L.A. Music

It’s been a long, LONG time since I have picked up my trust axe (guitar to the less musically inclined) and rocked out. Of course by axe i mean acoustic guitar and by rocked out I mean gentle finger the strings melodically in an effort to make sweet sweet music!
Upon paying a visit to LA Music this summer a deep sense of guilt and longing filled my soul as I realized I had forgotten my true passion — music.
That’s what LA Music is all about, a passion for music. Those who have that passion work here and those who share that passion come from far and wide to visit their massive store in Port Credit (located on the EAST side). Folks aren’t just walking in the door to shop here, they’re logging on from their homes across the globe and shopping online!
While I was only browsing the day I ventured in, I know where I am coming from now on when I want supplies for my own musical endeavors whether they be upkeep (strings, bags, picks etc) or perhaps a long overdue upgrade in equipment.
Staff her are amazingly friendly and helpful, and even as a casual tire kicker, they were more than happy to answer all my silly musical questions with flair and expertise. It’s this style of customer service that builds trust with customers so that when they day comes for a major purchase decision (new drums, guitar, bass or Ukelele) you come back to the guys who spent time chatting when you weren’t able to spend a dime.

I’m a guitar player, so this review just deals with that part of the store.
I’ll start with the good: LA Music has a great selection of instruments. They stock a number of very high end models of the lines they carry. It’s a big store with a lot of stock, which is great.
Here’s the bad, and unfortunately there’s a lot of it: When I walked into the acoustic guitar room, it seemed like everything they had was low or mid-​tier models. Turns out there’s a room, about the size of a walk-​in closet where they keep acoustics over $ 1500. From what I could see through the window, there were probably about 30 guitars in there, but it was tough to see. The door to this room is locked unfortunately, so I couldn’t get in there to see what they had. I found it a bit annoying to have the nicer instruments locked away.
In the back I found another room where they kept all the upper-​end electric guitars. Again, anything over about $ 1500. There were at least a hundred guitars in this room, so I was really interested in getting in there to see what they had.
I found the door locked, again, just like the acoustic guitar closet. When I tried to open the door the sales guy started telling me about the school nearby and how a kid irreparably damaged a $ 16 000 guitar and now they don’t let anyone in that room. I told him I wasn’t a high-​school student. He said they don’t even let him play the instruments in that room.
You can’t really see much through the door. The Gretsches all face the opposite direction and it’s really hard getting a sense of what’s in there. The sales guy just kept rambling on and on about how tough it is to run a music store when everyone wants to wreck your high-​end gear. By that time I was really annoyed and tuned him out. He just kept yapping on and on.
I was annoyed by the fact that a middle-​aged guy with disposable income, is getting treated like a high-​school kid. It was insulting to be treated like a child. But it was made much worse by the sales guy’s ingratiating chatter, trying to make excuses for why LA Music was going to continue to treat me like a child. And that was exacerbated by the fact that the sales guy made it sound like LA Music doesn’t even trust him, a supposed expert, with an instrument over $ 1500.
It made me feel bad. It was a bad shopping experience. I go to guitar stores to feel good. Like every other guitar player in the world, I go to guitar stores to dream about my next purchase, to discover an axe that I’d never seen before and to sit down, get a feel for the weight of it, the neck, the tone. And like every guitar player on earth, I’ll do this once a month and spend an hour or two in the store, playing a couple dozen instruments. And maybe once a year, I’ll drop a couple grand on something. This is how guitar players shop. If you run a guitar store you not only have to accept it, you should probably encourage it.
But LA Music doesn’t respect or trust their customers enough to even let them get within 10 feet of a guitar that costs over $ 1500. They’ve built a culture of mistrust and they project that onto their customers and they paint everyone with same brush, from the poorest school kid to richest Oakvillian.
If you want people to buy guitars from you. Let them look at the instruments. If you have to treat them like museum pieces (which I admit some of the really high-​end instruments are) at least display them in a way that people can get close enough to drool without getting saliva on the guitars. But for god’s sake, don’t make your customers feel like children for wanting to get close enough to look at the guitars.
If you think the bad experience ends with that, there’s more. It actually starts with the surly prick at the cash register when you walk in. This guy is the exact opposite of a walmart greeter.
Once you’re put on edge immediately after walking in, and after you’re insulted by being treated like a kid, you can have the joy of browsing the cheap guitar room. This room is filled with hundreds of guitars, most of them in the sub $ 1000 range.
Because these are the cheap guitars, they’re just the factory setups, some of which were downright awful. Many of the guitars I picked up had buzzing notes, or high action or corroded strings and every single one was out of tune.
Yet the salesfolk were standing around yapping. I can understand how expensive it would be to restring and set up a couple hundred guitars. But if the store’s empty why not grab a guitar or two and tune it up? Maybe wipe down the strings if they’re a bit crusty?
Anyway, my experience at LA Music was very bad. They made me feel bad about wanting to look at nice guitars. They made lame excuses that continued to insult me. And when they let me play the cheap guitars, they were badly set-​up and out of tune, which further sucked any remaining joy out of guitar shopping.
If you go to guitar stores to add a little joy to your life, avoid going to LA Music. I won’t be back.