Official Luthiers Forum!

I think even though it's not like playing an actual guitar, I find it to be a good finger exercise, and the drums that is a good timing exercise. It has it's purpose.

Argh...my first message got lost in an internet blip...danged wireless!

Anyhow, essentially I agree with everything you said. I think that the consulting part of sales will always have a place, and always exist...we just might see them charging separately for the consulting and the sale! And I, like you, am willing to pay for it...and I also think it's somewhere between dishonest and sleazy to go into a shop, waste a good chunk of their time, and then buy the same item somewhere else unless they spring it on you and it really is genuinely overpriced (say 20% over competitors).

I double agree that drums in Rock Band are crazy hard. And I've seen more than one person go buy a guitar -directly- as a result of playing GH or RB and either finding it super fun or feeling guilty about acquiring a lot of skill at the game instead of the real thing! It's the best thing to happen to the guitar industry since good, inexpensive guitars (thanks, Godin) and the merging of guitar music and pop music (thanks, England).

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Bob Garrish
Former Canonized Purveyor of Fine CNC Luthier Services

We could only hope BB will follow CC into bankruptcy then oblivion but I doubt it. CC seemed to be BB's only real competition. They may just flourish now.

I try to use small or local businesses whenever possible. I like the feel of seeing and knowing the person I am buying from. I like to go to a farmers market where 3 generations of a family are selling goods and I can see the dirt on their hands from their hard work. I like go to my local hardware store where there is so much stuff packed into such a small space that you have to ask for help just to find anything. Every time I leave the store I have exactly what I need to complete the job because the guy's service is outstanding and he seems to know how to fix everything.

I bought one new guitar in the last ten years and it was from a local store. I had a friend who played a Martin 000-15S which had a top made of mahogany (or sapele). I wanted one but couldn't find one to "test ride" in a store. The owner of a shop I went to on occasion told me that he could order it for me almost $250 dollars cheaper than GC or any online retailer. I told him I was very skeptical about buying a guitar I have never played. He told me "I'll order it. If you play it and don't want to buy it, I'll hang it on the wall and sell it to somebody esle." Thats the beauty of "mom and pop" owners. They want your your business. I guess he knew that if he treated me good I would come back. I also knew that he had kids at home and buying from him will help him pay his bills.

Thats a concept large corporations don't get.

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Brad

I'll have to check the BB around here to see if they are selling them. Maybe they're hiring.

I was talking to someone who works for Guitar Center as a manager in some capacity and they
told me that Best Buy and Guitar Center are owned by the same mother corporation. I don't know
if there's any truth to this or if he was just trying to blow smoke like he knew something that the
rest of us wouldn't. Does anyone know if this is true.

If so, it seems like a foolish and inconsiderate move by any owning body. Creating competition
for your own stores and , in turn, the staff in them just doesn't seem practical...or ethical to me.

This guy also told me that there is only one Best Buy store in all of the large state of Pennsylvania
that is selling guitars, but he had no idea where it is. Who knows how much of it all is just idle
chatter by a big fish in the little pond of a Guitar Center store.

Regards,
Kevin Gallagher/Omega Guitars

The manager of the musical instruments section at the local Best Buy was in my shop for a truss rod repair last week, and I got the vibe from him that they were aggressively trying to compete against Guitar Center (locally, at least). Of course that's not to say they're not still connected somewhere way up the chain of ownership - plenty of "competing" radio stations are owned by clear channel, but management I'm sure still competes for bonuses. I haven't heard anything of the like though. There may be some truth to it, or it may just belong in the rumor bin with with the long running one about Guitar Center's imminent takeover of Gibson and vice versa.

As to the rest of this thread, and the situation of box stores taking over the guitar market, it is what it is, and I don't see it going away. I used to buy my boots at Ehnis and Sons, my office supplies at Meyer-Schairer, and my drugs at Village Pharmacy. They're all gone now and I'm stuck with Cabela's, Staples, and Rite-Aid. I see no reason to expect guitars to be much different. Good or bad, the people who value the small local music store are a minority of the overall market. There will always be some around where they can survive, but I think they'll be fewer than before. Heck, Best Buy is probably a drop in the bucket compared to the effect of Amazon and eBay.

Regarding companies like Taylor (no idea how they got singled out here, as BB carries Martin, Gibson, and Fender as well, each with their own fair share of imported lines), you can't criticize a business for adjusting to the market. It's sink or swim in this market, and though it's nice to have principles of supporting the small dealers, they also have a business to run. Refuse to acknowledge the tide is changing, you're pretty certain to get washed away before long.

Sad thing for me is that all the small music stores in my immediate area pretty much suck. For the average musician's everyday needs - cables, pedals, tuners, mics, PA gear, amps, etc., - Best Buy is now the best place in town. I hate to say it, but it's true. They stock a good selection of good stuff. Even the guitars they carry are better than the alternative local shops. If it comes down to mail order or best buy, I don't think one is much more evil than the other.

I wish it were otherwise, but the market does what it will. Best thing to do is find a way to take advantage of it. If I weren't so happy in my current location or wanted to expand, I would open up shop right across the street from Best Buy or Guitar Center. I offer something they can't, and the location would deliver a steady stream of business through my door. Of course I don't really want to work on Epiphones and Takamines all day, which would likely be the bulk of that clientele. Still, maybe someday I'll branch out and put a satellite shop there to stick apprentices in as punishment. It wouldn't be fun, but it could certainly make some money.

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Eschew obfuscation, espouse elucidation.

Sad, but true! Here in Charlotte area, about the only thing the area, "privately owned" music stores can make money on is the rental of band and orchestra instruments to school children. What they carry for guitars is, for the most part, pretty poor. They can't afford the inventory costs and the low turnover, and can't compete for price with the bigger stores like GC and Sam Ash.

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Waddy

Photobucket Build Album Library

Sound Clips of most of my guitars

You guys will have to forgive me for constantly going off topic here, but this is something that really hits a nerve in me.



Out of curiosity, how does this differ from most skills you learn in life? Playing an instrument, for instance, requires little more than the ability to recognize the notation and play what is put down. Sight reading is essentially training your body to automatically respond to what you see on the sheet music, no different from Guitar Hero or any other game. Racing real cars is no different from racing a virtual car except you're just conforming to the physics of the real world as opposed to the physics in the game. I think you really overestimate how much actual intelligence goes into some of the things we often consider "more worthy" life pursuits.

Being a once semi-pro gamer who has taken out time to spend 12-hours a day perfecting my timing, in-game strategies, and studying all the mechanics of the game (yes, we're talking doing math and analyzing efficiency), perhaps I'm a bit biased. But to be honest, I find a single competitive multiplayer game infinitely more thought provoking than playing any piece of music I regularly play. The reason for this is simple. In a multiplayer game, you're dealing with another human being and the variables are constantly changing. What's written on that sheet of music in front of you doesn't change. So which REALLY requires more thought? An argument could be made for musicians that do a lot of improvisation and I can greatly respect that because it does require thought, but the fact is that most music in this world isn't improvised. Being a musician more often than not means being able to play what someone else has written.


Believe me when I say that there are a LOT and if you've played any number of games, I'm surprised you haven't encountered them.


Once again, this is bad as opposed to pushing the right key on the piano that corresponds to the next note in the song written on the sheet of paper in front of you?

If you really think about it, video games aren't so far apart from things we do everyday in life. Yes, you can say that a FPS game is largely about reflexes and trained precision, but that's looking at the game in a very shallow way. You could equally argue that a real life battle is all about reflexes and trained precision, but does that mean fighting in Iraq requires little thought? Of course not. There is a strategy behind all of the point-and-shoot fighting and those reflexes and precision are required to execute that strategy. The same applies to a game of basketball, for instance. While personal ability plays a great part, I think it'd be foolish to argue that there's no thought in the game. There are plays and those plays have to be thoughtfully designed around the abilities and attributes of your players.

Of course there are always people who play video games completely based on these reflexes with no thought whatsoever, but you'll never see them in any high position in the gaming community because they can't compete with the other players that ARE thinking. These gamers are pretty much the guys playing a casual game of basketball in the park as opposed to people that play on a somewhat organized level. By using these gamers to describe the level of thought and skill required in gaming, what you're essentially doing is taking a look at the guy that plays "Stairway to Heaven" on every guitar in the store and saying that's the extent of thought and skill that goes into music... Or perhaps you yourself are the guy that sits there playing "Stairway to Heaven" mindlessly over and over again and believes that's all music is limited to.

Playing games may not be the most important pursuit in one's life and I most certainly will not argue that it is important at all, but neither is music. They're both forms of entertainment and both are easy on the elementary level and incredibly difficult on the professional level... Think before you criticize.



Maybe it's just a generational thing (no idea how old you guys are), but gaming today is no joke. Go try to get on a professional gaming circuit or even play EVE ONLINE (online RPG) and try to be competetive for 6 months and tell me how easy it is and how little thinking or skill are required... I'll be smiling in the background while you're spending hours to make spreadsheets for just about everything in EVE. If you think just because it's an RPG it's all about allocating time, you'd be in for quite the rude awakening I guarantee.

Seriously..

Maybe it's just all the years arguing with my mother, but it really irks me...

It's counterintuitive, and it works like magic. People are generally more afraid of making a purchase if they haven't comparison shopped...so this lets them feel like they're savvy without risking them buying at some other company's store. It's fake competition, for the benefit of the company! (Interestingly enough, comparison shopping is actually inversely proportional to satisfaction with purchase!)

Case in point:
Future Shop (which might be a Canada-only chain) and Best Buy are owned by the same company, and they sell the same products. They just built a new Future Shop and a new Best Buy here in Halifax which face eachother across a parking lot. They were built and opened essentially simultaneously. They both have a price-match-minus-percentage guarantee...so they stock almost identical, but slightly different, items and on those where there must be overlap they have identical pricing.

Manufacturers help out the chains with respect to pricing and price matching by making slightly different models of their computers for every different chain. The HP computers at Staples are all slightly different than the ones at Future shop and slightly different than the ones at Best Buy, etc. Just a little more RAM in this one or a slower DVD drive, slightly larger HDD, etc etc. Since the products aren't 'the same', nobody needs to worry about matching someone else's price.

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Bob Garrish
Former Canonized Purveyor of Fine CNC Luthier Services

Hey Hesh wonderful story man thanks for sharing.

I hesitated even opening this thread b/c I thought it was going to be a joke in that BB was selling instruments of the quality of Wal Marts brand but Martin, Gibson and Taylor? Wow!

Well I am not surprised really. My friend who owned the local music store that I did repairs for here has been bullied by Taylor and Gibson to sell more and more for too long and had to give it up. He converted his retail music store to a school of music that sells one line of student guitars (Washburn) and accessories, all the money being in lessons. But that's another story. It was a great place to hang out and every night some of the instructors would gather with some of the shoppers and or students and just jam and offer advice etc... I will miss that very much.

I don't like the Wal Mart business model for all the reasons mentioned in this thread. But it is also true that even before the Internet we had snail mail catalogs.

I walked into best buy the other day here in anchorage. Couldn't believe it when I saw the new music department. Walked out with a taylor gs5. It was well humidified, setup just right, and had a beautiful WRC top on it. I have had it for a month now and cant put it down. Payed 1750 for it.

I too buy local when possible but will not walk away from a smokin deal on a great guitar. Just my 2 cents.

Craig