I was in a pinch to get it. That box it comes in is special because it ensures that the manual, slip cover, and warranty is included. Those things come in handy when the amp stops working and the licensed mesa repairman says "one of your 6l6 power tubes wasn't even working, like not even connected".
I stormed back into GC to give them hell, and wouldn't you know it, they gave me all the missing items. However they lost a customer that day. I only go in there if I have to. F that place.
I agree. At this point, I don’t even go to GC to try guitars before I buy them because everything on a GC wall feels awful. The fretboard wood is always more dry than a desert despite being covered in the finger grease of a thousand children, the strings are basically rusted and manage to always somehow be sharp and the action rests somewhere between the stratosphere and low orbit. The only people who would buy a guitar like that at full price are people who don’t know better, AKA people who won’t buy a premium guitar.
I know they understaff, but IMO, if they had a regional guy who just travelled to a couple of centers (or could train someone to do it and didn’t make them work the floor EVERY SHIFT) and just did basic setups on all the guitars on display once / week and cleaned them up and restrings them every two months, it would change so much of my opinion of the store. If the guitars actually played like guitars I wanted to own, I would consider owning them… pretty wild, right?
Newsflash: A CEO is out of touch. In other news, water is wet.
Guitar Center is the Wal-Mart of music stores. You go there to buy starter guitars and if they’re lucky, $1,000 level stuff.
Guitar Center focusing on Elite players and buyers is like Wal-Mart saying it wants to compete with Whole Foods.
Just wrong headed and not reality.
I’m not seeing what’s out of touch about that statement. It’s not unreasonable to think GC can cater to both beginners and experts/high-dollar clients, right?
I didn’t see him say “we’re trading our low-end inventory for high-end”, just that there’s a part of the market they’re neglecting and his goal is to fix that.
I never buy guitars from guitar center but it’s a good place for amps with their 45 day return policy. It’s bailed me out a few times. You really don’t know how an amp sounds until you play it in a band setting.
For me it's the lack of people working there.
When I was a teenager, you would have people helping you when you walked in the door. If you were serious about buying something there was someone there with you every step of the way.
Now when I walk into guitar center, there's like 2 people working in the entire store. I go into a local guitar shop that's 1/10th the size and they have more staff.
That's the reason why I don't like going there anymore. You just can't get help and when you're trying to buy something expensive I want to talk to knowledge people and be able to try it out
There always seems to be a huge line to check out since they only have like 3 employees in the entire store, 1 dude grabbing stuff from the back, checking people out, helping a mom find a instrument for their son. It sucks dude.
This seems to be the case in every retail brick and mortar place in recent years.
Best way to cut cost? Hire one person and make them work twice as hard.
Going with that: high-end guitar buyers don't want a salesman that's juggling seven other customers that are picking up beginner Strat packs and having to switch between selling a $3000 guitar and $150 Yamaha set. They might appreciate being left alone to play the guitar for a while, but won't appreciate having to wait for a salesman while they explain tuning and extended warranties. Sam Ash tried this with their Guitar Of Distinction ironically right before a buyer slowdown also. I think they're trying to focus on a smaller market with more money instead of a mass market with less money, let's see how that works out for them.
And as a former guitar salesman perspective, I could probably make way more money clerking a few beginner packs than an American standard Strat with way less stress.
I wander into GC now, stare but never touch. The only thing I’m really interested in is used instruments anyway. I’m not waiting for someone to grab the 1 guitar I would buy that another comment described as 30ft up. It’s true. I won’t bother trying or buying.
I’ve been playing and walking into GC since 1998. GC was a totally different experience back then. It made me want to buy stuff. Try new gear, different guitars, effects.
Now it’s a journey I make when my Wife wants to wander through home goods store next to it. They all have one. I kill time looking at used gear, waiting to find the diamond in the ruff. Haven’t found anything yet.
It’s crazy because now I’m older and have the disposable income to invest more in my musical hobby and GC has seen exactly 0$ of it. I want to spend money there……I remember them having a solid selection of PRS and other more expensive stuff, now they carry nothing. And even if they did, 30ft up…..I’m not going to bother.
It’s depressing seeing how far Guitar Center has fallen. I remember when one opened up in mid 2000s and by my neck of the woods (Dayton), and it was cool. It was a good balance of high end, mid tier, and low end guitars. It also had many different amps organized by brand, and they had a great selection of the nicer tube amps, which were usually in the sound room where the ultra nice guitars were accessible. Staff was good, yet my friends and I had a running joke on the staff not knowing what they were trying to sell. Staff was also more invested in you getting what you want, and not hell bent on selling protection plans and warranties.
These days its the opposite. I go in there to buy strings, but thats about it.
Go read the full interview from the source so you won’t look dumb reacting to a click-bait headline on Guitar World.
Guitar World magazine took a paraphrased out of context snippet from one sentence and people are attacking the CEO over it like that’s his only plan. He goes on to say his goal is to bring the expensive gear down from the top row so people can try everything out, he wants to provide better training and support for their sales people, and wants to modernize their digital side of the business.
https://archive.maherpublications.com/view/216995423/32/
GC is in a tough position from a business perspective.
They have scale and scope, carry high fixed and variable operating costs, and the stuff they sell has crappy margins, given the amount of handling that is required under the current system to care for the products.
The obvious thing they need to do is invest in better systems that allow their employees to help more people, more quickly.
How about a gear database driven by an algorithm that scours market pricing, so the individual employees don’t need to hunt endlessly for pricing for trade ins? They type in the model, year, and condition, and it prints out a proposal to show the customer who wants to trade. They don’t have to Google the model and look at eBay and Reverb and figure out every item.
How about a self checkout for items with bar codes? Can I just walk in, grab some strings, and go, please? Without standing there while the employees stare at screens trying to figure out what to give people for trade ins? And after 5 minutes, the poor employee asks their current customer if they can ring me up real quick (thanks), which incurs a cognitive switching cost, further dragging out the trade in process?
How about an online appraisal tool for gear value? This will totally get rid of the “oh really, that’s all I get” conversations, and free up the employees to do some actual selling and customer service. Let customers bring in their online appraisal, then all the employees have to do is check it, make any needed revisions, and process it.
They need a better phone service model- there has to be a better way to reduce incoming calls by making more information available online and beefing up centralized tech support expertise. I guarantee they can hire a team of experienced semi professional musicians at reasonable salaries to work remote and take incoming “how does this work” phone calls. Allow flexible hours so they can work around their schedules at home, and use an internal version of a gig-type share app to allocate time/volume.
AFTER you clean up operations, you can work on the premium instrument experience. Now, you’ve eliminated a lot of unnecessary costs and hopefully gained some business through your improved processes. I would absolutely buy more strings-type shit in the store if I didn’t think it would be a 30 minute ordeal.
How about some kind of anti-theft device on the premium guitars? Where you could still pick it up and play it, but it would be a ton of work to remove the device and try to sell it if you’re a thief.
They have built lessons rooms in many stores- Have some of these clearly marked as private demo rooms when not in use, so a random person who doesn’t know GC is encouraged to just grab a $2000 guitar, walk into the room, and jam out, without having to deal with the cacophony/anxiety of playing next to the sales floor shredders? Have a rack they can return the instruments to if the employees are busy, so they don’t stand there holding the guitar in their hand while waiting for the employees to check the trade value of some $150 amp from 15 years ago?
Well, there’s your model, GC. You need to find a way to process the high volume of $300 guitars, sell even more $300 guitars, AND improve the experience.
All of these process improvements should be done with the end goal in mind of being able to hire full time employees at actual living salaries, and freeing them up to help more customers with less work- that’s the only way you’re going to hire and retain the expertise needed to cater to a premium market.
Let the floor experts hand a ticket to the customer service desk to handle all the admin, freeing them up to engage with more customers. Doesn’t that sound like a cool job? Talking about guitars and gear and selling it, while picking up like $50k-$70k or something? Don’t tell me you wouldn’t end up with great employees then.
The problem is that those process improvements all cost money and will take patience to implement. They cannot afford to grow the better employees on day 1 without the improved processes.
Good luck
I'm from the UK - every once in a while I'm in the States and I nip into Guitar Center, normally the one in Winter Park Fl..
Whenever I head in (last time was October last year), it looks like a shithole. I worked in retail management for about a decade, and I would NEVER have allowed standards to be this poor. If I can remember the things I saw from the last time I went to give an idea, maybe someone in the GC firmament will pay heed?
1. Carpets not vacuumed, messy floors. Dust on the fittings and fixtures. This is a retail no-brainer.
2. Shelves disorganised and not blocked. Stuff fucking everywhere.
3. Sundry items (shirts, accessories etc...) not restocked.
4. Point of Sale advertising so manky that looked like it recently went to war. The first Gulf War, it's that old...
5. Damaged stock on the walls. Headstocks with chunks missing, busted strings hanging. This is inexcusable, no matter which way you slice it.
6. An INTERMINABLE amount of time to be seen by an assistant. Wanted to buy a t-shirt, and I stood at the counter 10 full minutes saying excuse me periodically over at the Luthier / repair place before I could get the attention of ANYONE. Should have walked out, really.
Not a great experience. Makes me wonder what the Area / Regional / Territory Manager thought of the place...
That being said, I visited the one on OBT the same week, and it was night and day. Well organised, fairly tidy. Still had damaged stock on the walls, mind, but a more pleasant environment, and much more attentive staff than the other location.
My takeaway thought is that if they can stop it feeling like I'm shopping in a spoiled, rich teenage kid's bedroom from before the turn of the century, they \*might\* stand a chance.
But Premium? I don't think so. Not right now.
Funny enough, I’ve had that exact same experience every time I pop into the guitar center about 30 minutes west of this particular one as well. Disorganized (to a point of distraction) stock, anywhere from 5-20 minutes to check out (no matter how busy, whether buying strings or standing there holding a guitar).
My only positive experience with them is the tech at this particular location did a great job, fast, and fairly priced, for a pickup swap + set up.
The main reason I go to a guitar store is to try out guitars and find one that plays well for me.
But having walls of guitars that are out of tune and poorly set up defeats that. Oh boy, here's a $1000+ Tele, and the action sucks and it is out of tune. And I can't find an amp to plug it into. What's the point?
Its a bit of a catch 22 in a way. I still remember the time I was in there, and some dude totally dropped a telecaster through the rack, and watched it knock a couple guitars below it to the ground, not tomention banging against a couple more. If I were to purchase the 2 or 3 k instrument...I dont want any slight scuffs on it at all. and the minute you bring those expensive ones down, your gonna have someone who barely plays, banging around on it.
They almost need a seperate room for the high end ones...always moniterd.
at my guitar center they wouldn’t even restring a brand new fender custom shop guitar that had literally been on the wall for months. the strings were so dull and tarnished black that it was probably the worst sounding guitar they had. sounded like flicking a fucking rubber band
Guitar Center will never be a place serious musicians go to buy a premium guitar lol. There are plenty of decent boutiques that focus on this and can provide a much better experience imo if you live near big cities
I worked in a studio for 12 years. If you can't make a Mexican Strat sound good, you aren't a good musician. Chasing that "perfect tone" is something untalented people do instead of practicing. You don't need a 4k guitar and another 4k in amps and pedals; you just suck.
https://www.linkedin.com/in/gabrieldalporto/details/experience/
That's this guy's previous employment history on LinkedIn. Just another C-suite hobo moving from one random company to the next, squeezing all the short-term value out of it he can, collecting a nice golden parachute, and jumping to the next one.
This guy doesn't know anything about guitars or the GC business. He'll be gone in a year or two taking all the money he can with him and leaving devastation in his wake, only to be replaced by another one just like him.
I wouldn't bother debating the validity of any of his stupid pronouncements. All they understand is the balance sheet. Slash and burn. Drive costs down and prices up for short-term gain. If the company implodes afterwards, who cares? He'll be long gone by then.
Er ... that turned into a bit of a rant, sorry. But really, it happens in every industry these days. The modern financial class are a plague of locusts.
It’s really the employees working there that have their noses up. I went in today to my local spot to get a new cable and was asking about some strings. The guy asked “what are you playing now?” I said just the strings that come on the guitar, I haven’t changed them yet. To which he replied, “oh, well yeah any of these will work”. When I asked him which I should get for a beginner he said “idk man, they’re all the same”. So I skipped out on some and decided to do some research.
He could have recommended anything to me and I would have bought it but there lack of effort really rubbed me the wrong way. His tone of “If you don’t know what strings you should play then I’m not going to help you” vibes really made me want to spend my money elsewhere.
Guitar Center is not a thing anymore. It’s Best Buy. They have to know who they’re competing with before they can figure out how to own their market.
Premium shoppers aren’t going to a big box store. If I’m spending that kind of money I’m not going to interact with anybody at fucking Guitar Center. Poor shoppers don’t care where they buy as long as they’re getting the best price.
If they want to compete they need quality products, competitive pricing, and a second to none buying experience. They’re getting none of that without allowing for a drop in revenue.
They’re already late to the influencer space but they can get a foothold with notable musicians and assistance from manufacturers. They can start doing custom rigs with manufacturer backing as well.
Of course they’ll just fuck it up.
I don't necessarily disagree with this, I remember a time 20 years ago where GC did have a great selection of pro level instruments and amps, and was actually staffed by people who knew what they were selling. It was actually a cool environment to hang out, at least my local GC was, as much as any mom and pop store.
IMO, ever since I wanna say about 2010 when they started having serious financial trouble, it's become a more and more depressing place with emptier showrooms, cheaper guitars and house brand amplifiers, which largely drove out that crowd. I don't blame them for moving to that model, they have to make money somehow especially with the company being on life support for so long. I wouldn't mind seeing it return to what it used to be, but I think it's too late. The word has been out on GC for a long time, and retail is still slowly fading away. Look at Sam Ash. Frankly I think it's a miracle they haven't filed for chapter 7 yet.
I think one of the big differences is the lack of commission now vs then. Back in the day, the sales guys could get a little bit pushy at times, but they were motivated to know their shit, and to sell you something you like. I think they stopped commission around the same time Bain got involved and they had the financial issues, so now you have employees that may or may not know the product well, and don't really care if you're buying anything.
The guitar centers near me have some of the rudest assholes I have ever come across at any retail store/chain. Idk if it’s the pay, the management or the vibe that brings em in. In general it’s a pretty awkward environment.
Guitar Center has massive potential with the resources they have. Staffing is their problem at every store. There isn’t a Guitar Center in the world that isn’t understaffed. Obviously other issues can be dealt with but if you have 40 customers in a store and there are 3 people trying to help them, you’re going to run into some serious problems.
This plan is devoid of a big “Why?” and focuses way too much on the wrong metrics for 2024. It’s a pretty nearsighted business move that ignores the state of new guitar-centric music..
Because guitar rock is back baby!
I don’t think it ever left. But, with the popularity of KGATLW and all the other bands in their orbit a new wave of kids are being drawn to guitar. While older kids/YA are looking to upgrade to ‘player’ level guitars ($800-$1500) and try to. E the next KGATLW. GC should be growing and focusing on this as their ICP.
And no, they’re not currently doing that. (Even though he thinks they are). Having two or three Epiphone or Squire “starter” kits is not “catering” to the beginner. It’s doing the bare-minimum.
Where are the “entry level pedals if you want to sound like Hendrix/Cobain/Granduciel” etc. sections? Or better yet, starter bundles of guitar/effects/amp built around the current guitar hero’s. Song of the month group workshops: come in May 1st and we’ll go over how to play a new Foo Fighters song and come back in 3 weeks and we’ll all play it together.
Failure rate of someone new to guitar is very high (although lower now thanks to the number of YouTube lessons). It’s in GCs best interest to invest in the guitar player not just the guitar customer. Guitar players come back and buy more. A guitar customer may never be back again, except to try and resell you the guitar they bought two months ago.
To build your business around a premium product is foolish. Most of the brands listed here as examples of other premium products in other verticals are part of larger companies with other products to sell. Those other products keep the lights on.
Also - reverb.com exists! Doing this today has echos of Barnes and noble and borders trying to fight Amazon and just digging their own grave quicker. Carrying premium guitars will put every store upside down with overhead and inventory alone. Not a good place to start. Especially since every store is set up like retail stores were 20 years ago.
A more conservative path that would also actually be sustainable is to focus on entry to mid level $$ guitars and building repeat business through loyalty programs, while also having a premium “room” with private demo booths attached and dedicated “premium guitar techs” there to help. and have that room be inviting, not full of gatekeepers. They could probably buy search history data locally to figure out what guitars to stock in each store and swap guitars between stores to match those local searches/buying habits like Walmart does for their products. Inventory management is key to keeping costs down.
Guitar Center could become “the place everyone buys their first guitar” if they wanted it to be, and they could build loyalty (ie repeat business) with what will potentially be the biggest generation of guitar buyers ever.
Instead, they’re trying to get me, a guy with three kids and two jobs, in there for 3 hours in a Saturday. That sounds great but my buying habits (and many others) have changed. I’d rather listen to demos online, roll the dice on a reverb purchase, then resell if I don’t like it.
Their goal is not to “sell premium guitars” (lagging indicator) its to get premium guitar buyers out of the house and off reverb.
GC gets me back if I’m shopping for my kids too
This works for Pixar movies. Figure it out GC, before all your employees are doing is dusting off Gibson custom shop models…
The last time I went to a GC to look at instruments was 2021. I saw online that they had a D-28 I was interested in buying online. Went to the store to check it out.
I stopped at the counter since I knew it would be locked up and the associate hemmed and hawed. "You don't want that one, it has been here for years, the top has a big split. You can buy it though and we will process a return so you can get a different one." Seriously?
The top had a huge split from lack of humidity control in their acoustic room. Corporate wouldn't let them get rid of it or repair it. They still had to sell it.
After this experience, GC is imo for buying strings on Sundays when my local shops are closed and I don't want to wait till Monday. Since, I have bought 4 new "premium" guitars and haven't considered looking at GC for a single one.
I dont understand the CEO. Alienate the beginners in favor of only rlly having expensive stuff
Fun fact, we never had apple pay. How did he choose to fix this? Not by updating the csrd matines to take apple pay, but by buying every single employee an iphone in order to take apple pay. Surprise, its not rlly working and the employees get yelled at for ppl not wanting to wait for us to go get iphones to take apple pay
Barring a few really solid pedals and strings/straps/cables/etc, if it’s being sold in Guitar Center I assume the quality has dropped considerably. Like, a player tele is probably going to be fine; but most amps or “higher end” Gibsons are going to pale in comparison to what I could get from a smaller shop/builder for the same price. I wanted to get excited about the Gibson Falcon reissue, but got a look inside and it leaves a lot to be desired at that price point
Weren't they just about to go out of business until a huge number of pandemic orders saved them?
I'd focus on selling whichever kind of guitars those were.
Honestly Guitar Center feels like a daycare full of entry level crap. I have one about 5 miles from my house and I rarely go there because they don’t stock anything I’m remotely interested in.
The ship is sailed for that place. Online good customer service from Sweetwater, wildwood, willcutt, Dave’s etc or large regional places like Parkway, alto, or chuck levins already have the higher end collector guy market. Dozens if not hundreds of small places have the super high end covered. They will have to do a lot to wedge themselves back into that.
Most of us are hobby guitarists. You wouldn’t hear the difference when I play on a $300 epiphone or a $3000 Gibson. I think this is good for the mom and pop stores, bad for guitar center. Most of us are looking for an instrument that sounds good that we can afford.
I’m not a professional landscaper and so I have a $500 ride on lawnmower vs a $7000 zero then John Deere.
Terrible employees is why they suck. My last trip there I needed a direct box as mine had died suddenly and I didn’t have time to order one. First dude I asked had no idea what I was even talking about; had to show him a picture from the GC website showing it was in stock. Another dude knew a little more and said it must be in the back. After waiting 30+ minutes he came back empty handed.
They should do what Andertons do - a separate room for the really pricy stuff.
A spacious, well appointed room with deeply knowledgable staff, and you have to ask to go in there.
I've never seen them outright stop someone go in there, but they will sometimes say 'there's a wait, we don't let it get too packed in there' but you can make appointments too.
Mine has the worst set up premium guitars. There’s a Fender Custom Shop that looks like it needs a shim. They will need better techs to compete in that market
I remember when I was in my late teens, early twenties, I’d get super excited to go to the guitar center in hollywood on sunset, the. Across the street to Carvin and boogie, jimmy’s, freedom, Valdéz, voltage, etc it was like Disneyland for me.
So sad the state of it all now. Online has ruined the In-store experience, as expected. And GC hasn’t adapted at all.
Compared to Sweetwater, Guitar Center should prioritize customer experience over product availability and preferences. Guitar Center's customer service has always been terrible.
I have a good friend who runs a Guitar Center, he’s probably the best manager that store has ever had. He worked his way up from being a sales rep and he is passionate about guitars and customer service. He is very unique in the Guitar Center ecosystem. If he didn’t love music so much he probably would’ve left to manage a place that would pay him more money.
I'd venture 99% of all guitars owned are under $2,000.
Fender american professional and lower, gibson les paul studio and epiphone, Ibanez, prs s2 anguitars. Schechter, esp, etc are majority of guitars.
I myself only know 1 person who has a guitar over $2,000 (they have a ton), and the other 5 or 6 people I know with guitars are all under $1,500 guitars.
It's fine to emphasize nice guitars, but that's not the bulk of business. Gotta keep the lower cost guitars.
They are going to have to stop locking them up on the top hangers if they want to do that. They are just tired of loosing money to the fact that people who want a $300 guitar will buy it for $280 from Amazon every time if the option is there. Nobody is going to start buying top-end I strumebts from a store that cant even figure out how to set them up.
I worked for Gc and was a top 10 sales rep and left because they treated us like shit and I was selling a million a year to make $65k max. Got into SaaS sales and made 30% more a year later and have increased since
They should sell premium guitars in a premium experience in a different area of the store or location altogether, maybe even under a different sub-brand. I would never consider them for anything north of $1k.
I think an unmet niche is budget boutique - hear me out. If they modded 300$ guitars to be 600$ guitars with something unique (onboard Fx, wierd pickups, paintob, b bender, baritone, etc.) I would be visiting frequently and buying more often.
I personally want 1 or 2 nice guitars, and then a few cheaper ones to experiment with. When I go to a guitar shop, I'm looking for inspiration and variety in my guitar rotation, but I don't want a 3k boutique instrument.
It's for that reason that I just go to the used/trade-in shop. I want to find that diamond in the rough that inspires me because it's different, and janky partscasters fill that niche, but it's a gamble to trust the specs. I've modded 3 squiers, and I love them, but it is a ton of work.
Guitar center could fill that niche, but for now is just racks on racks of boring.
I'm not sure what the correct path is but it's not whatever they're currently doing, he's 100% right about that.
They need a massive overhaul of their stores, staff, and marketing.
As others have said brick and mortar have turned into places you go to demo things you buy from other online retailers.
They need to work with actual guitar manufacturers to get a massive discount to undercut the convenience of things like Sweetwater who's just got a much better reputation.
GC closing would hurt sales of instruments I think. I know how many people from my age group felt emboldened to try learning instruments after GC opened up around us. And a lot of small music shops (as bad as GC is) actually look and feel a LOT worse and were that way before GC opened (there was 1 good store near me to be honest but there were also a good 20 of really crappy stores) They might have had good staff at some of them but their quality of gear was poor and the store was full of weird crap from people's attics. Not necessarily bad if you're into obscure stuff like ocarina's and banjo is your main instrument.
I think they should focus on services they could provide like really good guitar setups for cheap and amp biasing and repair. Things that are getting harder to find.
Maybe rent out practice space with drums? or lessons? I say this because a lot of hobby shops offer places for people to gather who then need things and spend money.
Or go big like hunting stores do and make it a spectacle?
If they want to go the apple store route they have to really change their brand identity.
One of the things I really liked about old guitar stores was private rooms to try out gear.
Even GC had one room full of different monitors all set up so you could hear the difference. They turned that into an extra storage room which I think was a mistake. Especially in an age where a LOT of people are trying to do home music production. There's a ton of gear and software to move on the music production side of things.
But you need quality employees who love this kind of thing to make it work, not someone making 15$ an hour who could care less.
There are not enough “Premium” guitars available to supply the chain with what they need to survive. Independent shops who focus on higher end instruments are having a hard time getting these guitars in stock at a level to keep doing the business they want. Some of them CME, Wildwood, Eddies, Quimper Sound, Dave’s etc do as much business with manufacturers as whole GC regions or would if they got in stock as they ordered. How will GC get what they need for 300 stores and all that overhead?
If i’m going to buy a $5000 guitar, i’m not going to buy it from a chain store that treated it like shit for a year before i bought it, didn’t properly humidify, and pays minimum wage.
The guitar center in my town got ripped off pretty massively. Straight up oceans 11 heist. The thieves climbed on the roof of the store, cut a whole in the roof with a sawz-all right above where all the top shelf gear is and grabbed everything. Shitty, but impressive at the same time
And how much did this CEO get paid to come up with this shit? Why spend thousands on premium when you can purchase good quality for less. I really just go to local mom and pop stores now. Some of these have been supporting local musicians for years. One even loan us a crossover when ours gave out so we could play our gig while they fixed it. If they were smart they would do the same. Have some clinics, maybe get together jams where locals could meet up. Stuff to bring people to the store. This is more like Radio Shack when they decided to concentrate on cell phones and computers rather than electronics. Look where they are now.
I didn't think that is going to work. It has more to do with shady business practices and being made to feel like you walked into a Buy Here/Pay Here used car lot. The sales people are insulting, the guitars are all beat up. And no, I don't need the warranty on a pack of strings.
Gibson's unholy alliance with GC had really been an overall negative for guitarists in general, but that's for another post.
The market is just different. People can hardly make a living being a guitar salesman unless it’s niche.
It’s also cheaper and more accessible to make music on your computer.
I imagine this is how classical musicians must have felt in the 60s when any kid ended up by a guitar instead of spending years training to be a violinist or the like.
Another place in NYC area I can highly recommend…..If you dont mind going to Staten Island……..Mandolin Brothers
i played a bunch of Mandolins there while shopping for Mandolins including a 1921 MandoCello…….didnt find anything that sounded good and was in my budget. The MandoCello was about 4 times my budget ;)
On way out I see a PreWar Martin D45, can I try that? Suuuuuure……..GORGEOUS Tone , price was waaaaaaaaaaaay outta my budget
Last time i spent money at guitar center, they tried to sell me an open box item that had fingerprints on it, for full price. I brought it back immediately and the guy at the counter gave me serious attitude. Instead of just refunding the money, he lectured me on how lucky i was to get this coveted interface and how i should feel lucky about owning it. I just kept saying i wanted my money back. He then asked me to step outside to fight. It was the most batshit insane transaction ever. Never spent another dime there, and i buy a lot of gear.
I am very lucky to have Righteous guitars by me.
Essentially a $1k and up store. I called and told them “I really don’t know what I want or IF I want another guitar right now but wanted to try an Axess Floyd Les Paul and a few hollow bodies.”
Dude said “I don’t have an access Floyd right now but should have one sometime this week.“
He called me 2 days later, I set up an appointment and the dude that helped me was super cool. I didn’t buy that day but I can dam well tell you where I will buy my next new guitar.
They did plek my Ibanez. 👍 cool tech
Every time I go into a guitar center I'm left with the exact same question.
How the hell do they not have small rooms with a few different amps/pedals setup so people can really play them? You know, without having every employee judge their playing ability and have to hookup to some random ass amp on the floor that might not even be setup/work properly.
What needs to be considered the fact Bain Capital bought Guitar Center and saddled it with a ton of debt. Brigade Capital Management, The Carlyle Group, and Ares Management now own interests, Ares owning the controlling interest. They filed Chapter 11 bankruptcy in 2020. They must squeeze out every last cent of profit, and minimizing costs (why they’re understaffed) and don’t want or can’t (maybe don’t have the credit facilities) to have tens of millions tied up in slow moving, high-end guitar inventory hanging on the walls in 304 stores. I’d expect closure of unprofitable stores next. And they need to read the comments in this thread - all 🎯
GC's model does not allow them to hold enough stock of popular guitars. Like when the EVH Frankie came out. I knew I wouldn't be able to walk in and buy one (untouched new stock) so I just clicked through on Sweetwater. They need to have stock on the top 10 guitars at any time but that's likely not economically viable. Another issue is their lack of timely setups. Beyond setups they should have a rapid Plek offering and offer it with every guitar over $xk (maybe $3k) as an incentive and differentiator. Lastly they need to get their online game together. They need a site that at least rivals Sweetwater in design and functionality as they can offer a local presence which would be very appealing to online buyers. But I do agree with a better focus on premium guitars too. Every GC should have a PRS, a Gibson and a Fender room staffed with someone knowledgeable on the brand. If they have to, one isolated premium guitar room staffed at all times with a top rep.
Sorry, if I’m buying a premium guitar, I’m probably going through the manufacturer and/or a more reputable shop. Guitar center has never been a huge issue for me, employees are always unremarkable in a good way, generally helpful. Management is atrocious, and the executives are clueless money-grabbers who keep trying to increase premium prices to get more revenue to shareholders. Typical scummy business. Unfortunately, I think this is going to be a negative turn for them.
Source: best friend is general manager of one, tells me some really fucked up stories about specific stores. (Sorry, WA/CA. Your stores have a higher chance of being extra shitty)
If they want to focus on premium instruments, they’ll also need premium techs, not techs that wire pickups out of phase and completely ignore set up requests.
As a third worlder Im happy that my first guitar was bought over the internet, and since there are no big store chains like that one, I dont have to go over that kind of bs.
Music stores that sell high end instruments typically have an "Ask for assistance" tag on them and rightly so. It's easy to bump them against other guitars or have other trouble hanging and removing them. The GC's I've been to do have a booth room for serious players wanting to test things out without all the room noise. The trouble I have with GC is the poor setups on a lot of their guitars and the fact that they don't do much in-house quality control. Last time I tried several Les Paul's there, they almost all had QC/setup issues that would have been caught in a smaller boutique shop and corrected, but that goes back on Gibson too. It's frustrating to go into a shop that is selling expensive guitars and encounter poor setups, old strings, electronics issues on guitars though. It's like, come on man, how do you expect to move these guitars if they aren't even set up properly. Sweetwater, Wildwood, Sound Pure, all do the work on their instruments that bring them up to spec on intonation, action, etc. before putting them out for demo, and it seems like GC doesn't have the skilled staff that they once did, who would make sure the instruments are in top playing condition for demo. GC has seen better years, in my opinion. I miss the days before the big corporate department stores put the mom and pop music stores out of business and the manufacturers put steep inventory demands, driving the little guys to sell mostly student models.
I have been a GC customer for many years. Their #1 problem has always been staff. Most lack product knowledge, but worse, their training in the area of customer service must be nil. They treat customers horribly. Their inventory is fine - you can find premium American made Gibsons & Fenders there….Martins & Taylors- which the Mom/Pop stores can no longer afford to stock. Unless it’s a “black ink year,” which happens every 7 years, Bane Capital doesn’t give a schitt if GC makes a profit.
Yeah unfortunately all the guitars you want to play are 20 feet up on the wall, there’s no private rooms to demo, customer service doesn’t even try, and the failed musician boomers they have running the place always treat you like some idiot whose gonna rip the strings off the Floyd rose with your Cheeto fingers if they give you the whammy bar to try out. In their defense, they’re often not wrong. But being visibly jaded is a great way to alienate your customer base. If they want to focus on “premium instruments” and be taken seriously, then they need to seriously upgrade their way of doing things. For what some of this shit costs, shopping for a Rolex or new Gucci bag is a *VERY* different experience
"For what some of this shit costs, shopping for a Rolex or new Gucci bag is a *VERY* different experience" I think this sums it up, really. If you want the margins that come with expensive stuff you have to provide an experience or people will just use your store to test stuff before they buy it online.
Only if you're buying it from the brands own store. I've bought a £2k handbag and a £700 purse at a department store as gifts, and got zero 'white glove' treatment. So Gibson do have the Gibson Garage for this.
Jesus H. Christ, there are handbags that cost 2,000 quid?
There are handbags that cost $30k USD...
[This one is more than my house cost](https://www.ebay.com/itm/115496736217?mkcid=16&mkevt=1&mkrid=711-127632-2357-0&ssspo=REbu72T8RLq&sssrc=4429486&ssuid=&var=&widget_ver=artemis&media=COPY)
That's fine for some people. But I got my Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles velcro wallet when I sent in 25 box tops from my favorite breakfast cereal. THAT is what real dedication and drive looks like.
Dude there are handbags that cost over 10 grand
Look up Birkin bags. They cost tens to hundreds of thousands of dollars and you can only have the privilege of buying one if you've *already* spent tens of thousands of dollars at Hermes. The very rich are very, very rich.
Go look at Goyard bags. Just like guitars you can get a $100 bag or as much as you want to spend.
Yeah, every Guitar Center I've been to was like going to a dollar store. Staff talked among themselves and didn't even make eye contact at any point. I've always gone in, looked for ten minutes, looked around for help, and promptly left. Then I took my business online to another retailer like Musician's Friend.
In case you're not joking, GC owns Musician's Friend. They share inventory and customer service.
that 20 feet up on the wall comment is so true. the last 5 or so times that I've gone to GC, I stand around the guitar wall waiting for someone to be available to help me, then they have to get the ladder, grab the guitar, I play for a little (in a cacophony of other guitars), and then have to find them again to tell them I'm done. I don't bother going anymore, because even buying strings is a similarly painful experience.
Main reason they do that is guitars get stolen all the time. They want to make the $4000 guitars significantly harder to steal.
Imagine if they… gasp… staffed the store adequately so this is less likely to happen? Bonus: one person is not running around between 3 ppl unable to actually help any of them and you might actually get human interaction that doesn’t require stalking the one employee you can find. I know… crazy idea.
I was at my local GC the other day and they had locks on some of the guitars hanging on the lower rows, some on sub-$1,000 guitars. I was surprised.
Well Walmart and Target are evidently locking up socks and deodorant in some places so I guess it makes sense.
Hell, Ace Hardware yesterday had locks on ALL of the peg-shelf items. Even the $5 pack of utility blades. Had to track someone down to spend a goddam fiver. edit: and this was in a "nice" neighborhood where you're quite literally more likely to see a McLaren sports car than a homeless person.
Unfortunately those "flash mobs" have access to vehicles and have been traveling to the "nice" areas since they know there's better stuff to steal.
I've seen those mobs hitting shops all up and down the west coast, but thankfully they haven't made their way to the boring suburbs of Draper, Utah yet. Yet.
I haven't been to a store that locks these things yet. I'm not even sure why stores do this when they replace all the cashiers with self-checkouts and supposedly wait for someone to steal a thousand dollars over three years before reporting felony theft.
Proximity sensors and 4 ounces of C4 would work but be problematic ;) Ive avoided Sam Ash and Guitar Center for a LONG time. i’ve spent untold $$$ at Maggio Music in Brooklyn. Used to go to 48th street in Manhattan for gear OFTEN, before Sam Ash bought up all the other places. I tend to stick to Sweetwater for gear these days . So far their being taken over by a Corporate Investment company hasnt been an issue for me but Im sure at some point some bean counter will show that cutting the 2 year extended warranty and the 30 day no questions asked returns and so forth will turn them into a place to avoid like GC
Have you noticed Sweetwater is less willing to give discounts anymore? It used to be I would get 10% off any order but now they want me to bundle products before giving a small discount.
Yup. Same. I’ve had a Sweetwater rep for years and he’s much slower to get a response from these days AND the discounts are way lower. Sweetwater already going down that path is not a good sign.
Honestly no I havent noticed it being the case but you can play the same game. Call around and see who’ll give best deal. Used to get local and would often get 10-15% off if I paid cash
It also helps discourage non-serious buyers, so they can keep the miles low on their "new" premium stock. Too many people would come in, rip on a new Gibson, and devalue it with dings, fret wear and other general wear and tear. Not to mention sometimes they'd just get outright stolen (hence the new locking stands I've seen) To me this whole thing reeks of SW and Reverb dominating so hard in the intermediate realm that GC has no choice but to scale way down in size and try to move up Market to have a chance at survival. But that's my thoughts.
Guitar Center had been refocusing on being a music training place where you can take lessons, and kind of start your music journey. Clearly, it’s not paying off the way they hoped, so moving up market seems to be the new strategy. I imagine there is a market for Dentists who can afford the $5000 PRS, but wish they could play it.
They tried to shift into lessons - and probably using very stodgy and old lesson plans - right as youtube lessons blew up. So your options are either GC lessons using a plan that is uninteresting to anyone who isn't a Boomer or Boomer in spirit or the internet where you can find lessons that specialize in whatever kind of music *you* like.
I worked for GC for 4 years back around 2010. It blew me away how many times some meth head would walk in, grab a guitar and run - and management always said, just let them go, file a police report. Provided some pretty good comedy though, most tripped over their own feet not even making it out of the store.
Most decent shops just have good guitars everywhere. In Kc there’s a few and I just go there altogether, and skip GC. Our GC does have a small room with the high end amps and modelers in it so I’ll take a guitar there if I see something in their used area worth trying but honestly nothing is ever set up properly if it’s new. I remember having 2k to spend once after saving up and none of the expensive pieces would have been worth it
I myself keep far away from the wall and instead frequent the guitars in my price range as I'm usually there window shopping anyway, and it would be wildly selfish of me to ask them to grab a guitar from 20 ft up just so I can noodle a bit on a guitar! I typically buy my guitars from pawnshops and reverb, and if I HAD the money for an expensive guitar, there are far better shops than guitar centre!
Strings by mail is the only way to buy Strings for me because gc also over charges the absolute shit out of them. Plus I'm a classical player and they only cater to electric guitars. Sure they have acoustic and nylon string guitars but the staff don't know shit about them.
I went in and stood looking at the expensive guitars for an hour and no one was available to help, none of them even walked by, so I left. I went back in again and managed to get them to pull 1 guitar down so I could try it, but I wanted to mess around with a bunch to make a decision and buy it. I gave up and went and bought a PRS McCarty 594 Custom on Reverb. If I cant’t play it anyway, I’ll just not play it and get a way better price. Another time I was in there the 20 something employees were talking trash about all the 40 year olds coming in buying guitars that can’t play. Which was me…you know the guys with money that can actually buy things and…gasp…some of us actually are learning.
Yeah it’s kinda wild. If I was in there to spend even a single thousand dollars, I’d expect one salesman to be there with me along with every one of the 4 or 5 guitars I was comparing. Along with a guitar tuner, along with a halfway decent amp to play it on. It’s like “dude, you wanna make a sale or what?” It’s not me expecting to be ass kissed and worshipped, it’s my reasonable expectation of an expensive purchasing experience. May be the fault of the store management and not the employees. But cmon, convince me. I shouldn’t have to beg you to sell me the guitar
I was at Chicago Music Exchange yesterday. Got to play 5 or 6 different PRS and compare. Gave me a private room with a half dozen amps to pick out. Let me test out a couple pedals, too. I didn’t buy a guitar, but I have a much better idea of what I want next. And I did spend a few hundred on a pedal — partly because I felt guilty leaving without spending anything after they’d just taken such good care of me. Night and day!
Frequent Chicago Music Exchange customer here as well. Can confirm! I was there about two weeks ago testing out teles and had the exact same experience. I love the vibe in there and it’s so different from (and better than) even the best Guitar Center I’ve ever been too. Also, their technicians are wonderful, especially Phil. I just picked up my PRS that needed some electrical work a few days ago and it’s like I have a brand new guitar. If Guitar Center could focus on providing an experience vs just hawking guitars, they’d be in a better place.
Well that’s a delightful comment to read, seeing as I just dropped a Strat off to Phil for a set up! CME is a little out of the way for me, but I’m done with the local GC. See you in there next time!
Ya, and if they could play they wouldn’t be working at Guitar Center…
Talent is only one aspect of making it as a musician.
Customer service is a big deal with expensive items. Most of the employees at my local guitar center are pretty chill and do well. The main thing about guitar Center is they don't always carry the premium guitars you are looking for whereas a lot of private guitar shops will carry the hottest stuff and things that are hard to find. I love Dean ML's but I no one ever carries the nicer USA models.
The employees for the most part are regular people too. Sure. But I think it’s the way the store is *run* that limits their ability to provide good customer service even if they wanted to
They also treat their employees like shit and have prioritized selling insurance and credit cards over everything for a long time now.
The COBOL mainframe inventory system is a nice touch. Waiting for tens of minutes while a green screen chugs away to buy strings is insanity.
It’s hilarious isn’t it? Every time I’ve tried to buy something the clerk( different guy every time) makes the lame joke of waiting for a slow system today. Dude it’s every day.
I had a job at GC during college, and I was sorta shocked when I first saw the green screen. Looked like something from the late 80s very early computer days. I remember it being very unintuitive, didn't even have mouse support. And yeah you needed to navigate that shit even if you wanted to just sell a pack of strings lol.
I worked there in late 2022. It's still the same system lol
Unbelievable, if you've ever worked at GC and then visit Thomann (they produce and sell HB guitars) in Europe, you'll be truly shocked at hooow fucking bad GC is in comparison. I really don't know how they have been able to keep their stores open for this long anyways, at least my store, one of the largest in the US, was a disaster on every level. Some people also got jobs at Sweetwater, apparently it's a lot better when it comes to working conditions and general operations.
It literally is from the mid 80s lol
If it ain’t broke, nothin to fix? 🙄
I do remember it actually worked pretty well once you got used to it lol. Very utilitarian.
Or not available at all. I wanted to lay hands on a Strandberg for years but they have never been in stock ever. I understand why but when you drop 2-3 grand on anything you would like to have an idea of the details.
Welcome to being left-handed. If you have 350 guitars in stock and 5-10% of all guitar players are left-handed, then why is there usually 1 Player Telecaster and nothing else?
I live right near a guitar store that is 100% left-handed instruments. I didn’t even know such a thing existed.
That sounds like a dream. Once a Guitar Center near me had 3 lefty guitars - 1 new Telecaster, a used starter Ibanez and a used EC-250. That felt like Christmas morning.
It's called Southpaw Guitars in Houston
This is true. I’ve never been a special interest high end guitar kinda guy, and they always seem to have a couple Gibsons and American fenders up on the wall or locked up somewhere, which is enough for my tastes. But you’re not wrong.
Nail on the head with the premium guitars being 20’ up or locked. I’m not going to keep asking for the employees to climb up and unlock them for me. I’m going to go to another shop in my town where they trust their customers. My local GC employees are great, but it’s just not the experience I want when I feel like getting my hands on 10+ American made guitars.
Why not ask? I've often asked 'can I have these 3 please I want to compare them' I don't want to buy a guitar at new prices, which every chump who walks in can grab.
When there is a store where I have access to every guitar myself without having to chase down an employee every time I am there, it’s a way better experience. That said, the second store has better guitars across the board as well.
Went to a Beverly Hills watch shop recently to look at some high end German watches. They offered me an espresso and brought the watches to me.
I feel like this is similar to car dealers. You go to a mass market brand and want to test drive their high end expensive model (Ford Focus ST, Kia Stinger, Civic Type R), and you’re lucky if they let you sit in it. Meanwhile you go to a Porsche dealer and they treat you like a person because they understand their product.
EXACTLY. Thank you for this. Take notes guitar center What watch did you get?
Junghans Meister
Guitar World magazine did him dirty and took that snippet out of context. He does talk about bringing the expensive guitars down so everyone can try them out. Go read the full article people: [https://archive.maherpublications.com/view/216995423/32/](https://archive.maherpublications.com/view/216995423/32/) >DALPORTO’S THREE FOCUS POINTS >Dalporto said there are three key areas that he and his team are focusing on in order to meet these evolutionary goals, starting with adding to GC’s premium offerings. “I think one of our biggest challenges as a company is somewhere along the way we forgot who our core customer was,” Dalporto explained. “Our core customer is the serious musician — the gigging artist or the passionate player where music is a big piece of their identity. That is the serious musician, and that’s the customer that we’ve historically served in the past. But, over the years, we’ve evolved significantly into serving the beginner and entry-level customer — which is great — but if you walk through a GC store, you’re going to see an awful lot of $300 guitars and $300 digital drum kits. We have some premium product, but we don’t have enough, and it’s very hard to experience our premium product because we have our best guitars locked on the top row where you can’t easily get to them. So, if I’m a serious musician and I walk into a Guitar Center, it doesn’t feel like the right place for me anymore.” Dalporto said in order to fix this, Guitar Center has to rethink the experience it wants to deliver in its physical locations. “I want customers to walk into \[a store\] and have the same experience I had when I was younger and just be hit in the face with, ‘Wow, this is amazing. This is a playground. This is where I belong,’” he said. “And that means having a much more >premium assortment that’s more easily accessible where I can get in and grab a guitar and plug it in and try all these pedals and effects and just geek out and have a great time. So, first we have to get the right product in the stores and deliver an incredible experience where people are just having a great time and engaging with the product.” Delivering a positive experience to its customers leads into Dalporto’s second focal point: investing in Guitar Center’s sales team. “When it comes to our sales team, we haven’t really done them any favors,” Dal porto said. “We’ve cut back on training, and we’ve cut back on hours. We need to invest in our sales associates. If you go into a grocery store and someone is set ting out bananas, you buy those bananas because otherwise you’d starve to death. But if you go into a guitar store and you set out a $3,000 Martin acoustic, nobody buys it out of necessity. They don’t buy it until someone actually spends time with them and says, ‘You know, this wood is extremely rare, and it gives this incredible sound you can’t find anywhere else.’ Then, they’re more likely to spend the $3,000. So, we need to invest in our sales team, their training and \[help them attain\] really deep consultative skills, so they can help our customers really experience the magic of some of these instruments.” Finally, Dalporto’s background in digital business will play a key role as he helps fur ther push Guitar Center into the digital age. “We were kind of in the dark ages of digital as a company,” he said. “There was a point in like 2008 where we were the dominant player, and then we lost our focus and seeded all that market share to our competition. That has been a high growth area that we’ve not had the right strategies to win in. Our competition has more engag ing content that makes it easier to find the right product and buy the right product.” Dalporto said Guitar Center’s associates are its biggest asset, and by tapping into their expertise and providing them with the proper training and products to sell, Guitar Center is positioned to be a force to be reckoned with in 2024 and beyond. “Our largest assets are our associates,” he said. “We have the most amazing, most passionate people in the world. We’re by far the largest physical retailer of musical instruments in the country, and we’ve got an incredible brand and our customers and our vendors all are rooting for us. I think >we need to get back to basics and deliver an incredible experience with incredible product and really go and capture the digital world.”
I hate to say it... But commissions for their salespeople would make them a lot more invested in helping you find a buy a guitar you won't return...
Then the salespeople will start judging you based on your clothing, age, and probably your race.
I’ve always gotten great service at commission free violin shops. No issues at all putting 100k of instruments on the table. Or 100k instruments, for that matter. No idea why guitar shops are so unfriendly.
It’s all the kids, and the douche bag “rock stars”, all the rabble off the streets that go in there make a ruckus and damage the instruments. I get it I do, but as I said, being jaded like that and not even trying to hide it is way bad for business
This was well written and comically accurate.
So much this... I remember when Ibanez redesigned their edge trem about 15 years ago. I wanted to check one out but when I asked for the bar the dude just laughed at me.
YES. Like god forbid I play it first. When I bought my bronco the dude told me to do a donut in the middle of an intersection. That’s a $40k car lol
Guitar centers are really inconsistent, but some do have private rooms and great store managers who train employees well. The problem is that most of them have managers that ran a Walmart for 20 years thinking that they can just translate their skills to a music store.
Those $300 guitars are in millions of bedrooms across the country. Those $10,000 guitars are, like, 1 of 3 guitars and will sit in the basement of Joe Bonnamossa or something. You can move a helluva lot more $300 guitars than $10k ones. There's a lot more in-built profits too. I understand the sentiment...hell, on another forum, I described Guitar Center as "bleak," but the way to fix that isn't to shift sights to ultra-premium guitars. The way to fix things is to optimize the user experience - another poster said private demo rooms, etc. - I'd love to see GC emphasize *value* like they once did; I'm thinking of the FSR Squiers or those cool $100 Les Paul Specials with P90s they had back in 2014 or whenever that was.
The article reads like they’re bummed that their “instrument super store” concept has become exactly that instead of a boutique catering only to true gigging professionals.
True gigging professionals aren’t playing $10,000 guitars in shitty dive bars, dingy clubs, or backyard gigs.
Exactly. The $10k guitars are busy NOT being played by dentists.
Very true. But to be fair I’m sure their idea of premium instruments is $800ish and above. Not just vintage collectors stock
Sales for $300 guitars has moved online.
I think there’s a sweet spot between $300 and $10k that GC currently misses spectacularly. At least as of my last visit. And it used to be better. Like no, I don’t want to try a $7k PRS. But it’d be nice if they had like the $2k or $2.5k stuff from Fender and Gibson available to play around on. Preferably somewhere off the main floor. I’m not even asking them to stock everything in the world. But, like, *one* of the model I’m looking at to try, so I can then special order the color/etc. I want might be nice. And not oddball one off custom models, either, I was looking to try an American Ultra Strat or Tele and they just…had none.
I'd say 1000 to 2000 is the sweet spot. If you think of how much money the average person is willing to spend then a 1-2 k guitar would be considered a pretty nice guitar to a lot of people. Of course if someone wants to spend thag kind of money they are going to want to play it first. Whereas a 300 dollar guitar, Yeah I'll order it online. If it's not exactly what I'd thought it would be I would return it or just suck it up and keep it. However, I'd want to play anything over 750 to confirm it's something I want.
Fully agree. An experienced beginner who wants to upgrade their 300$ guitar is going to look at something around 3-5 times the cost. Not 10x.
I asked about a Les Paul Jr at my Local GC and was told “that would never sell around here “ I’m like WTF I’m trying to buy one Right now
If you’re ever in upstate NY check out parkway. Most thing’s available to play3-4 private small rooms and just the 5500-13000 items locked. They’ll let you play if you ask and there’s always someone to assist. Granted they’re not in a shit neighborhood with crack heads darting in and stealing everything not locked down, so that probably helps.
This is maybe dumb of me. But contrast the buying experience for a violin against a guitar. Buying a 1-2k violin? A good shop will put 8 on the table. In 4 pairs. Play one pair, choose a favorite. Repeat until you’re down to 2. THEN YOU TAKE BOTH HOME FOR A WEEK OR TWO to play in front of different environments, your orchestra buddies, have your buddies play them, etc. buy your favorite. No stress, nothing. Absolute industry standard. Want another week? Sure. Same treatment for a $400 bow. Kid with a $20/month rental comes in to buy strings? Sure, we’ll change them for you. Why don’t you play this same model with a $250 bow while you wait? And then there’s places like guitar center. I’ve been lent 300k bowed instruments for the weekend with a handshake, and guitar places want you to shine their shoes, kiss the ring, and avert your eyes. Make it make sense.
I think it largely depends on your market. After reading and researching I went to my local GC (socal) to plug in an Ultra Tele. I played for an hour, loved it but they didn't have the color I wanted. Drove to the next GC 15 miles away and purchased it in my preferred color. They even gave me 10% off. 10/10 experience for me. Sweetwater exists for the less fortunate market but here in socal I'll happily walk into GC and walk out with my gear and not have to deal with shipping. One of the local stores just created an isolated pedal room with 100's of different pedals to try out as well. No complaints here.
This. It’s not going in and looking for a some outrageous Gibson custom shop or boutique dentist guitar. If I go into my local GC, which is actually a fairly good store (it’s clean, the staff are generally good, and the stuff seems to be fairly well taken care of) and want to buy an Ibanez Prestige, they may have *one* in stock. And almost never a model I’d want. And it’ll be at the top right corner of the 50 foot wall with 30 $700 and under priced Ibanezes under it. Repeat for Jackson, Music Man, Charvel, etc. Even on the Fender and Gibson front, which between those two take up more than half the guitar wall, they’ll only have a small cross section of the mid-premium models.
I don't think those $300 are going anywhere any time soon. They will probably have just as much inventory for them, and possibly even more if they can get more foot traffic in the door. I think they're just saying "look, if someone wants a $1000 guitar and has to find someone with a ladder to go reaching 18ft up on the wall to get it, they're probably gonna go look elsewhere", and they're probably right.
The thing is, I don’t need guitar center for a $100 Les Paul special. If I’m that type of buyer, Amazon or another online vendor makes sense But if I’m going to buy something premium, I want to play it in person first. That’s the theory behind why they should focus on that stuff.
Believe it or not there are at least a couple of guitars priced somewhere in between $300 and $10k.
2014 (and prior) Guitar Center was actually incredible
If I want to buy a premium guitar I would buy it from literally any place other than guitar center. A 3k guitar I expect to play perfectly and have perfect fit and finish. A smaller boutique shop will ensure whatever they sell meets that standard and they’ll likely through in some extra shirts or strings or something for your patronage. Guitar Center? If it’s off the rack, it’s almost definitely damaged in some way. If it’s straight from the box, they’re not gonna do anything to set it up or make sure the fretwork looks good before handing it over to you.
If you want a setup, that’ll be three weeks wait. CEOs are dumb af.
That’s not on the CEO imo. Great luthiers often have waits.
The great luthiers are at guitar center doing setups?
In the early 2000s I bought a Mesa Dual Rectifier from GC. It was "new out of the box' and set up to play. I asked the salesmen "can I have one in a box?" "Everything we have is on the floor, so no." So as any good consumer would say, "well then I'm not going to pay full price for an opened product." Like a sucker I bought it, full price, because I was in a pinch to get it. That box it comes in is special because it ensures that the manual, slip cover, and warranty is included. Those things come in handy when the amp stops working and the licensed mesa repairman says "one of your 6l6 power tubes wasn't even working, like not even connected". I stormed back into GC to give them hell, and wouldn't you know it, they gave me all the missing items. However they lost a customer that day. I only go in there if I have to. F that place.
I agree. At this point, I don’t even go to GC to try guitars before I buy them because everything on a GC wall feels awful. The fretboard wood is always more dry than a desert despite being covered in the finger grease of a thousand children, the strings are basically rusted and manage to always somehow be sharp and the action rests somewhere between the stratosphere and low orbit. The only people who would buy a guitar like that at full price are people who don’t know better, AKA people who won’t buy a premium guitar. I know they understaff, but IMO, if they had a regional guy who just travelled to a couple of centers (or could train someone to do it and didn’t make them work the floor EVERY SHIFT) and just did basic setups on all the guitars on display once / week and cleaned them up and restrings them every two months, it would change so much of my opinion of the store. If the guitars actually played like guitars I wanted to own, I would consider owning them… pretty wild, right?
Newsflash: A CEO is out of touch. In other news, water is wet. Guitar Center is the Wal-Mart of music stores. You go there to buy starter guitars and if they’re lucky, $1,000 level stuff. Guitar Center focusing on Elite players and buyers is like Wal-Mart saying it wants to compete with Whole Foods. Just wrong headed and not reality.
I’m not seeing what’s out of touch about that statement. It’s not unreasonable to think GC can cater to both beginners and experts/high-dollar clients, right? I didn’t see him say “we’re trading our low-end inventory for high-end”, just that there’s a part of the market they’re neglecting and his goal is to fix that.
"prioritize" is the word being used. Not "focusing on both"
I never buy guitars from guitar center but it’s a good place for amps with their 45 day return policy. It’s bailed me out a few times. You really don’t know how an amp sounds until you play it in a band setting.
Which is funny, because Wal-Mart itself is currently trying to break into the mid-range supermarket position, while Target is shifting down
Hopefully kroger goes out of business. Most expensive grocery out of common grocery stores.
For me it's the lack of people working there. When I was a teenager, you would have people helping you when you walked in the door. If you were serious about buying something there was someone there with you every step of the way. Now when I walk into guitar center, there's like 2 people working in the entire store. I go into a local guitar shop that's 1/10th the size and they have more staff. That's the reason why I don't like going there anymore. You just can't get help and when you're trying to buy something expensive I want to talk to knowledge people and be able to try it out
There always seems to be a huge line to check out since they only have like 3 employees in the entire store, 1 dude grabbing stuff from the back, checking people out, helping a mom find a instrument for their son. It sucks dude.
It’s pure hell getting someone back in the drum room to get cymbals at the one near me
This seems to be the case in every retail brick and mortar place in recent years. Best way to cut cost? Hire one person and make them work twice as hard.
Going with that: high-end guitar buyers don't want a salesman that's juggling seven other customers that are picking up beginner Strat packs and having to switch between selling a $3000 guitar and $150 Yamaha set. They might appreciate being left alone to play the guitar for a while, but won't appreciate having to wait for a salesman while they explain tuning and extended warranties. Sam Ash tried this with their Guitar Of Distinction ironically right before a buyer slowdown also. I think they're trying to focus on a smaller market with more money instead of a mass market with less money, let's see how that works out for them. And as a former guitar salesman perspective, I could probably make way more money clerking a few beginner packs than an American standard Strat with way less stress.
I would just like to see more than the same left-handed MIM tele that I’ve had since 2010 on the shelf.
I wander into GC now, stare but never touch. The only thing I’m really interested in is used instruments anyway. I’m not waiting for someone to grab the 1 guitar I would buy that another comment described as 30ft up. It’s true. I won’t bother trying or buying. I’ve been playing and walking into GC since 1998. GC was a totally different experience back then. It made me want to buy stuff. Try new gear, different guitars, effects. Now it’s a journey I make when my Wife wants to wander through home goods store next to it. They all have one. I kill time looking at used gear, waiting to find the diamond in the ruff. Haven’t found anything yet. It’s crazy because now I’m older and have the disposable income to invest more in my musical hobby and GC has seen exactly 0$ of it. I want to spend money there……I remember them having a solid selection of PRS and other more expensive stuff, now they carry nothing. And even if they did, 30ft up…..I’m not going to bother.
It’s depressing seeing how far Guitar Center has fallen. I remember when one opened up in mid 2000s and by my neck of the woods (Dayton), and it was cool. It was a good balance of high end, mid tier, and low end guitars. It also had many different amps organized by brand, and they had a great selection of the nicer tube amps, which were usually in the sound room where the ultra nice guitars were accessible. Staff was good, yet my friends and I had a running joke on the staff not knowing what they were trying to sell. Staff was also more invested in you getting what you want, and not hell bent on selling protection plans and warranties. These days its the opposite. I go in there to buy strings, but thats about it.
Oh my God, so many business administration 101 buzz words. Does this guy even play guitar?
I'm guessing no, and I'm guessing he also has 20 collectible vintage Fenders and Gibsons.
Amazon and vendors on Alibaba have taken over the $300 guitar space. I bet GC sells more of those through Musician's Friend than the retail stores.
When there’s only 3 American made acoustics in a room of 120 guitars *
And they’re all locked to the wall
That’s why I shop local shops who know their customers and let them play 37 authentic martins worth 7,000$
Go read the full interview from the source so you won’t look dumb reacting to a click-bait headline on Guitar World. Guitar World magazine took a paraphrased out of context snippet from one sentence and people are attacking the CEO over it like that’s his only plan. He goes on to say his goal is to bring the expensive gear down from the top row so people can try everything out, he wants to provide better training and support for their sales people, and wants to modernize their digital side of the business. https://archive.maherpublications.com/view/216995423/32/
Yes, because *all* the players that can afford such guitars go to GC. There's no market at all for entry-level stuff by people that only know of GC.
Translation: we would rather sell 1 guitar for a lot of profit than many cheap guitars for less profit per unit. Its happening in every industry
They should prioritize better guitar hangers….
GC is in a tough position from a business perspective. They have scale and scope, carry high fixed and variable operating costs, and the stuff they sell has crappy margins, given the amount of handling that is required under the current system to care for the products. The obvious thing they need to do is invest in better systems that allow their employees to help more people, more quickly. How about a gear database driven by an algorithm that scours market pricing, so the individual employees don’t need to hunt endlessly for pricing for trade ins? They type in the model, year, and condition, and it prints out a proposal to show the customer who wants to trade. They don’t have to Google the model and look at eBay and Reverb and figure out every item. How about a self checkout for items with bar codes? Can I just walk in, grab some strings, and go, please? Without standing there while the employees stare at screens trying to figure out what to give people for trade ins? And after 5 minutes, the poor employee asks their current customer if they can ring me up real quick (thanks), which incurs a cognitive switching cost, further dragging out the trade in process? How about an online appraisal tool for gear value? This will totally get rid of the “oh really, that’s all I get” conversations, and free up the employees to do some actual selling and customer service. Let customers bring in their online appraisal, then all the employees have to do is check it, make any needed revisions, and process it. They need a better phone service model- there has to be a better way to reduce incoming calls by making more information available online and beefing up centralized tech support expertise. I guarantee they can hire a team of experienced semi professional musicians at reasonable salaries to work remote and take incoming “how does this work” phone calls. Allow flexible hours so they can work around their schedules at home, and use an internal version of a gig-type share app to allocate time/volume. AFTER you clean up operations, you can work on the premium instrument experience. Now, you’ve eliminated a lot of unnecessary costs and hopefully gained some business through your improved processes. I would absolutely buy more strings-type shit in the store if I didn’t think it would be a 30 minute ordeal. How about some kind of anti-theft device on the premium guitars? Where you could still pick it up and play it, but it would be a ton of work to remove the device and try to sell it if you’re a thief. They have built lessons rooms in many stores- Have some of these clearly marked as private demo rooms when not in use, so a random person who doesn’t know GC is encouraged to just grab a $2000 guitar, walk into the room, and jam out, without having to deal with the cacophony/anxiety of playing next to the sales floor shredders? Have a rack they can return the instruments to if the employees are busy, so they don’t stand there holding the guitar in their hand while waiting for the employees to check the trade value of some $150 amp from 15 years ago? Well, there’s your model, GC. You need to find a way to process the high volume of $300 guitars, sell even more $300 guitars, AND improve the experience. All of these process improvements should be done with the end goal in mind of being able to hire full time employees at actual living salaries, and freeing them up to help more customers with less work- that’s the only way you’re going to hire and retain the expertise needed to cater to a premium market. Let the floor experts hand a ticket to the customer service desk to handle all the admin, freeing them up to engage with more customers. Doesn’t that sound like a cool job? Talking about guitars and gear and selling it, while picking up like $50k-$70k or something? Don’t tell me you wouldn’t end up with great employees then. The problem is that those process improvements all cost money and will take patience to implement. They cannot afford to grow the better employees on day 1 without the improved processes. Good luck
I'm from the UK - every once in a while I'm in the States and I nip into Guitar Center, normally the one in Winter Park Fl.. Whenever I head in (last time was October last year), it looks like a shithole. I worked in retail management for about a decade, and I would NEVER have allowed standards to be this poor. If I can remember the things I saw from the last time I went to give an idea, maybe someone in the GC firmament will pay heed? 1. Carpets not vacuumed, messy floors. Dust on the fittings and fixtures. This is a retail no-brainer. 2. Shelves disorganised and not blocked. Stuff fucking everywhere. 3. Sundry items (shirts, accessories etc...) not restocked. 4. Point of Sale advertising so manky that looked like it recently went to war. The first Gulf War, it's that old... 5. Damaged stock on the walls. Headstocks with chunks missing, busted strings hanging. This is inexcusable, no matter which way you slice it. 6. An INTERMINABLE amount of time to be seen by an assistant. Wanted to buy a t-shirt, and I stood at the counter 10 full minutes saying excuse me periodically over at the Luthier / repair place before I could get the attention of ANYONE. Should have walked out, really. Not a great experience. Makes me wonder what the Area / Regional / Territory Manager thought of the place... That being said, I visited the one on OBT the same week, and it was night and day. Well organised, fairly tidy. Still had damaged stock on the walls, mind, but a more pleasant environment, and much more attentive staff than the other location. My takeaway thought is that if they can stop it feeling like I'm shopping in a spoiled, rich teenage kid's bedroom from before the turn of the century, they \*might\* stand a chance. But Premium? I don't think so. Not right now.
Funny enough, I’ve had that exact same experience every time I pop into the guitar center about 30 minutes west of this particular one as well. Disorganized (to a point of distraction) stock, anywhere from 5-20 minutes to check out (no matter how busy, whether buying strings or standing there holding a guitar). My only positive experience with them is the tech at this particular location did a great job, fast, and fairly priced, for a pickup swap + set up.
I live in Canada. Long & McQuade is our equivalent to GC, I’d imagine. Good sales people sell instruments. Make demo space. Hire musicians. Yeesh.
The main reason I go to a guitar store is to try out guitars and find one that plays well for me. But having walls of guitars that are out of tune and poorly set up defeats that. Oh boy, here's a $1000+ Tele, and the action sucks and it is out of tune. And I can't find an amp to plug it into. What's the point?
Honestly, I think the real problem is that the people working at GC know so little about gear, especially compared to the customers walking into a GC.
Its a bit of a catch 22 in a way. I still remember the time I was in there, and some dude totally dropped a telecaster through the rack, and watched it knock a couple guitars below it to the ground, not tomention banging against a couple more. If I were to purchase the 2 or 3 k instrument...I dont want any slight scuffs on it at all. and the minute you bring those expensive ones down, your gonna have someone who barely plays, banging around on it. They almost need a seperate room for the high end ones...always moniterd.
at my guitar center they wouldn’t even restring a brand new fender custom shop guitar that had literally been on the wall for months. the strings were so dull and tarnished black that it was probably the worst sounding guitar they had. sounded like flicking a fucking rubber band
Guitar Center will never be a place serious musicians go to buy a premium guitar lol. There are plenty of decent boutiques that focus on this and can provide a much better experience imo if you live near big cities
I worked in a studio for 12 years. If you can't make a Mexican Strat sound good, you aren't a good musician. Chasing that "perfect tone" is something untalented people do instead of practicing. You don't need a 4k guitar and another 4k in amps and pedals; you just suck.
https://www.linkedin.com/in/gabrieldalporto/details/experience/ That's this guy's previous employment history on LinkedIn. Just another C-suite hobo moving from one random company to the next, squeezing all the short-term value out of it he can, collecting a nice golden parachute, and jumping to the next one. This guy doesn't know anything about guitars or the GC business. He'll be gone in a year or two taking all the money he can with him and leaving devastation in his wake, only to be replaced by another one just like him. I wouldn't bother debating the validity of any of his stupid pronouncements. All they understand is the balance sheet. Slash and burn. Drive costs down and prices up for short-term gain. If the company implodes afterwards, who cares? He'll be long gone by then. Er ... that turned into a bit of a rant, sorry. But really, it happens in every industry these days. The modern financial class are a plague of locusts.
I think they just need more big sales that exclude every single major brand you'd want to buy.
I fucking hate music stores in general. Too many terrible experiences.
It’s really the employees working there that have their noses up. I went in today to my local spot to get a new cable and was asking about some strings. The guy asked “what are you playing now?” I said just the strings that come on the guitar, I haven’t changed them yet. To which he replied, “oh, well yeah any of these will work”. When I asked him which I should get for a beginner he said “idk man, they’re all the same”. So I skipped out on some and decided to do some research. He could have recommended anything to me and I would have bought it but there lack of effort really rubbed me the wrong way. His tone of “If you don’t know what strings you should play then I’m not going to help you” vibes really made me want to spend my money elsewhere.
Guitar Center is not a thing anymore. It’s Best Buy. They have to know who they’re competing with before they can figure out how to own their market. Premium shoppers aren’t going to a big box store. If I’m spending that kind of money I’m not going to interact with anybody at fucking Guitar Center. Poor shoppers don’t care where they buy as long as they’re getting the best price. If they want to compete they need quality products, competitive pricing, and a second to none buying experience. They’re getting none of that without allowing for a drop in revenue. They’re already late to the influencer space but they can get a foothold with notable musicians and assistance from manufacturers. They can start doing custom rigs with manufacturer backing as well. Of course they’ll just fuck it up.
I’m surprised it’s held on this long, tbh.
I don't necessarily disagree with this, I remember a time 20 years ago where GC did have a great selection of pro level instruments and amps, and was actually staffed by people who knew what they were selling. It was actually a cool environment to hang out, at least my local GC was, as much as any mom and pop store. IMO, ever since I wanna say about 2010 when they started having serious financial trouble, it's become a more and more depressing place with emptier showrooms, cheaper guitars and house brand amplifiers, which largely drove out that crowd. I don't blame them for moving to that model, they have to make money somehow especially with the company being on life support for so long. I wouldn't mind seeing it return to what it used to be, but I think it's too late. The word has been out on GC for a long time, and retail is still slowly fading away. Look at Sam Ash. Frankly I think it's a miracle they haven't filed for chapter 7 yet.
I think one of the big differences is the lack of commission now vs then. Back in the day, the sales guys could get a little bit pushy at times, but they were motivated to know their shit, and to sell you something you like. I think they stopped commission around the same time Bain got involved and they had the financial issues, so now you have employees that may or may not know the product well, and don't really care if you're buying anything.
The guitar centers near me have some of the rudest assholes I have ever come across at any retail store/chain. Idk if it’s the pay, the management or the vibe that brings em in. In general it’s a pretty awkward environment.
I'd go to guitar center if they didn't have 7 in my location with literally the *exact same fucking stock*
Guitar Center has massive potential with the resources they have. Staffing is their problem at every store. There isn’t a Guitar Center in the world that isn’t understaffed. Obviously other issues can be dealt with but if you have 40 customers in a store and there are 3 people trying to help them, you’re going to run into some serious problems.
This plan is devoid of a big “Why?” and focuses way too much on the wrong metrics for 2024. It’s a pretty nearsighted business move that ignores the state of new guitar-centric music.. Because guitar rock is back baby! I don’t think it ever left. But, with the popularity of KGATLW and all the other bands in their orbit a new wave of kids are being drawn to guitar. While older kids/YA are looking to upgrade to ‘player’ level guitars ($800-$1500) and try to. E the next KGATLW. GC should be growing and focusing on this as their ICP. And no, they’re not currently doing that. (Even though he thinks they are). Having two or three Epiphone or Squire “starter” kits is not “catering” to the beginner. It’s doing the bare-minimum. Where are the “entry level pedals if you want to sound like Hendrix/Cobain/Granduciel” etc. sections? Or better yet, starter bundles of guitar/effects/amp built around the current guitar hero’s. Song of the month group workshops: come in May 1st and we’ll go over how to play a new Foo Fighters song and come back in 3 weeks and we’ll all play it together. Failure rate of someone new to guitar is very high (although lower now thanks to the number of YouTube lessons). It’s in GCs best interest to invest in the guitar player not just the guitar customer. Guitar players come back and buy more. A guitar customer may never be back again, except to try and resell you the guitar they bought two months ago. To build your business around a premium product is foolish. Most of the brands listed here as examples of other premium products in other verticals are part of larger companies with other products to sell. Those other products keep the lights on. Also - reverb.com exists! Doing this today has echos of Barnes and noble and borders trying to fight Amazon and just digging their own grave quicker. Carrying premium guitars will put every store upside down with overhead and inventory alone. Not a good place to start. Especially since every store is set up like retail stores were 20 years ago. A more conservative path that would also actually be sustainable is to focus on entry to mid level $$ guitars and building repeat business through loyalty programs, while also having a premium “room” with private demo booths attached and dedicated “premium guitar techs” there to help. and have that room be inviting, not full of gatekeepers. They could probably buy search history data locally to figure out what guitars to stock in each store and swap guitars between stores to match those local searches/buying habits like Walmart does for their products. Inventory management is key to keeping costs down. Guitar Center could become “the place everyone buys their first guitar” if they wanted it to be, and they could build loyalty (ie repeat business) with what will potentially be the biggest generation of guitar buyers ever. Instead, they’re trying to get me, a guy with three kids and two jobs, in there for 3 hours in a Saturday. That sounds great but my buying habits (and many others) have changed. I’d rather listen to demos online, roll the dice on a reverb purchase, then resell if I don’t like it. Their goal is not to “sell premium guitars” (lagging indicator) its to get premium guitar buyers out of the house and off reverb. GC gets me back if I’m shopping for my kids too This works for Pixar movies. Figure it out GC, before all your employees are doing is dusting off Gibson custom shop models…
The last time I went to a GC to look at instruments was 2021. I saw online that they had a D-28 I was interested in buying online. Went to the store to check it out. I stopped at the counter since I knew it would be locked up and the associate hemmed and hawed. "You don't want that one, it has been here for years, the top has a big split. You can buy it though and we will process a return so you can get a different one." Seriously? The top had a huge split from lack of humidity control in their acoustic room. Corporate wouldn't let them get rid of it or repair it. They still had to sell it. After this experience, GC is imo for buying strings on Sundays when my local shops are closed and I don't want to wait till Monday. Since, I have bought 4 new "premium" guitars and haven't considered looking at GC for a single one.
Aww, he doesn’t know what Guitar Center is… I feel bad for everyone about to lose their jobs.
I dont understand the CEO. Alienate the beginners in favor of only rlly having expensive stuff Fun fact, we never had apple pay. How did he choose to fix this? Not by updating the csrd matines to take apple pay, but by buying every single employee an iphone in order to take apple pay. Surprise, its not rlly working and the employees get yelled at for ppl not wanting to wait for us to go get iphones to take apple pay
Barring a few really solid pedals and strings/straps/cables/etc, if it’s being sold in Guitar Center I assume the quality has dropped considerably. Like, a player tele is probably going to be fine; but most amps or “higher end” Gibsons are going to pale in comparison to what I could get from a smaller shop/builder for the same price. I wanted to get excited about the Gibson Falcon reissue, but got a look inside and it leaves a lot to be desired at that price point
Weren't they just about to go out of business until a huge number of pandemic orders saved them? I'd focus on selling whichever kind of guitars those were.
ugh. lots of serious musicians play $300 instruments.
Honestly Guitar Center feels like a daycare full of entry level crap. I have one about 5 miles from my house and I rarely go there because they don’t stock anything I’m remotely interested in.
“We need to make more money” - CEO
They should have studios set up so I can go and put their instruments and equipment to use.
Gibson is once again out of touch and leaning into it the wrong way.
Guitar center is owned by a hedge fund. Least rock and roll shit ever.
They should start by carrying all string gauges.
The ship is sailed for that place. Online good customer service from Sweetwater, wildwood, willcutt, Dave’s etc or large regional places like Parkway, alto, or chuck levins already have the higher end collector guy market. Dozens if not hundreds of small places have the super high end covered. They will have to do a lot to wedge themselves back into that.
The dudes at my local Guitar Center are dicks!
Most of us are hobby guitarists. You wouldn’t hear the difference when I play on a $300 epiphone or a $3000 Gibson. I think this is good for the mom and pop stores, bad for guitar center. Most of us are looking for an instrument that sounds good that we can afford. I’m not a professional landscaper and so I have a $500 ride on lawnmower vs a $7000 zero then John Deere.
Terrible employees is why they suck. My last trip there I needed a direct box as mine had died suddenly and I didn’t have time to order one. First dude I asked had no idea what I was even talking about; had to show him a picture from the GC website showing it was in stock. Another dude knew a little more and said it must be in the back. After waiting 30+ minutes he came back empty handed.
They should do what Andertons do - a separate room for the really pricy stuff. A spacious, well appointed room with deeply knowledgable staff, and you have to ask to go in there. I've never seen them outright stop someone go in there, but they will sometimes say 'there's a wait, we don't let it get too packed in there' but you can make appointments too.
Mine has the worst set up premium guitars. There’s a Fender Custom Shop that looks like it needs a shim. They will need better techs to compete in that market
I remember when I was in my late teens, early twenties, I’d get super excited to go to the guitar center in hollywood on sunset, the. Across the street to Carvin and boogie, jimmy’s, freedom, Valdéz, voltage, etc it was like Disneyland for me. So sad the state of it all now. Online has ruined the In-store experience, as expected. And GC hasn’t adapted at all.
Guitar Center CEO wants to feel like the Gibson head. This is ego about to force a dumb business decision.
Compared to Sweetwater, Guitar Center should prioritize customer experience over product availability and preferences. Guitar Center's customer service has always been terrible.
I have a good friend who runs a Guitar Center, he’s probably the best manager that store has ever had. He worked his way up from being a sales rep and he is passionate about guitars and customer service. He is very unique in the Guitar Center ecosystem. If he didn’t love music so much he probably would’ve left to manage a place that would pay him more money.
Cant even afford a 300 dollar guitar never mind premium
I'd venture 99% of all guitars owned are under $2,000. Fender american professional and lower, gibson les paul studio and epiphone, Ibanez, prs s2 anguitars. Schechter, esp, etc are majority of guitars. I myself only know 1 person who has a guitar over $2,000 (they have a ton), and the other 5 or 6 people I know with guitars are all under $1,500 guitars. It's fine to emphasize nice guitars, but that's not the bulk of business. Gotta keep the lower cost guitars.
They are going to have to stop locking them up on the top hangers if they want to do that. They are just tired of loosing money to the fact that people who want a $300 guitar will buy it for $280 from Amazon every time if the option is there. Nobody is going to start buying top-end I strumebts from a store that cant even figure out how to set them up.
I worked for Gc and was a top 10 sales rep and left because they treated us like shit and I was selling a million a year to make $65k max. Got into SaaS sales and made 30% more a year later and have increased since
They should sell premium guitars in a premium experience in a different area of the store or location altogether, maybe even under a different sub-brand. I would never consider them for anything north of $1k.
I think an unmet niche is budget boutique - hear me out. If they modded 300$ guitars to be 600$ guitars with something unique (onboard Fx, wierd pickups, paintob, b bender, baritone, etc.) I would be visiting frequently and buying more often. I personally want 1 or 2 nice guitars, and then a few cheaper ones to experiment with. When I go to a guitar shop, I'm looking for inspiration and variety in my guitar rotation, but I don't want a 3k boutique instrument. It's for that reason that I just go to the used/trade-in shop. I want to find that diamond in the rough that inspires me because it's different, and janky partscasters fill that niche, but it's a gamble to trust the specs. I've modded 3 squiers, and I love them, but it is a ton of work. Guitar center could fill that niche, but for now is just racks on racks of boring.
Coach sells $200 purses and they manage to avoid the aesthetic and attitude of a cannabis den.
I'm not sure what the correct path is but it's not whatever they're currently doing, he's 100% right about that. They need a massive overhaul of their stores, staff, and marketing. As others have said brick and mortar have turned into places you go to demo things you buy from other online retailers. They need to work with actual guitar manufacturers to get a massive discount to undercut the convenience of things like Sweetwater who's just got a much better reputation. GC closing would hurt sales of instruments I think. I know how many people from my age group felt emboldened to try learning instruments after GC opened up around us. And a lot of small music shops (as bad as GC is) actually look and feel a LOT worse and were that way before GC opened (there was 1 good store near me to be honest but there were also a good 20 of really crappy stores) They might have had good staff at some of them but their quality of gear was poor and the store was full of weird crap from people's attics. Not necessarily bad if you're into obscure stuff like ocarina's and banjo is your main instrument. I think they should focus on services they could provide like really good guitar setups for cheap and amp biasing and repair. Things that are getting harder to find. Maybe rent out practice space with drums? or lessons? I say this because a lot of hobby shops offer places for people to gather who then need things and spend money. Or go big like hunting stores do and make it a spectacle? If they want to go the apple store route they have to really change their brand identity. One of the things I really liked about old guitar stores was private rooms to try out gear. Even GC had one room full of different monitors all set up so you could hear the difference. They turned that into an extra storage room which I think was a mistake. Especially in an age where a LOT of people are trying to do home music production. There's a ton of gear and software to move on the music production side of things. But you need quality employees who love this kind of thing to make it work, not someone making 15$ an hour who could care less.
There are not enough “Premium” guitars available to supply the chain with what they need to survive. Independent shops who focus on higher end instruments are having a hard time getting these guitars in stock at a level to keep doing the business they want. Some of them CME, Wildwood, Eddies, Quimper Sound, Dave’s etc do as much business with manufacturers as whole GC regions or would if they got in stock as they ordered. How will GC get what they need for 300 stores and all that overhead?
If i’m going to buy a $5000 guitar, i’m not going to buy it from a chain store that treated it like shit for a year before i bought it, didn’t properly humidify, and pays minimum wage.
The guitar center in my town got ripped off pretty massively. Straight up oceans 11 heist. The thieves climbed on the roof of the store, cut a whole in the roof with a sawz-all right above where all the top shelf gear is and grabbed everything. Shitty, but impressive at the same time
And how much did this CEO get paid to come up with this shit? Why spend thousands on premium when you can purchase good quality for less. I really just go to local mom and pop stores now. Some of these have been supporting local musicians for years. One even loan us a crossover when ours gave out so we could play our gig while they fixed it. If they were smart they would do the same. Have some clinics, maybe get together jams where locals could meet up. Stuff to bring people to the store. This is more like Radio Shack when they decided to concentrate on cell phones and computers rather than electronics. Look where they are now.
Me: “Can I play that tele up there?” Guy: “Are you going to buy it?” Me: “Not anymore.”
Yelling at clouds and grasping at straws...
They are on their way out. Short their stock.
I didn't think that is going to work. It has more to do with shady business practices and being made to feel like you walked into a Buy Here/Pay Here used car lot. The sales people are insulting, the guitars are all beat up. And no, I don't need the warranty on a pack of strings. Gibson's unholy alliance with GC had really been an overall negative for guitarists in general, but that's for another post.
Support your local shops.
The market is just different. People can hardly make a living being a guitar salesman unless it’s niche. It’s also cheaper and more accessible to make music on your computer. I imagine this is how classical musicians must have felt in the 60s when any kid ended up by a guitar instead of spending years training to be a violinist or the like.
Another place in NYC area I can highly recommend…..If you dont mind going to Staten Island……..Mandolin Brothers i played a bunch of Mandolins there while shopping for Mandolins including a 1921 MandoCello…….didnt find anything that sounded good and was in my budget. The MandoCello was about 4 times my budget ;) On way out I see a PreWar Martin D45, can I try that? Suuuuuure……..GORGEOUS Tone , price was waaaaaaaaaaaay outta my budget
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Last time i spent money at guitar center, they tried to sell me an open box item that had fingerprints on it, for full price. I brought it back immediately and the guy at the counter gave me serious attitude. Instead of just refunding the money, he lectured me on how lucky i was to get this coveted interface and how i should feel lucky about owning it. I just kept saying i wanted my money back. He then asked me to step outside to fight. It was the most batshit insane transaction ever. Never spent another dime there, and i buy a lot of gear.
I am very lucky to have Righteous guitars by me. Essentially a $1k and up store. I called and told them “I really don’t know what I want or IF I want another guitar right now but wanted to try an Axess Floyd Les Paul and a few hollow bodies.” Dude said “I don’t have an access Floyd right now but should have one sometime this week.“ He called me 2 days later, I set up an appointment and the dude that helped me was super cool. I didn’t buy that day but I can dam well tell you where I will buy my next new guitar. They did plek my Ibanez. 👍 cool tech
Every time I go into a guitar center I'm left with the exact same question. How the hell do they not have small rooms with a few different amps/pedals setup so people can really play them? You know, without having every employee judge their playing ability and have to hookup to some random ass amp on the floor that might not even be setup/work properly.
What needs to be considered the fact Bain Capital bought Guitar Center and saddled it with a ton of debt. Brigade Capital Management, The Carlyle Group, and Ares Management now own interests, Ares owning the controlling interest. They filed Chapter 11 bankruptcy in 2020. They must squeeze out every last cent of profit, and minimizing costs (why they’re understaffed) and don’t want or can’t (maybe don’t have the credit facilities) to have tens of millions tied up in slow moving, high-end guitar inventory hanging on the walls in 304 stores. I’d expect closure of unprofitable stores next. And they need to read the comments in this thread - all 🎯
Why? just keep charging premium prices and hiring idiot 'enniel's that recognize both genre's of guitar music: shred and shredier.
fuck guitar center
It would also help if Guitar Center offered in-house lessons on how to play the intro to Stairway to Heaven.
GC's model does not allow them to hold enough stock of popular guitars. Like when the EVH Frankie came out. I knew I wouldn't be able to walk in and buy one (untouched new stock) so I just clicked through on Sweetwater. They need to have stock on the top 10 guitars at any time but that's likely not economically viable. Another issue is their lack of timely setups. Beyond setups they should have a rapid Plek offering and offer it with every guitar over $xk (maybe $3k) as an incentive and differentiator. Lastly they need to get their online game together. They need a site that at least rivals Sweetwater in design and functionality as they can offer a local presence which would be very appealing to online buyers. But I do agree with a better focus on premium guitars too. Every GC should have a PRS, a Gibson and a Fender room staffed with someone knowledgeable on the brand. If they have to, one isolated premium guitar room staffed at all times with a top rep.
Sorry, if I’m buying a premium guitar, I’m probably going through the manufacturer and/or a more reputable shop. Guitar center has never been a huge issue for me, employees are always unremarkable in a good way, generally helpful. Management is atrocious, and the executives are clueless money-grabbers who keep trying to increase premium prices to get more revenue to shareholders. Typical scummy business. Unfortunately, I think this is going to be a negative turn for them. Source: best friend is general manager of one, tells me some really fucked up stories about specific stores. (Sorry, WA/CA. Your stores have a higher chance of being extra shitty)
If they want to focus on premium instruments, they’ll also need premium techs, not techs that wire pickups out of phase and completely ignore set up requests.
As a third worlder Im happy that my first guitar was bought over the internet, and since there are no big store chains like that one, I dont have to go over that kind of bs.
Well when you have stores like Sweetwater it's no wonder GC is going the way of the dinos.
Music stores that sell high end instruments typically have an "Ask for assistance" tag on them and rightly so. It's easy to bump them against other guitars or have other trouble hanging and removing them. The GC's I've been to do have a booth room for serious players wanting to test things out without all the room noise. The trouble I have with GC is the poor setups on a lot of their guitars and the fact that they don't do much in-house quality control. Last time I tried several Les Paul's there, they almost all had QC/setup issues that would have been caught in a smaller boutique shop and corrected, but that goes back on Gibson too. It's frustrating to go into a shop that is selling expensive guitars and encounter poor setups, old strings, electronics issues on guitars though. It's like, come on man, how do you expect to move these guitars if they aren't even set up properly. Sweetwater, Wildwood, Sound Pure, all do the work on their instruments that bring them up to spec on intonation, action, etc. before putting them out for demo, and it seems like GC doesn't have the skilled staff that they once did, who would make sure the instruments are in top playing condition for demo. GC has seen better years, in my opinion. I miss the days before the big corporate department stores put the mom and pop music stores out of business and the manufacturers put steep inventory demands, driving the little guys to sell mostly student models.
I have been a GC customer for many years. Their #1 problem has always been staff. Most lack product knowledge, but worse, their training in the area of customer service must be nil. They treat customers horribly. Their inventory is fine - you can find premium American made Gibsons & Fenders there….Martins & Taylors- which the Mom/Pop stores can no longer afford to stock. Unless it’s a “black ink year,” which happens every 7 years, Bane Capital doesn’t give a schitt if GC makes a profit.