Guitar Center

I just want to see your what you think about guitar center

Have you noticed guitar shops are closing?

I've started a campaign to try and save them from disappearing for good. When GAK in my hometown of Brighton UK closed down, it hit me hard. It was such an iconic, destination. A big reason Brighton is such a cool music town. Then PMT went. Then I noticed that Sam Ash and Cassel's Music in the US have closed. And I realised it's happening everywhere.

Save Our Guitar Shops is based on a simple pledge for guitarists like you: to shop in your local store when you can, and try to avoid the online giants.

Okay, shopping online is more convenient sometimes. Maybe a little bit cheaper. But think about what cost there is to no guitar shops at all. Because that's where we're heading.

So please don't put convenience and a few pennies over people, and music culture itself.

I believe you have to actually hold and play a guitar before you buy it. YouTube reviews can't replace that. Guitar shops are places we can build trust with experts in our town. They're where we can get repairs and settups. And they're the heart of our local music scenes, where kids pick up their first guitars and get inspired to play.

A future without guitar shops is a future with less guitarists.

I think guitar players are mostly good people. United by a shared love of music, inquisitive, open to new ideas, inspired by the positive force of collective action (which being in a band is).

So I have hope that this can make a difference. I've had a few local papers run the story. Music Inc Magazine in the US has run it. And shortly there's gong to be a piece in Guitar World.

But this is just the start. One day I want it to be as big as Record Store day for record shops, and that campaign has made a huge impact.

So please take the pledge here: https://guitarmammoth.com/save-our-guitar-shops/

And please share it with any guitarists you know, and on your social media. I think guitar shops are worth saving. Do you?

Yesterday I got an email allegedly from Guitar Center promoting a "Fathers Day Sale" with discounts as high as 70%.

Unlike so many such online sales where that 70% typically applies to things like bow rosin and discontinued guitar polish, this one promotes hard-to-resist discounts on popular stuff.. like a PRS Private Stock Special Semi-Hollow Electric Guitar for $3,279 (a $8700 discount) and a Fodera Monarch 4 fretless for $1665 (a $3885 discount).

In the latter case, the site alleges that it had over 500 of this particular Fodera model in stock when Fodera only makes a few hundred basses per year across all models and the factory is back-ordered for two years. Why would Guitar Center heavily discount a bass that it could probably sell for more than MSRP in 20 minutes on Reverb?

It's a scam running out of China.

The email pushes you to a Chinese-registered domain, https://guitarcenter-us.shop. If you were to buy something from the site the recipient would almost certainly be a party you've never heard of and which will never respond to your "Where's my stuff??" inquiries.

From what I can see, they scraped Guitar Center's (huge) web site, replaced the prices with ridiculous discounts of 70% and then hijacked the e-commerce component for themselves.

It's an ambitious scam and one that even had my greed fighting with common sense. Guitar Center has been in troubled financial shape since 2020. What if Guitar Center needed to raise a mountain of cash quickly to comply with a bankruptcy court order, blah blah? No. Just no.

I showed the ad to a guitar player who is friends with some guy in Guitar Center management who told him that it's a scam that's popped up before.

I thought the deals on that site looked a bit too good to be true, very official looking site until you take a look at the about page. Had a whole cart full of guitars because they were so cheap. Just a heads up! I don't know how I ended up on the site (possibly an Ad) but it's definitely not real.

From a recent Guitar World article-vertisement I clicked on. Seriously, I wish the company well; they have a great potential under decent management and I hope the new (since October) CEO leads them right. And it's true, they're stuck does disproportionately lead to basic and beginner stuff because that's where the easiest cash is, because people don't take Guitar Center as seriously as they used to. But the lack of expensive guitars is not their biggest problem by a long shot.