The ShadowMusic Web Community

Visitors to brighton may have come across the GAK (Guitar Amp Keyboard) shop in the North Laines district

The business is up for sale with a signboard saying 'Investment opportunity' (which, these days, means offices or flats).

Ray

The odds are that the proprietors have already contacted likely buyers from among their competitors and not found any great enthusiasm for a take-over.

GAK's property in Brighton (there's more than the one address) is likely to be quite desirable, though probably not as a music shop and possibly not as a retail shop of any sort. I hope that B&H City Council have robust conservation area policies in place. It would be a tragedy for the street to lose that frontage.

Be a shame to see that go, my colleague was there a couple of weeks ago. Is the web presence continuing does anyone know.

I was in there last week and noticed the keyboard shop had closed, and the keyboards had been moved to what was the bass guitar area of the main shop!

Ian

I suspect many dealers are having a bad time- Andertons are all at sea with their web site- it doesn't seem to work at all. Probably a good time to pick up a good deal...

A lot of the major Guitar Retailers seem to be getting pretty much overstocked with top of the range
equipment and surely must be treading near to serious cash flow problems in a few cases.
It seems to move stock quicker, that attractive loans or financing similar to motor vehicles could be a solution
on higher price items. Then again they could bite the bullet with massive discounts!!!!

Mike

The only 'winners' in the covid pandemic seem to have been gear4music who cashed in with their slick mail order business when people wanted musical instruments to while away the hours of lockdown. Maybe those instruments, like the puppies and kittens bought as playthings, will turn up on ebay quite soon.

My work regularly took me to Brighton and during my lunch break I would often look around GAK. It was always busy with various would be guitar gods practicing their best riffs.

On one occasion, upon entering the shop, my ears were assaulted by someone in the back of the shop playing very loudly. It was in the part of the shop that I always headed to first so I continued through to find Gary Moore rocking out on a blue Gibson ES-335. No one thought to tell him to turn it down!

I was never a fan of Gary Moore but it was nice to see him.

RayL wrote:The only 'winners' in the covid pandemic seem to have been gear4music who cashed in with their slick mail order business when people wanted musical instruments to while away the hours of lockdown. Maybe those instruments, like the puppies and kittens bought as playthings, will turn up on ebay quite soon.

Gear4music no longer seem to stock most of their advertised stock but rather they appear to be working in conjunction with Thomann in Germany. I've sent at least two items back to Gear4music and recently I bought a Pacifica 612 there and it basically shouldn't have been sold in its condition- frets that needed badly smoothing, a trem that was a real pain to adjust, pickups (Seymour Duncan) that were uneven in response- the humbucker needed its bass string pole screwing right down quite a very long way- the single coils had an over high pole, which brings me onto- why don't Fender make non staggered pickups with the current range of flatter radius necks? I think its G&L for me in the future with their adjustable pole pieces. Fender seem to be stuck in the past with a reluctance to make even simple changes to their line up...unless you perhaps are prepared to pay loads of money for the so called 'custom shop' offerings.

Somerset wrote:My work regularly took me to Brighton and during my lunch break I would often look around GAK. It was always busy with various would be guitar gods practicing their best riffs.

On one occasion, upon entering the shop, my ears were assaulted by someone in the back of the shop playing very loudly. It was in the part of the shop that I always headed to first so I continued through to find Gary Moore rocking out on a blue Gibson ES-335. No one thought to tell him to turn it down!

I was never a fan of Gary Moore but it was nice to see him.

He was probably playing loud because his ears are probably shot!

Regards,
Baz.