Guitars

I love guitars.

I have since I was in the 11th grade. Playing, buying, or fixing them, I just love guitars. Guitar Center is the primary place I go to satisfy this addiction of mine and like any junky, I just can’t get enough.

One think I have learned since I picked up the hobby is something that has remained true to this day: never trust the comments on guitarcenter.com. No matter what type of guitar (acoustic, electric, hollow body, solid body, vintage, or brand new) the comments will always be five out of five stars with a short rant on how the guitar produces the music of the gods.

If I were to base my purchase solely on the comments left on guitarcenter.com I would never be able to choose an instrument because they are all made out to be the greatest guitars to ever be crafted by human hands.

It gets ridiculous too, after a quick search of the site I wasn’t able to find a front-page review lower than 4 stars on most of their selection.

A five star review of an Epiphone AJ-100CE Acoustic-Electric Guitar posted anonymously read, “I recommend this guitar for anyone that can't afford a really expensive one. It sounds and feels great. I do not regret buying this!”

Tell me if that sounds like a real person, or a person working for Gibson (the parent company that owns Epiphone) to try and boost sales of that instrument.

I can’t take a comment seriously unless it’s negative in some way. One left by Bernie T. on the same guitar read a little differently saying, “I just received my new AJ-CE100 and I’m quite disappointed due to the 6th, 5th, 2nd and 1st strings actually touching the first fret. It is not producing any "rattle" or "buzz" sound, but no note at all???I have to use a capo for it to produce a proper note! With the capo on, it actually produces a good quality sound, but I paid for a guitar that didn’t need a capo on it to get it to produce good music!!!” – the spelling/grammatical errors make it a tad more believable too.

This practice of purely positive comments on most of their guitars plays right into Keen’s flattening of culture. If everyone is on a level playing field on the web, then the honest opinions of average people will get shoved aside for more favorable opinions from PR reps and paid yay sayers. It makes it impossible to tell what’s really going on sometimes when it comes to things like buying goods or determining the quality of an object because if a product is genuinely excellent, it cannot stand above the rest. At the same time if the product sucks, it will have positive reviews or no reviews at all.

Guitar Center has a flawed system in place for anyone just trying to buy a good guitar. The only real and honest way to purchase one is to go to the store, play a bunch, and find the one you love.