What Happened with Big Box Music Stores?

[Jaycat]

Millions of Fender and Ibanez buyers out there.
Thousands of Zon and Modulus buyers.
Other than that, the Guitar Center near me has 100 + basses, including...

And they're all top sellers!

 

[J Wilson]

This presses a lot of buttons.

If you think about it, Guitar Center and the like are the WalMarts of the music business. Well, you're not going to find Staub or LeCreuset cookware at Wally World, and the days you'd find big money small builder basses is mostly passed.

My retail experience mirrors what others have said here, and my days were before the internet. You'd stock something, it gets whacked around the store for 6 months, then the same thing always happened: The one or two guys that could have stepped up didn't want one that had demo miles on it, and the other two guys would buy it mail-order (in those days) for $50 bucks less . . . . then come in and show it off to us when buying strings. Grrrrrrr . . . . .

And it's a pain for the builders. Alembic is just now around 30,000 pieces in total built . . . . since 1976. These kinds of builders simply don't deal in orders of several hundred, shipped in the next 90 days. Doesn't happen, can't happen.

This is also why you see what were previously handbuilt-only instruments now expand their product line to lower-content, offshore reproductions: This is how you FINALLY make some money after all those years building them by hand, and you can't blame anyone for doing that. I'm never convinced by the usual 'Now EVERYONE can enjoy the features that made the XYZ StratoBass famous!' press release, though.

And after all that, buyers are just in a lot of cases too fussy to ever be satisfied with careful, masterbuilt products by other human beings. I've seen dweebs here in TalkBass complaining about the most petty, unimportant crap, they should be embarassed. But in a social media world, Dweebism has been elevated to an Olympic sport, and for some guys, beyond perfect in a lifetime instrument is just not enough. What do you do with that?

For those of us of a certain age, being able to hang at a good local music store with experienced cats and encouraging owner operators was vital to us in our early years. The encouragement, the good advice, the occasional free strings or picks, the ability to hang out without somehow never feeling like we were pests or lame rookies, and the service backup from people you knew and grew up with was vital. The internet and the Big Box stores cleared out a lot of these folks, and it's a shame, but capitalism is ruthless . . . . and not always good.

So now you can buy sight unseen, pray UPS or FedEx doesn't destroy it while paying those high shipping rates, shamelessly order stuff you know you're not going to keep just to try it out and return it, then complain that there's no local stores that have what you wanted.

Circular, ain't it?

 

[Ostie]

GC in my town has entry-level basses. Mostly Squiers, MIM Fenders, etc. I have to go to Elderly to play the USA Fenders. I did see a Markbass amp at GC once but it’s mostly Rumbles.

At Elderly you can play anything that’s hanging on the wall. You don’t even have to ask. I play 5k mandolins there frequently. They will let you play the high $$ stuff, but it’s probably not hanging on the wall.

 

[Greg Pruitt]

As for high end bassed, I think it's about location and demand.

The GC near me on the South Side has been crap for years now.

The one on the North side isn't as good as it used to be, but always seems to have a few high end goodies.

The one in in Villa Park used to have allot in the mid 00s when I worked there. Now it's a wasteland.

Haven't been there recently, but I bet the one in the wealthy suburb of Schaumburg still has some higher end fun.

Seeing the trend?

I have not visited the Schamburg store in years. I often visited the Chicago Northside before they moved to the Halsted St. location and could always find some nice instruments on the hangers. I used to go there to covid the Pedulla Thunderbolt 5 string bass guitars just to name one quality bends they carried. Now, it seems that all the Guitar Center stores in this area have nothing but low-end bass guitars. Same can be said for bass amps. It is kind of a waist land in the stores these days. Markbass is the only exception.

I don’t what to sound like a rant. I do understand supply and demand. The lack of quality instruments on the hangers at the Big Box stores has been a thing for several years now.

 

[J Wilson]

Another 'tell' with the Big Box stores and the margins they're making:. Just like car dealers who'll sell you a car 'at invoice' just so they can bury you with financing your purchase (which is where they murder unwary consumers who didn't do their homework on car loans and laugh all the way to the bank), why do you think the BB stores advertise payments or their own credit card ?

 

[FronTowardEnemy]

As for high end bassed, I think it's about location and demand.

The GC near me on the South Side has been crap for years now.

The one on the North side isn't as good as it used to be, but always seems to have a few high end goodies.

The one in in Villa Park used to have allot in the mid 00s when I worked there. Now it's a wasteland.

Haven't been there recently, but I bet the one in the wealthy suburb of Schaumburg still has some higher end fun.

Seeing the trend?

I grew up a few blocks away from the south side GC. In the eighties and nineties, it was good. Not so much now.

At least we have CME.

 

[Bass Viking]

Another 'tell' with the Big Box stores and the margins they're making:. Just like car dealers who'll sell you a car 'at invoice' just so they can bury you with financing your purchase (which is where they murder unwary consumers who didn't do their homework on car loans and laugh all the way to the bank), why do you think the BB stores advertise payments or their own credit card ?

And let's not forget the extended warranty.

 

[bassbrowser]

Where is best store in all of USA to find the top basses now? I remember nice one in Seattle since 20 years ago, but is gone last visit I make. If you could only enter one store in whole country to find dream bass, which you choose these days?

 

[Admiral Akbar]

“For those of us of a certain age, being able to hang at a good local music store with experienced cats and encouraging owner operators was vital to us in our early years. The encouragement, the good advice, the occasional free strings or picks, the ability to hang out without somehow never feeling like we were pests or lame rookies, and the service backup from people you knew and grew up with was vital. The internet and the Big Box stores cleared out a lot of these folks, and it's a shame, but capitalism is ruthless . . . . and not always good.”

this exactly. The music stores, both big box and mom and pop were centers where musicians of all levels of experience would come together exchange ideas. As a younger guy in the 90’s, I would deliberately walk 30 minutes from my job the 48th street in Manhattan and hang at the stores: BB like Sam Ash and Manny’s (owned by SA at the time), as well as We Buy and Sell, Rudy’s, and even much smaller shops like Sadowsky and Alleva-Coppolo (literally in the same building on the same floor just a few doors down from each other!).

It was a magical time, and the stuff I’ve learned and the people I’ve met are still my closest friends today. No internet buying experience to save $60 is worth trading that.

 

[alack]

I used to work at a full-line MI dealer in the early 2000s. Customers kept coming in and complaining that we didn't have any high high-end basses. So, I went to our manager and convinced him to transfer half a dozen basses from other branches. We got it a couple of Ken Smith, a couple of high end Lakland, and a couple of Fender Custom Shop.

Guess what. EVRRYBODY wanted to PLAY them. But NOBODY wanted to BUY them.

I wish I had never gone to bat to get those basses sent in. After a few months we wound up sending most of them back, and selling a couple at a deep discount because (you guessed it) customers had scratched them up.

Unfortunately, the gospel guys were the WORST. They pretty much wanted to come in and take both Smiths into the amp room and spend lots of time teaching each other bass lines to gospel songs. What a headache! I was glad to see those basses go back into the warehouse before being shipped out. (Those two were scratched up so badly that the manager of the store we sent them to forced our store to pay the difference in the street price and what they wound up having to sell them for.)

I never mentioned high-end basses again. And I'm a bass player!

The older I get the more I don’t want to be that guy. I rarely shop the local big box stores and on the rare occasions I do I never take down something I’m certain I wouldn’t purchase.

My preferred local shop does stock plenty of high end basses (MTD, Lull, Sadowsky). I shy away from trying out such basses since I’m just never in the market for such an expensive instrument. The manager is a friend and more often he encourages me to try something. I prefer to be invited and even then I keep the test drive short and treat the instrument with kid gloves.

 

[Admiral Akbar]

Where is best store in all of USA to find the top basses now? I remember nice one in Seattle since 20 years ago, but is gone last visit I make. If you could only enter one store in whole country to find dream bass, which you choose these days?

That’s a great question!

In 1999, I would’ve said Alleva-Coppolo’s shop without question, followed by Rudy’s Music. But that was a quarter of a century ago!

 

[jim nolte]

Some people try out basses in stores and then buy them online. What’s the incentive to stock? IME if you told your store you wanted to buy a top bass they’d be happy to order it for you and then you get the shop’s backing.

That’s what killed the camera store I worked in, people would come in to try out cameras and lenses, ask me a million questions about the compatibility with this and that, say thank you and buy it online somewhere, we basically became a showroom for Amazon, can’t run a business doing that and I would imagine it’s a similar situation in music stores.

 

[Killing Floor]

Where is best store in all of USA to find the top basses now? I remember nice one in Seattle since 20 years ago, but is gone last visit I make. If you could only enter one store in whole country to find dream bass, which you choose these days?

The Low End near Nashville is pretty full of nice basses. Bass Club Chicago is also fun for us.

 

[LBS-bass]

That’s what killed the camera store I worked in, people would come in to try out cameras and lenses, ask me a million questions about the compatibility with this and that, say thank you and buy it online somewhere, we basically became a showroom for Amazon, can’t run a business doing that and I would imagine it’s a similar situation in music stores.

Very much so. I was in musical instrument sales between 1994 and 1999. Those years were hugely transitional; when I started there were very few people shopping online and most folks were afraid to use an online vendor. By the time I left, it was all exactly as you say. Zzounds and Musician's Friend had come online and were offering the same products at razor-thin profit margins. You'd spend hours of your day working with someone to demonstrate all the features of a product (I sold keyboards and pro-audio equipment so there was a lot of depth sometimes) and a few days later they'd call you to brag about the price they'd gotten for it elsewhere. Or they'd say something like "I found it at <a price that's 3% over dealer cost>. But I'd really love to give you the business. Can you match it?" Well, gee, thanks, you just squeezed all the margin off the sale and that means I get no commission. How thoughtful

There was just no way to compete with that.

 

[Smallmouth_Bass]

That’s what killed the camera store I worked in, people would come in to try out cameras and lenses, ask me a million questions about the compatibility with this and that, say thank you and buy it online somewhere, we basically became a showroom for Amazon, can’t run a business doing that and I would imagine it’s a similar situation in music stores.

We just had a long standing large camera store close in my city. I suspect it was victim of what you just described.

 

[jim nolte]

Very much so. I was in musical instrument sales between 1994 and 1999. Those years were hugely transitional; when I started there were very few people shopping online and most folks were afraid to use an online vendor. By the time I left, it was all exactly as you say. Zzounds and Musician's Friend had come online and were offering the same products at razor-thin profit margins. You'd spend hours of your day working with someone to demonstrate all the features of a product (I sold keyboards and pro-audio equipment so there was a lot of depth sometimes) and a few days later they'd call you to brag about the price they'd gotten for it elsewhere. Or they'd say something like "I found it at <a price that's 3% over dealer cost>. But I'd really love to give you the business. Can you match it?" Well, gee, thanks, you just squeezed all the margin off the sale and that means I get no commission. How thoughtful

There was just no way to compete with that.

With the advent of smart phones I had people doing that in my face, they would be searching the web in my store to find the lowest price on the internet and hold it up to my face and say “ can you match that”, many times that price was below what we paid for the camera/lens, when the store owner turned 66 he just threw in the towel.

 

[dbsfgyd1]

Demand. Period. If the demand were still there, and selling those basses at those locations were still profitable, they would still be hanging on the walls.

Spot on.

The profit margin is higher on lower cost to mid price instruments and Big Box can sell a lot more of them than top end instruments. Thanks to volume discounts from the manufacturers, that margin is even higher.

 

[Wfrance3]

The internet changes everything. - Used to be that a store had to have a variety of instrument s for people to try so they could see what all their choices were. Putting nice pictures on the internet and having efficient distribution coupled with quantity buying power is much more cost effective than buying and maintaining an inventory at the margin dictated by the internet seller. So, now a regular guitar store has to buy and maintain inventory, and match online prices or loose the sale.
Also, music stores take the hit when a new instrument gets banged up when some bone head treats rough while they are are trying it out.
I do miss the days when even guitar center had 3 or 4 brands of bass amps, and a wall with more basses. I have a GC right by my office and have gone in at lunch time a few different times in the last couple months. Nothing they have inspires me to pick it up and play it. It feels like what’s left after the really good stuff is gone at a going out of business sale.
Supply chain shortages are also a thing. It’s just not going to be the way it used to be ever again.

 

[sylvanbass]

I think I'm spoiled being in the Nashville area, but the GC here has some decent mid to high level stuff on the floor, and walls. The used department sucks in regards to bass gear, but their used guitar section is amazing. I think they do that to keep up with some of the smaller'ish "mom n pop" stores in the area like Gruhn, Carter Vintage, Lane, and Rumbleseat that all offer online shopping and more often than not free shipping. That being said, I have found some amazing deals on GC used section on the website and frequent it daily almost. Have never been disappointed with any of the used stuff I bought, but have the option to return if something is squirrely. Thats just my experience though, and after reading some threads on here I may just be lucky lol.

For high end bass stuff, I have been a somewhat loyal fan of Bass Central. I have bought a couple Lakland basses from them. I knew what I wanted and they had them on their site. Called them up, and even spoke to Beaver once. They had them on there site, but they shipped to me directly from Lakland. Took about three weeks. I had the funds on hand and paid in full, but he said I could just put down $500 and pay the rest of the balance when it was ready to ship. Not a lot of places do that.

 

[MultiScaleMale]

That’s what killed the camera store I worked in, people would come in to try out cameras and lenses, ask me a million questions about the compatibility with this and that, say thank you and buy it online somewhere, we basically became a showroom for Amazon, can’t run a business doing that and I would imagine it’s a similar situation in music stores.

I was buying a 70-200 VR f2.8 and oof course with a few clicks I knew what B&H was selling for and I contacted the local camera shop and they obviously know what B&H was selling the lens for but they wouldn't budge on the price. Their price was full retail because of the support and advice they give. They didn't need two match B&H, just meet me in the middle or something. Oh, and their knowledge and advice was crap too. I tried to buy a book or something that was under $20 at the store and had att least two sales associates walk up, saw that I wasn't buying a new camera body and walked away. I tried to support them but their estimates of their own value was greatly inflated. I think they made it until 2012 or so.

Maybe that was really the big change with the internet, nobody needed advice that could be freely and easily obtained online.