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What would YOU like from Guitar Center?

xjeremiahx

xjeremiahx

Apr 19, 2009
1,112
7
Chicago, IL
www.encrustmusic.com
Disclosures
No longer a slave to GC.
#1
After seeing/reading some of the "What would you like from Gibson" thread, I wonder, with all the bashing of GC on this board(and nationwide), what would YOU like from Guitar Center?

Let's keep this constructive, i.e. no comments like "no idiots working there" "no guitars/drums/dj/lights/PAs/whatever"

Brands? Basses? Amps?

I'm just curious as to what some of you people would like GC to carry/do.

Personally, I'd love if they carried a few more brands than they do, and a better selection of amps IN STORES.... Spector, Hartke(i know they're owned by sam ash), Aguilar, Sadowsky(wishful thinking :))

Moderators - could you keep an eye on this thread? I can see it becoming a total flame-fest, and I just want to see what people's thoughts are, OTHER THAN THE NEGATIVE. We've heard those enough already.

Thanks
Jeremy
 
#6
have better trained staff,
a wider range of gear in store,
and cater more to musicians with experience over kids that know they can play real instruments because they can kill on the hard setting for Guitar Hero.
 
#8
colcifer said:
Maintain their stock better.
Click to expand...

+1

Even simple truss rod tweaks would help, and I can't even count the number of times I've seen employees standing around doing nothing. I guess that many of the employees don't put two and two together.... well maintained instruments = more sales, more sales = more commission.

GC has good things and bad things, just like every other chain. I can't complain really about the product selection - it works for them, and they know their market better than I do.... BUT.... simple maintenance would go a long way.
 
#9
Dark Horse said:
+1

Even simple truss rod tweaks would help, and I can't even count the number of times I've seen employees standing around doing nothing. I guess that many of the employees don't put two and two together.... well maintained instruments = more sales, more sales = more commission.

GC has good things and bad things, just like every other chain. I can't complain really about the product selection - it works for them, and they know their market better than I do.... BUT.... simple maintenance would go a long way.
Click to expand...

Right on. It's not easy maintaining an entire store's worth of guitars in tune/setup all the time. Although @ my store we TRY to keep up with it all, we get behind sometimes, and yes, we get lazy too - we're human.

Keep em coming, this thread is working out to be exactly what I was hoping.:bassist:
Another reason I love TB.
 
#10
I think the #1 thing is don't have stuff for sale that's broken, missing parts, etc. I was there one day and the salesguy was trying to sell this older (like 70 year old) gentleman an amp that had something wrong with it... to defend the salesguy he probably didn't know, but when I told the salesguy that something was wrong (it was a GK MB combo, when you turned up the horn it went silent) he just looked at me like I was an idiot and how dare I point out that the amp was broken.

Now I know there's a bunch of dumb kids running around, and it'd be impossible to keep things in tune cuz you always have some dumb kid wacking the crud out of the strings and you got the kids always messing with tunings (e.g. putting everything in drop D... even the Hofner Icon Beatle basses). But it just seems too often basses and guitars are missing knobs, input jacks are messed up, and amps are messed up.

Product selection is always hit and miss. It seems like in Dallas depending on what store you go to is what they have. It's like there's one store that's got a bunch of high end stuff, and one that's only got low end stuff, and one that's midrange. I don't like that it always seem they only stock 2-3 brands... and it always varies what brands those are.
 
#11
Less Strats and Les Pauls, and more bass gear. And just think, I'm a guitarist that plays bass?!!!

Longevity in their staff. I fortunately have a friend of mine that's been working there for 15+ years, but for the most part every time you go in 80% of the staff has changed. Hard to develop any kind of relationship with a sales rep that way. "Oh great let me explain my musical life story AGAIN!!!!"
 
#13
Set ups for sure, there should be one employee at every guitar center that all he does is set ups , all day everyday. Other employees need to be doing stuff while on the floor, for example tuning and cleaning the guitars instead of standing there like the local guys.

I work at a local music store and I am always doing something. Personally I would like to see alot more used gear.
 
#15
Raymeous said:
Longevity in their staff. I fortunately have a friend of mine that's been working there for 15+ years, but for the most part every time you go in 80% of the staff has changed. Hard to develop any kind of relationship with a sales rep that way. "Oh great let me explain my musical life story AGAIN!!!!"
Click to expand...

+1, It seems like everytime I go in there's a whole brand new set of sales people. Luckally I mostly go in to buy strings, and there's be the same accessories person there for a while, and they know me.
 
#17
xjeremiahx said:
Right on. It's not easy maintaining an entire store's worth of guitars in tune/setup all the time. Although @ my store we TRY to keep up with it all, we get behind sometimes, and yes, we get lazy too - we're human.
Click to expand...

Believe me, I understand that, I also worked for GC for a few years, so I know the ins and outs, and the way things are at a lot of the stores. :)

The way we used to do it is in the morning, before the customers start really arriving, have 2 employees - one gets the larger Fender truss wrench (for MIMs and similar), the other gets the small size allen wrench (for USA Fenders)...you go through and do quick tweaks.

Then the next day they work on the Gibsons - one employee does the tweaking, the other brings the guitars to him and back to the wall.

Wednesday we did the acoustic room, same way as the Gibbies....as well as hit the other brand electrics that weren't tweaked on Monday or Tuesday.

Thursday - Sunday was "thank you" calls, prospecting, getting ready for the weekend, etc.

After a few weeks, the guitars were in such good shape it typically was a 10 minute job...find the few stragglers, tweak them, and go on about your day.

That's how we did it at my store. It took about an hour a day for the first few weeks. Anything that needed strings or more tweaking could be done later in the day when it was slow. It still left plenty of "lazy time", and REALLY helped sell the guitars. I averaged between $60k and $70k per month in sales, and had months up to $128k in guitar sales.


Keep em coming, this thread is working out to be exactly what I was hoping.:bassist:
Another reason I love TB.
Click to expand...

I'm glad you come here Jeremy - it shows that GC is not completely horrible. There ARE employees who care, and ones who know their stuff. Conversely, there are employees who just "think it is cool to work in a music store", and really are just taking up space. It's up to the customer to find the good employees and make sure that they continue to give him/her their business.
 
#18
Dark Horse said:
Believe me, I understand that, I also worked for GC for a few years, so I know the ins and outs, and the way things are at a lot of the stores. :)

The way we used to do it is in the morning, before the customers start really arriving, have 2 employees - one gets the larger Fender truss wrench (for MIMs and similar), the other gets the small size allen wrench (for USA Fenders)...you go through and do quick tweaks.

Then the next day they work on the Gibsons - one employee does the tweaking, the other brings the guitars to him and back to the wall.

Wednesday we did the acoustic room, same way as the Gibbies....as well as hit the other brand electrics that weren't tweaked on Monday or Tuesday.

Thursday - Sunday was "thank you" calls, prospecting, getting ready for the weekend, etc.

After a few weeks, the guitars were in such good shape it typically was a 10 minute job...find the few stragglers, tweak them, and go on about your day.

That's how we did it at my store. It took about an hour a day for the first few weeks. Anything that needed strings or more tweaking could be done later in the day when it was slow. It still left plenty of "lazy time", and REALLY helped sell the guitars. I averaged between $60k and $70k per month in sales, and had months up to $128k in guitar sales.




I'm glad you come here Jeremy - it shows that GC is not completely horrible. There ARE employees who care, and ones who know their stuff. Conversely, there are employees who just "think it is cool to work in a music store", and really are just taking up space. It's up to the customer to find the good employees and make sure that they continue to give him/her their business.
Click to expand...

Dude.
Your post just floored me. I can't tell you that I won't straight up STEAL that schedule hahahaha. That's awesome. I'm glad that you've kind of shed some light for some others who don't/haven't worked for GC.

Thank you for the compliment, I really appreciate it, I know that saying I work for GC on this board is like running through the lion's den covered in steaks, but I'm trying to show exactly what you said, we're not all morons @ GC. But you're right, there are people who think it's cool to just WORK @ gc, it's sad, because they give us a bad name.

Let's keep this thread moving
 
#19
The GC Murrietta has an on-duty luthier

100_6228.png


It's his job to clean, set up and make any repairs to used gear and set up the new stuff. I think he does pretty well and everything I've played there was in good shape.

This is a shot of the Fender wall

100_6292.png


Here's the Tele Tubbies (Bongo) basses and a few more Fenders and maybe even an Ibanez or two - but there's more-----

100_6293.png


....and there's a whole 'nuther two walls of basses I didn't take a pix of.

Remember - this is one of the smaller stores too!

Just off the top of my had - they have Hofners, Yamahas, Ibanez, Fender, Rickenbacker, Squier, Gretsch, Music Man (Tele Tubbies), Epiphone, Danelectro, Dean, B.C. Rich, Schecter, Warwick, Peavey and a few others I cannot remember. So what's with YOUR GC?

Amps-wise they have the Ampeg, Orange, GK, Peavey, Fender, Acoustic, Line 6, Marshall, Ibanez, Mesa Boogers, MarkBass, Aguilar and even one of those ones with only a bunch of 5" speakers in it - although it wasn't there today when I went.

The bass/guitar section is manned by several gigging pros and I trust all but one of them to be looking out for my best interest. I guess it was a personality quirk that caused friction between him and me and it's not gonna get repaired if he always turns the other way when I come into the store.

The other guys are all great, personal and call me by my name. I can't ask for much more than that. I get great service and that makes me come back more and more.

I would like to see GC offer lessons though. That would make it just about perfect - well that and coffee and donuts would help too.
 
#20
I understand that alot of people on here have a very negative view of Guitar Center, but for me, Guitar Center is like the El Dorado of music stores. I live in a south-western Ontario border city, and I travel to Detroit for almost all of my purchases. Canada has it's own big chain like Guitar Center called Long & McQuade, and I have seen some amazing outlets of this chain in other cities, but the one in my town is a complete disgrace. I have seen employees purposely withhold information from customers about products, just to laugh about them when they leave the store. Mind you, the service has been getting better lately, but still pales in comparison to the service and selection I get at Guitar Center across the bridge. Just baught my new rig from there last week actually.

Just wanted to show some GC love
 

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