Best Buy: The New Destination for all Your non-Ric needs

[bitzerguy]

From reports I've heard from others (I don't know myself, no best Buys in Canada) they are stocking everything from AC30's to custom shop Fenders in some of the shops.

Hey Nick : http://www.bestbuy.ca No Store in a store instruments yet though. They have been around in my neck of the woods for three years now. They are part of the group that now owns Future Shop.

It would be interesting to see if they try a music store in Montreal. They could probably compete well against the shops here. With a couple of notable small shop exceptions, stores around here tend to gouge a bit (usually higher prices than MSRP).

[cjj]

I don't think I'll be visiting a Best Buy soon. Us guys in in the official middle of nowhere have to travel over 400 miles to find one, and no telling if there's a guitar store in that one...

[jps]

I don't think I'll be visiting a Best Buy soon. Us guys in in the official middle of nowhere have to travel over 400 miles to find one, and no telling if there's a guitar store in that one...

Aren't you a bit left of the middle of nowhere?

[cjj]

I don't think I'll be visiting a Best Buy soon. Us guys in in the official middle of nowhere have to travel over 400 miles to find one, and no telling if there's a guitar store in that one...

Aren't you a bit left of the middle of nowhere?

Actually, I'm next door to the middle of nowhere...

[blueflamerick]

I checked out the instrument section of the South Coast Metro Best Buy before I moved. It was just like Guitar Center without the high end Gibson stuff. The people working there weren't any more or less knowledgeable than the clowns at GC, and they called me sir instead of man or dude.

[britinvasion]

A friend of mine is a sales rep for a wholesale music supplier. He told me about BB getting into this and I couldn't quite believe it.
I didn't think Gibson would be involved after they canned a lot of small and mid size dealers a few years back. He said they would have the instruments priced pretty much at MSRP. But hey, I could tell the wife I'm running out to pick up a new toaster and come back with a
LP Standard Hmmmm... the wheels are starting to turn

[ricaddic]

You could still buy the toaster when you go to best buy and tell your wife that you got the Les Paul free for buying that perticular brand of toaster, problem solved.

[JakeK]

I'm not a fan of corporations (especially GC), and the best store I think I've ever been to was International Vintage Guitars in New Orleans. It is a Mom and Pop store, which generally are the best.

And now, time for a small rant (please remove this or edit it if it's a problem):
The problem with corporations (and yes, my local music store is a small chain store) is that they don't care about you and/or the instruments/amps/whatever, they care about your money. When I walked into GC in mid-July, I found several guitars with missing screws knobs, and whatnot. And the problem is, is that 80% of the kids are into putting in their SG Faded into an overdriven Marshall or Line6 solid-state stack. They also think Rics suck and they sound terrible driven (a 360/6 sounds better with FUZZ, really)

The best thing about Mom and Pop stores is that they don't care (just) about the money, they care about you and the instruments. And if you want to turn the amp up to 10, you turn it up at least to halfway (4 or 5). They are the best, and always will be. Best Buy is a chain, and therefore, it'll be a carbon copy of GC.

(End of said small rant)

[kiramdear]

Well said, Jake! I couldn't agree more.

Priced at full MSRP, one would expect more than a blank stare in answer to one's questions, for example.