Sam Ash isn’t much better off from what I’ve seen, though they seem to have embraced Ebay/Reverb in a way that GC has not.
I disagree there Gary. I've known the Ash family since I was young, and they're very good people. They treat their employees like family, much like D'Addario does. When you go into either of the Long Island stores, you are greeted by generally cheerful and knowledgeable workers, many of whom have been with the company for a very long time. I can't say that about a single GC here, and it's a testament to the bankruptcy laws in this country that they're even still in business. They've been on life support longer than Sears!
I think so too, based on my own personal behavior. I've bought several items from Sweetwater during the dark ages of the pandemic. None of these items were guitars however. With one exception, I still have to hold a guitar before I buy a guitar. I'm fortunate to have a good used guitar shop in town, and Tom Jacobs, not far from me, always has an interesting thing or two hanging around. I bought a little Fender pro-junior from Sweetwater with a bit of trepidation; as it turned out there has been no problem. Threre is a Guitar Center about 3 miles from me, and I have nothing against it: it's just that it never has anything of interest (to me) in the store.
Recently saw a guitar on GC online, it had one picture. Of the back of the guitar. Wood was super dark so totally indistinguishable. Might as well taken a photo of concrete.
And I think that's part of the problem.....they spread too thin. Buying a guitar shouldn't require being a convienience. That's reserved for McDonalds French fries and their 10 min shelf life. During the absolute monetary height of the music industry, the 80's, in the D.C. area, we had our strip mall music stores that were mainly geared for supplying school music programs and otherwise only sold cheap guitars and amps. We had to drive an hour to Chuck Levin's Washington Music Center if you wanted the good stuff. Then...DURING the decline in the music industry, a shift from guitar driven music towards 2 turntables and a microphone, Guitar Center box stores popped up all over the place. I have 1 pretty close to me, plus 3 more that are STILL closer than Chuck Levin's. Then add online shopping. Their downsizing was inevitable as far as I'm concerned. There should really only be 1-2 per major city and surrounding suburbs, not 10-15. If you're about to spend 1,2,3 thousand on an instrument, you should have no problem driving 45 min to buy it. GC, just like any big box store, also put loads of people out of work when small local mom and pop music stores went belly up. I'm not losing any sleep if they close 4 out of every 5 stores. IMO, they never should have been there to begin with. We also don't need a Kohls/Bed Bath and Beyond/Old Navy every 4-5 miles. And we definitely don't need a Home Depot right across the street from a Lowes. It's all just nonsensical greed driven madness.
And I'll add that if you are spending that kind of money, you shouldn't be buying it at Guitar Center at all. None other than Ren Ferguson told me that "Guitar Center isn't where you should be buying a Gibson" when I asked him why there weren't any good ones at my local GC, which has been on life support forever.
