Guitar Center Grand Opening: What Should I Expect?

I haven't seen or heard any advertising for this, but are the sales for grand openings decent or just 10% off the usual stuff?

Probably the same exact price as any other store that's already open. They'll advertise a big "grand opening sale" and show the 10% off retail price...even though it's their default price.

Maybe they won't. But as 2 years of (unwated) monthly ads from them have told me, they probably will.

I was hoping to score a 2-tiered V-stand, but if there price is the same as everyone else's I might as well get it online & save the tax, which is hefty around here. Thanks for the scoop.

I forgot to mention--the other local chain changed its name from "Ben Jack's Arkansas Music" to "Ben Jack's Guitar Centers". I'm pretty sured they're scared crapless right now.

There's a local guitar shop that used to be called Guitar Centaur until the GC legal goons made them change it:

Well, they'd better start focusing on customer service ... 'cause GC's is for sh-t!

You should check online before you go to the store. See what they have in store...if it is cheaper go for it, if not you can try to haggle if you'd like. Or if it is the same as online retailers, just go home and order it there.

Assuming there is no special sales price, that is a good bargaining tactic...tell them that it is the same price at their website and others (zzounds, etc), and you can get it there with no tax and free shipping. They will probably just offer to sell it low enough to eat the tax, but you could try to make them go lower...ask why you should be buying it there anyways, if they're just making it all the same.

Get in their heads...and keep them out of your pockets.

a waste of time

Depends on where you are. Some GC's are better than others but if your near a major city or marketable environment, then you've probably hit paydirt.

I personally would expect some really depressed Guitar Center workers. I could be wrong.

I wasted 90 minutes of my life waiting and then shuffling through a crowded, chaotic store only to find a "sales rep" who doesn't know what Novation even is and a keyboard room dominated by home keyboards and the usual workstations. No DSI stuff, no Moog, not even any Clavia stuff. All I want from them right now is the power supply for my incoming Nova and I have to order through an authorized dealer to get it.

I should have known better, but I only went with the faint hope of being offered some sort of incredible deal. The only stands in the store were the standard x-stands. I lived in Dallas for 7 years and this store was tiny compared to the ones there, which explains the limited selection. The only keyboard special was a Casio home keyboard and single-tiered x-stands.

People are so desperate around here for a decent shop that the line went from the front and wrapped around to the very end of the building and it took over an hour to get in the front door. I'm not exaggerating when I say there were hundreds of people in line (maybe closer to a thousand). Oh, and you had the wacky guys using the shirt gun on people and a really crappy metal band playing under a tent to people who basically stared at them. It was a miserable experience.

If it was anything like the grand opening in the store in Boise, Idaho or Eugene, Oregon (don't ask me how I ended up going to both, but I did):

Expect lots of mullets, yuppie-butt-rocker breeds who are just waiting to tell the 17 year olds how much better the glory days (the 60s and 70s) were. Think a room-full of Stephen Kays after a hard night of whiskey. It's disgusting!!

I was disappointed by the recent GC buyout news, BTW. I was hoping for a Burger King-GC merger, you know, with that creepy Burger King dude with a mullet holding a Van Halen guitar type of statue protruding halfway over some street.

Best of luck with the GC takeover in your area. It wiped out the music shop scene in Idaho and now mullets and crappy guitar playing litters the streets.

I don't even shop at the local shop (we only have 1 place that carries synths besides the G/C) we have here now. They're friendly, but they don't know anything about keyboards and don't really care. They're fine for guitars and I'm sure they know their stuff, but there's just not a big market for synths here, so they don't worry about that too much.

Yes, waiting in line did suck. Mainly because I had an older lady behind me who just wouldn't stfu and kept cackling on the entire time. Nothing but generic commentary and generalizations mixed with some good ol' country humor. She was much worse than the 14-15 year-olds in front of me who just played grab-ass the entire time.

I don't see myself shopping here in the future unless I need to pick up some accessory right away or, as the Focusrite rep mentioned yesterday, I have to order Novation parts through an authorized dealer and G/C is a Novation dealer.

Some GC's have such a crappy selection they should be closed down. Others can have clavia, DSI, moog, etc. Just depends.

For example, the closest one to me is about an hour. The one to the north in Milwaukee is really poor, the local stores are far better, the two to the south are better but really hit or miss. Sometimes they have stuff, sometimes I spend all of 30 seconds there cause they don't.

I got really good prices on SKB keyboard cases the first month they opened. Was very pleased with that.

I'm not impressed with the quality of the people working there though. Most smaller music stores usually have people working there that know the products. This is so much of a "wal-mart" type store that the people working there seem to be just workers. At least that's what I have gathered so far. But this is also in a new store in Lexington, KY. I'm hoping that this changes and the sales people start learning about what they're selling!

Also, the keyboard area at this store is pretty lame. Sure they have the Fantoms and Motifs, but no Moogs, DSIs, Andromedas - no cool stuff to actually try out. Oh yeah, they have plenty of arrangers. um, wow :-P

As much as the screaming liberal in me absolutely abhors large corporations, many of the guys working in the quite thorough synth section at the Towson (Baltimore) Guitar Center are incredibly knowlegable and helpful. I've never paid full retail when shopping there.

They always hook a brother up.

I'm not black; I'm sorry.

That keyboard section is not owned by Guitar Center. It must be independantly owned, and just stationed within an existing Guitar Center.

Candy, I've found WILD variation in GC's. There's one less than a mile from my house. Not a single interesting thing for the most part. There is another 12 miles from my house, and they usually have a DSI PEK, various Virii, Moogs, Nords, Korgs, etc. Give you one guess which one I hit first when they have their big sales...

So sadly it sounds like your new one is of the former variety than the later. Tis a shame, but it really depends on the synth geek at the store as far as what they stock. I met the guy in Phoenix who was responsible for the great stock they had. He told me that with pride, and you could tell - they had the good stuff.

You might get faster service that way!

CTB, there really doesn't seem to be dedicated keyboard people in this store, but there's a butt-load of staff. The person I dealt with to get my Nova's power supply ordered was in pro audio. However, I will say this--their service was very good when I was there today. They were all trying to help people, which is different than what I experienced when visited some stores in the Dallas area. Dallas, on the other hand, was sometimes a good place to get used stuff. I picked up a Polysix there for $300 about 6 years ago.

This isn't a real synth-savy area, so I'm pretty sure it will be a bare-boned keyboard section dominated by workstations and some other 'boards by the Big 3. I was also told by one of the guys that whenever a store first opens, they're sent the basics in keyboards and once winter rolls around, they get a lot more variety in terms of what they can carry. Although I was let down by the sale, I was pleasantly surprised that they seemed eager to help anyone that was even in the keyboard section.

GC is starting to turn out to be the Walmart of music instruments.

Sam Ash, do something!

Remember Mars Music? Didn't they extend themselves too far in the musical instrument industy?

I think the internet is really making music stores grapple for good footing. Many people are using ebay and online music stores.

Anyone know the story behind what happen to Mars Music? Not sure if they were nationwide. I think they started in Florida. Not sure.

They're no longer around. Went out of business about 5-6 years ago, from what I remember. G/C purposefully built locations near Mars locations in Dallas. It was very Starbucks of them. They didn't really have much that G/C already didn't have and they didn't price match stuff from the Internet. G/C did and probably still does.

I still prefer Sweetwater, NovaMusik, & Analogue Haven as they seem to the be the most knowledgeable when it comes to synths.

Same in the Marietta GC ... they're kind of small, and they have a room the size of a small office for their workstations. They have tons of the home keyboard stuff because that's high margin gear. My guess is about 15 - 20 percent for a Moog or something of that ilk.