Northwest Music & Sound

I make a trek into this ghost town maybe once per year, just to see how things are going. It’s sort of like how you might cruise by your ex’s place to make sure you’re still doing better than they are. I’m not an orchestra guy, so I can’t comment on that portion of the store, but here’s what I did observe:
Guitars:
Pretty sparse. A few lower end Takamine’s and Ovations brought a sliver of hope to their acoustic selection, but the two I grabbed were very poorly set up, so I didn’t play them long. As far as electric guitars go, it gets worse. I left over an hour ago, and I could probably recount to you exactly what guitars they had on the wall. There were a couple Peaveys (including one PRS copy that actually looked sort of cool, but that I remembered from my previous expedition last year), a few Squier Bullet Strats (One of the hangtags read «Squrie»), and an interesting-​looking Tele-​copy from a brand I’d never heard of. I picked that guitar and made my way to the amps, where I discovered there was not a valve amp in the entire store. There were a few off-​brand cheapos, and then a line of brand new Line 6 Spiders, ranging from a small practice amp to a 100W half stack. These amps do an okay job with high gain tones, but they aren’t particularly useful for blues/​country playing.
Bass:
Umm, maybe five, if I’m being generous. Nothing memorable. Trust me.
Drums:
I wish I could recall the brand name of the kits they had, but I can’t. They were priced about the same as Tama’s ImperialStar kits, and they did have some interesting shell finishes, but they weren’t well-​built. They did have a good selection of Pro-​Mark sticks, though.
PA:
Part of the name of the business is «And Sound,» so one might expect a large devotion to, well, sound. Not so. At least, not what was on the floor. They had a few decent Peavey cabs, a single Peavey mixing board (24 or 32 channel, I can’t recall), and that was about it. Oh, and some of the new Line 6 PA speakers.
Bottom line? Nope… That’s all I can say, really. The owner’s son was there, and when I asked him if he had any valve amps, he told me «Well, I have some myself!» And then I got a sales pitch on the Line 6 stuff. I’m saddened by this experience, because Northwest Music used to be a great store (admittedly, it used to be the only store.) But I have found Jacobsen music to be better in literally every single way. I guess nothing’s going to change any time soon. Maybe I’ll update next year.