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I get that the guy is trying to rebrand Guitar Center as a "premium experience" or whatever but saying dumb shit like "you see an awful lot of $300 guitars" is just bad marketing.
CEOs truly are worthless to everyone but the investor class.
Fuck, $300 guitar is fancy for me. I got lucky with my current one in that the seller had no idea what they had.
Edit; I also paid $300 for a Schecter they had and then resold it back to them a year later for $200 effectively renting a guitar for a year for $100.
I'm with you. I really only buy cheap instruments. I do know that once you get into the pro-sumer range they can get really costly.
I just feel like that line from the CEO comes off as really classist and shitty, even if he is trying to signal that he wants to get those higher end customers in the door.
Oh yeah, for sure. I figure anyone with the CEO job title forgets or has never experienced being a broke ass.
Professional guitar players aren’t buying from Guitar Center. Guitar Center, Sam Ash, etc. make their money off of entry level players. Guitar Center should focus on selling as many $100 guitars to as many teenagers as they can. Or the next article we read about them will be “Guitar Center declares bankruptcy”
I don't think it's at all about the price point of the guitars but the expertise of the people working there. I don't go to a guitar center to just buy a guitar. I go there to find expertise about which guitar to buy after a little conversation with a knowledgeable employee who can direct me to what I need.
I don't go to Best Buy anymore because they went the wrong way. Instead of hiring the best most knowledgeable people, they hire bottom of the barrel monkeys that could not help me if they studied for 10 years.
Yeah but people who just want a cheap piece of crap to try learning on these days probably buy off Amazon.
The only time I go to stores for stuff is when the cheap shit doesnt cut it anymore and I want to hold the more expensive items in my hand and see if I think the money is worth the quality or if its just the same factory with a different sticker and markup.
Quickest way to turn enthusiasts off to you is to gatekeep when they’re still excited to learn
I own/have owned just about every kind of guitar (in about 50 years of playing), and today’s “$300 guitars” can be fucking amazing.
Most recently, for example: a new Jet SSH Strat…for $200 that (with a little home TLC) I’d put up against many over $1.5k instruments. A new Squire Custom Vintage Jazzmaster (open box) for $300 that smokes (see Chris Buck vid on these).
The market is fundamentally different today and it doesn’t take a lot of money to have an A+ rig.
Guitar Center is the Best Buy of music equipment.
I’ve been playing for 30 years. There’s nothing inherently wrong with a $300 guitar.