I bought my Sterling bass from Dave @ Monkton last week-- gave me a great deal.
It should be here on Tuesday-- can't wait!
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Guitar Center Struggling
- Thread starter Doner Designs
- Start date
I bought my Sterling bass from Dave @ Monkton last week-- gave me a great deal.
It should be here on Tuesday-- can't wait!
I recently bought an Acoustic B100C amp from GC's website; due to the present COVID difficulties, it took nearly a month to be delivered to me, but I'm not holding that against them. My local GC in VA Beach was not open last I checked; frankly, I'm not even sure it's still in business. Tough times in music retail for sure.
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I have nothing but kind words to say about my local GCs with the exception of letting any snot nosed kid walking in off the street to create sonic mayhem with clearly no ability to buy what they are abusing.
Most of the employees are helpful.
Most of the employees are helpful.
Only problem with stopping them is that these snot nosed kids eventually get money, and if they're like me, they remember every single slight by salespeople, and if they're like me, they won't hesitate to march back in there when they have money and tell the manager exactly why they'll never buy anything there as long as they live. And they'll name names if the salesperson is still there. I've done it gladly.
Fair enuff. Those kids probably killed a lot of potential sales by older cranky but moneyed folks like me that walked out disgusted.
But I know what you are saying.
"And stay off my lawn!"
Just remember that old farts like us used to be broke snot nosed kids.
"And stay off my lawn!"
Just remember that old farts like us used to be broke snot nosed kids.
Where I grew up, the music store circa 1970 was run by a cranky old man who played violin and didnt let you touch anything. Everything was behind the counter or a glass case. And it smelled funny.
If you call sweetwater and ask for a deal they always knock something off the price. I just saved pretty big on a Les Paul Standard for my son
It'll be interesting to see who survives this downturn, and it may not be the obvious suspects.
We have two music stores in town, one big professional organization and one old dude who lives over his store. The bigger outfit has a superficially attractive website, but it doesn’t actually do anything except give you their contact info. And they don’t return calls or emails. Meanwhile the one old dude has his entire inventory listed online, and he’s super responsive. He’s going to make it. The other guys, I’m not so sure; they may be out of business already.
We have two music stores in town, one big professional organization and one old dude who lives over his store. The bigger outfit has a superficially attractive website, but it doesn’t actually do anything except give you their contact info. And they don’t return calls or emails. Meanwhile the one old dude has his entire inventory listed online, and he’s super responsive. He’s going to make it. The other guys, I’m not so sure; they may be out of business already.
yep. If i need accessories i go to my local Music Go Round. At least they occassionally get in an interesting bass.
No kidding. Yep. They're still imposing a, police-enforced, fourteen day quarantine on incoming travelers. Maybe later this year.My grandson and I were supposed to be there right now.
He is bummed out. I had to explain to him that we could get arrested going surfing
It's hard to understand when you're 12.
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I ordered a Spector from Sweetwater last week Wednesday night, estimated arrival date was Monday; it showed up Saturday morning.
I used to stop in at one of my local GCs, but honestly, most of the sales people only paid attention to you if you were buying a high ticket item. Or you were an attractive woman.
One of our local music stores, no longer in business, moved right next door to another music store that catered to school bands and their instruments. The new store proceeded to go thru the dumpster and get the names of the customers they could and then scoop said customers from the older gentleman who had been in business for years there.
This was told to me by the older gentleman who owned the store. Maybe he should have been more careful with his customer info but I was not surprised when these fellows closed their doors. They even had a worse selection than GC, if that is possible.
Another local music store is run by a introvert who can't carry on a conversation and alienates half the people who enter the store. I do not frequent his place either.
That leaves George's (worse than GC) or Sam Ash way across town, who is actually pretty good.
GC is about 2 miles from my house. Frankly I've had very few issues with them or the GC across town, whose manager gave me a killer deal on a Taylor 6 string I was looking at because of a web site error in pricing.
I don't care for most of the basses or accessories for basses but for cords and such they are fine.
This was told to me by the older gentleman who owned the store. Maybe he should have been more careful with his customer info but I was not surprised when these fellows closed their doors. They even had a worse selection than GC, if that is possible.
Another local music store is run by a introvert who can't carry on a conversation and alienates half the people who enter the store. I do not frequent his place either.
That leaves George's (worse than GC) or Sam Ash way across town, who is actually pretty good.
GC is about 2 miles from my house. Frankly I've had very few issues with them or the GC across town, whose manager gave me a killer deal on a Taylor 6 string I was looking at because of a web site error in pricing.
I don't care for most of the basses or accessories for basses but for cords and such they are fine.
My local GC is pretty good. One other reason I like GC is this.......
I have bought two bass guitars from Amazon and another two from GC. Same price from both stores, same packaging from both stores and delivery times so close it didn't make a difference.
Amazon delivered my basses to the front door. I picked up my other two basses from my local GC.
My wife was fully aware of the two basses that Amazon delivered.....but she doesn't know about the two basses that I picked up from GC.
I have bought two bass guitars from Amazon and another two from GC. Same price from both stores, same packaging from both stores and delivery times so close it didn't make a difference.
Amazon delivered my basses to the front door. I picked up my other two basses from my local GC.
My wife was fully aware of the two basses that Amazon delivered.....but she doesn't know about the two basses that I picked up from GC.
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Ironically, back in the 80's Washington Music was kind of like what Sweetwater is today. I worked at a smaller (well, bigger than most, but not huge) music store (Audio, Light, and Musical) in Norfolk in the mid-80s, and in the keyboard department we were ALWAYS getting people coming in that had bought from Chuck and needed support ("I just bought this DX7 from WMC, can you teach me how to program it?") or wanted us to match WMC's pricing. We often couldn't do it because Chuck was the big dog in that part of the country, bought in much larger volumes, and could offer better pricing even with shipping factored in.
This isn't meant to be a criticism of WMC in any way, just an illustration that the situation that smaller stores have as a result of Internet shopping isn't anything new, except it was bigger stores offering mail-order that we were competing against.
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This wasn't Mozart Music in Norfolk, VA by chance, was it? I worked there for two days, and decided the place wasn't for me when the cranky old man that owned the funny-smelling place and kept everything behind the counter or in a glass case wanted me to break up a Fender Precision package and sell the case and case candy to the customer separately.
I worked at a small local chain store 15-20 years ago. GC moved in and our business went down and eventually the owner closed the doors (after I changed careers) We had beginner stuff, but had a large amount of the premium stuff (Lakland, Pedulla, Zon, Roscoe, etc... as well as Eden, Bergantino, Epifani amps and speakers)
The GC store never was all that nice. They had floorspace and a LOT of cheap guitars. Now the GC store is a joke. Employees dont know anything and nothing is clean or set up.
Let them go, maybe a decent store will have an opportunity to move in.
The GC store never was all that nice. They had floorspace and a LOT of cheap guitars. Now the GC store is a joke. Employees dont know anything and nothing is clean or set up.
Let them go, maybe a decent store will have an opportunity to move in.
