Ode To Guitar Center West Los Angeles

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This past Thursday, the 23rd of January 2025, was an end of an era as they say for the Guitar Center in West Los Angeles at the corner of Pico and Westwood Boulevard. I managed and did corporate sales at a Borders Bookstore years ago up the street at 1360 Westwood Boulevard.  (Remember Borders before Amazon?)  That store closed in January 2010.

I didn’t have to be Nostradamus, and it was easy for one to predict, that one day this enormous store with high overhead costs – and on most visits in recent days was a proverbial ghost town – was going the way of Borders and would eventually Guitar Center would close this store location.  It was just a matter of time.

Over the years, I purchased everything from strings to effects pedals, monitors and speakers for event productions… and, of course guitars and basses, some purchased online and then stopping by for an in-store pickup and others were impulse, on-the-spot purchases. Guitar stores like bookstores build and support communities and enrich the culture, and it is sad when they close their doors or go out of business. Something is lost. Like the guitar player magazines of yesteryear which too are going out of print with the exception of  two publications (Vintage Guitar and Premiere).

If you’ve ever stepped foot in a guitar store, you hear the stereotypical loud cacophonous environment of distorted guitar players hacking their way through a Zeppelin song or the garden variety “shredder” showing off. At Guitar Center in West L.A. there were two opposite ends of the spectrum on the 1st ground level-floor: The Electric guitar rotunda (where they kept the good stuff- the most expensive guitars high up on the wall away from hacks, thieves and browsing bozos with sharp belt buckles and no respect for a premium axe) and the Acoustic Guitar room where I would typically take a left hand turn while the  drowned out overhead speaker sounds of Stone Temple Pilots “Plush” or occasional classic rock song like Rebel, Rebel or insert random Tom Petty here, on the store’s station or playlist.

ONE MORE DOOR DOWN…

But there was one area of the store that it seemed I always had to myself and I could sequester and cloister myself in was their acoustic/classical guitar room. It was in this bathroom-sized room with a glass door that was of least interest and unoccupied by most shoppers or time-killers, and for me, it was the hidden gem of this store.

If this Guitar Center was a ghost town, then the classical room was Mars to most guitarists. It’s like the poetry section of a bookstore when everyone else is fixated on the Bestsellers.

If I had managed this store, I would have cultivated a much more ambient and educational classical guitar experience that was more conducive for the curious. For example, there was one barstool in this room, which is fine for Flamenco, but there was no proper chair with foot rest or classical guitar supports .

The brand selections (Yamaha, Ibanez and Cordoba) were not impressive nor were the tones including the squeakiest and cheapest of strings. The serious classical player or aficionado would head over to Guitar Saloon International and sell their car for their high priced models. . I also realize that classical guitarists are a rare coterie of players. However, to get back to the point…

There was a limited number of books on classical and flamenco guitar – and there are many excellent books – and that section was also another unoccupied area. So, the question arises: How are we cultivating better guitar players if we don’t give them tools and experiences that help them round their playing?  The staff had little or no knowledge of this classical and Flamenco area.

The same goes for the serious Jazz player inspired by Wes Montgomery, George Benson or Kenny Burrell. Guitar Center had  Gibson Hollow bodies, but I rarely, if ever, encountered a player in the store that bent my ear playing one.

Guitar Center did away with their practice rooms, which I think would have been a better choice for demoing guitars and qualifying serious customers who weren’t there to make other customer’s ears bleed and chase them out of there.

 

According to a quote in Guitar.com by Guitar Center’s new CEO Gabe Dalporto

“We have some premium product, but we don’t have enough,” Dalporto explains, a by-product of the company pivot to the entry-level market over the years. “And it’s very hard to experience our premium product because we have our best guitars locked on the top row where you can’t easily get to them. So, if I’m a serious musician and I walk into a Guitar Center, it doesn’t feel like the right place for me anymore.”

Based on my personal and professional experience, Guitar Center has myriad systemic problems beyond “premium product.”  Also, with a city like Los Angeles, you definitely want to keep those high-dollar items out of reach and out of the hands of thieves.

Bottom line, retail is a tough business but I still prefer to be able to walk into a store and test out different instruments before making a purchase.  When I haven’t had that opportunity, I’ve resorted to the instrument demo videos on YouTube to help me make a selection.

Unfortunately, the brick and mortar stores continue to fall like dominoes.

Sam Ash was big news in 2024 with the announcement of their store closings.

Sweetwater by contrast is a strictly e-commerce business model and I have had an overall good experience with them in my past.

According to their CEO comments in Retail Dive  “…a distinction needs to be drawn between generalist purchases for those dabbling in music and more specialist purchases for those more involved in making music…

Then there was the advent of “Gear Advisors.”

I don’t personally need a gear advisor since I personally research, read interviews, and listen to demos online to assess what suits my needs. I found that my “gear advisor” is not genuinely interested (which is everything in sales) and marginally helpful if I’ve done my own advising myself.

I hope Guitar Center weathers the storm and Gabe Dalporto can bring them out of “the dark ages” as he has stated, but I remain skeptical based on where the music industry is going.  For now, I will always have a fondness for the guitar store experience – like bookstores of the past– and it’s  a shame that they’re closing quicker than Hollywood movies– and that a particular Guitar Center gem in West Los Angeles was the latest to take the fall.

The Guitar Center located in West Los Angeles on the corner of Pico and Westwood.

 

 

 

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