Guitar Center reviews

2.8

41% would recommend to a friend

(2,726 total reviews)
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Gabe Dalporto

28% approve of CEO

24% positive business outlook

Guitar Center has an employee rating of 2.8 out of 5 stars, based on 2,726 company reviews on Glassdoor which indicates that most employees have an average working experience there. The Guitar Center employee rating is 21% below average for employers within the Retail & Wholesale industry (3.5 stars).

Reviews by job title

3K reviews
1.0
Jul 11, 2025
Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook

Pros

Employee discount, most coworkers are amazing people

Cons

How do we even begin? This place has been slowly chipping away at labor and commission and putting unbearable pressure on staff to produce more and more and more. It’s never enough! Meetings consisted of corporate trigger words and regurgitated nonsense on a weekly basis, essentially monkeys ooing and aaahing “ooo loOK biG nUmBur, vErY NiCE (clap clap)”. We need 3 completely different systems to do one simple task and it’s embarrassing to have billionaire company with such antiquated systems, the new systems suck too don’t worry! Stupid little updates that no one asked for yet the ONE function we did ask for over and over again for years is unattainable for some reason apparently. Ask yourselves why only 3/15 stores have your arbitrary minimum number, it’s because it’s impossible to actually do business with you! You rely on the perfect scenario that only exists in your head to pan out with real lives, it’s insane! I also had the laziest store manager in existence. Would sit in their office all day and look at gear and cars they wanted, always taking personal calls. Would complain that no one had their work ethic but they’d do everything to get out of doing anything. Severely misunderstands what a store manager actually means; you’re gonna have to burn sometimes, you’re gonna have to pick up calls and make sales too. Especially when there’s 1 person on the floor.

2.0
May 16, 2025
Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook

Pros

- Employee discount - Good relationships with coworkers - Good relationships with lessons customers

Cons

The company is just so poorly managed from the top down. I lost count of how many new things were promised by corporate in order to streamline the lessons business and make my job significantly easier that simply never happened. The weekly conference calls make the poor management glaringly obvious - "good job you made number go up! everyone look at number and also make number go up! yay big number!" - That is pretty much the intelligence level you can expect from upper management. Aside from my part of the business, which improved dramatically because I was good at it, literally nothing else improved in the 2 years that I worked there. Note that if you have a degree in anything, no one will bat an eye. They do not value intelligence, only your ability to do grunt work, make numbers look good, and sell insurance plans and credit cards. It's just sad, Guitar Center wants to do it all--guitars, drums, keyboards, pro audio, DJ, production, lessons, repairs, rentals, used & vintage--but they will never be able to cover all these areas successfully as long as they keep cutting labor and offloading part time responsibilities to full time managers. Obviously the pay is laughable, this is retail so don't expect anything competitive. I was there for the experience, and I guess it was cool for a while. But whenever I talked to people with regular jobs, they were shocked at my workload and how stressed I was all the time.

2.0
Mar 23, 2023
Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook

Pros

• The discounts on gear and the relationships you build with the customers • Insurance is actually really good

Cons

• Constant micromanaging • Basically an extended warranty company, more important to sell a useless insurance plan that's impossible to use than to sell the actual item • No possibility of actual growth in the company • The extent of your training is "figure it out"; there is no training whatsoever, the system is so outdated and barely working • The new pay structure is the absolute worst pay structure I've ever heard of for any salespeople in any line of sales ever • Every store is severely understaffed, there is no good merchandise at any store, everything has to be ordered, defeating the entire purpose of a brick and mortar store • Impossible to make a living as a salesperson, it is required to have a second or third job just to make ends meet • Purposely sabotaged by corporate

Viewing 31 - 33 of 2,726 Reviews

Glassdoor has 2,790 Guitar Center reviews submitted anonymously by Guitar Center employees. Read employee reviews and ratings on Glassdoor to decide if Guitar Center is right for you.