Shopping online is all about convenience and ease. Whether you’re looking for a new guitar, an amp, or perhaps some plugins and software, you can get it all from a host of online music gear stores.
Online shopping however does present a bit of a problem – you do not have the opportunity to test or handle what you’re buying. You are at the mercy of the often-incomplete descriptions on the website and sometimes blurry images for all the required details.
Your shopping experience does not always have to be unpleasant. In fact, you can find great products with excellent after-sale support if you know where to go.
Three of the most frequented online musical instrument retailers in the US are Sweetwater, Guitar Center, and Musician’s Friend. Personally, I prefer Sweetwater most of the time for several reasons, which I will discuss in detail below.
In a nutshell, I prefer Sweetwater over either GC or MF, because of –
Table of Contents
A Little Bit of History
Guitar Center
Guitar Center is the largest music retail chain in the United States, boasting 294 locations as well as a comprehensive online store. The company was founded by Wayne Mitchell in 1959 as ‘The Organ Center’ and sold electric organs for both church and home use.
It then became ‘The Vox Center’ in 1964 and finally ‘The Guitar Center’ in the late 1960s.
Musician’s Friend
Musician’s Friend was founded in 1983 by the Eastmans. From its humble beginnings in a suburban garage, the couple along with Al Dinardi grew the business into the vast company it is today.
It is important to note that Musician’s friend is owned by Guitar Center (bought for $50 million in 2000) although the two companies still run separate websites under their respective brand names.
Guitar Center is now a Bain Capital-owned company, which means both GC and Musician’s Friend are now owned by Bain Capital. Bain Capital bought GC in 2014 when GC could no longer cope with its overwhelming debt.
Sweetwater
Sweetwater was established in 1979 by Chuck Surack, as he hoped to escape the touring musician’s life. Initially, Sweetwater offered remote recording services in a Volkswagen Microbus and a recording studio at his home.
The company slowly but steadily grew into the industry leader in online instrument sales in the US over the next few decades. The Sweetwater Campus in Indiana now includes corporate offices, a distribution center, performance venues, and recording studios.
The Website Experience
The first, and by far the most important aspect of online shopping is the user experience. Nothing is quite as frustrating as trying to navigate your way through the convoluted maze that some sites present you with.
You want a site that offers an easy-to-read modern layout with relevant imagery. People like pretty things, even when they’re shopping online. The effort that an online store puts into its website will give you an idea of the quality of service that you can expect.
The site should be easy to navigate and must offer an easy registration and checkout procedure. Advanced search options, filtering features, and sorting options is a huge bonus for any website.
To get an in-depth experience, I shopped for a Fender Standard Stratocaster and a Schecter Stiletto Extreme 4 on all three platforms to better understand and experience each platform’s pros and cons.
As far as website experience is concerned, the clear winner for me is Sweetwater. Your search result will return the most relevant options first, while on GC and Musician’s Friend I had to do some browsing through the search results.
Product information, specs, and photographs are extremely important when you buy online. You want to see as much as possible and know as much as possible about an instrument before buying it, especially if you won’t be able to handle it yourself before purchase.
GC and Musician’s Friend was at a considerable disadvantage here. The information and specs are limited and photographs, while offering closeup views, were not quite detailed enough and it was difficult to really get a good look at the instrument as a whole.
The Sweetwater site was easy to navigate and the different categories were well organized and clean while offering much more detailed product information. The enlarged magnifying glass view of each instrument will ensure that you really see every little detail of the guitar.
I also appreciated the Sweetwater Guitar Gallery detailing the process of instrument care including a 55-point inspection, climate control and repacking, and shipping standards. This gives its customers peace of mind when shopping online.
Musician’s Friend and Guitar Center both have great websites, but I found the websites slightly less navigable and a little convoluted at times. Musician’s Friend and Guitar Center also took a bit longer to load search results.
Customer reviews are an extremely important part of any product sold online or even in store. Guitar Center and Sweetwater pull ahead here with reviews readily available, while on the Musician’s Friend site, you must really search for it if it’s at all available.
Keep in mind that most of these reviews are based on the instrument only and not necessarily on the quality of service or the store.
Product Variety
Any musician will know the importance of having options when shopping for an instrument. This is even more true for online shopping since the main draw is the possibility of endless options. In-store shopping is always more limited with certain products only available at certain branches.
All three sites offer an impressive range of instruments in all price ranges. Whether you’re looking for a more exclusive and expensive Martin or an entry-level Yamaha guitar, you are guaranteed to find it on all three platforms.
A slight advantage however goes to Guitar Center – the fact that they have close to 300 stores across the states means they have better stock availability while the online option for Sweetwater and Musician’s Friend often requires you to wait while a product is ordered in.
GC does however have a rather bad reputation of destroying local competition by coming in with great specials once they open a store. When the little guys are unable to compete and are forced to close, the prices shoot up. This is not relevant to online shopping, but I think it is worth considering when making a choice.
GC has one great advantage though, and that is its used section which is considerably larger than the other two platforms’ offerings. Again, this could largely be attributed to the hundreds of locations that ensure Guitar Center is always able to buy back used gear to resell.
A special feature offered on Sweetwater however is the exclusive finish option. This means that certain brands partnered with Sweetwater to provide exclusive color and finish options that you will not find anywhere else.
Models for the exclusive finish option include (but are not limited to) Les Paul, Stratocasters, Telecasters, and PRS guitars. This option gives the Sweetwater platform a feeling of exclusivity which is a great plus when you start moving into the higher price range.
Customer Service
Now we get to one of the ultimate tests of any company, online or location. Customer experience.
Customer service has never been as important it is today – with companies facing more competition than ever before, and many products having fixed pricing, it is really the customer service that will sell your brand to buyers around the world.
It is always frustrating dealing with a customer service representative who does not have the relevant experience or understanding of the product. Though there are those representatives with the necessary expertise, it is up to fate to decide if you will be speaking to the novice or the expert.
There is no doubt that Sweetwater is the industry leader when it comes to customer service. The service experience is just vastly superior – not only to other online music stores but also to all other online shopping platforms.
Sweetwater assigns ‘sales engineers’ to each customer once a purchase has been made. They will be your go-to guy (or girl) for all queries. They assist you with choosing the right gear for your needs, follow up on shipping and delivery, assist with technical advice, and sometimes just discuss gear and about your own musical pursuits in general.
These ‘engineers’ are experts. They test all instruments and receive regular training to stay on top of all the latest music gear technology. This gives you great peace of mind – knowing that you will be dealing with someone who understands exactly what you need and how to fill that need.
Then, of course, they add a bag of candy for every purchase. Receiving your order from Sweetwater is a bit like a birthday or Christmas every time.
You also get a handwritten thank you note just to make it even more personal.
To be fair, this is not everyone’s cup of tea. Some people find the constant phone calls and emails to be annoying and unnecessary. Some prefer a simple, minimum contact scenario where they get what they ordered and that’s that. zZounds is a nice alternative preferred by most of them.
With zZounds, you still get fast, free shipping (without the candies) and extremely competitive pricing, but without any human interaction (if you prefer that).
GC, unfortunately, has a very different reputation. The sales reps are often completely uninformed and unable to answer very basic questions. They sometimes make false promises about matching and beating the prices of their competitors.
GC employees have been known to provide terrible advice. The reps are nice enough and usually friendly, except maybe for the pro audio department. It’s just that they quite frankly lack the knowledge and experience to help in a meaningful way.
As with all things in life, this does not apply to every single representative that ever worked for GC in all its history. There are always exceptions, but it seems they are few and far between these days.
Musician’s Friend has built up a similar reputation in recent years. In addition, it is difficult to get information from them once you place an order. This, combined with its tendency to take longer than guaranteed delivery times, has really been bad for Musician’s Friend’s reputation.
GC and Musician’s Friend are often referred to as the Walmart of music stores, not exactly a stellar review by any standard.
I personally love the extra attention that I get from Sweetwater, as do many other artists.
Pricing and Shipping
The prices of popular guitar and music gear products are standardized. This means the price is fixed and will cost you the same on all three platforms. Deals and specials however are unique agreements between the store and the manufacturer/distributor and will mean you could get a special price on an item on one of the three sites.
A good example is Musician’s Friend’s ‘Stupid Deal of The Day’. This deal offers a huge discount on a selected item. So, if you’re lucky, you could end up getting your dream instrument at a much lower price.
With Sweetwater, the financing offers can often be extremely lucrative, especially with their Sweetwater credit card. This is matched only by zZounds with their zero-credit-check financing option.
Another aspect of pricing is of course the cost of shipping. Once again, Sweetwater takes the crown here. Musician’s Friend and Guitar Center offer free shipping on select items, but most of the larger items will incur a hefty shipping fee.
Sweetwater, on the other hand, offers free shipping on most of its products with only certain exclusions. Sweetwater also does not have a minimum purchase amount and any product in stock, regardless of size and price, will qualify for free shipping. This comes in handy when you only need some cheap items, like a set of strings or a capo.
For items that will incur shipping fees, Sweetwater offers reasonable rates. Once you have entered a Zip Code on the checkout page, you will be able to see the shipping cost and charges payable.
With Sweetwater you can expect to wait around 1-3 business days for any orders to the continental United States and 6-7 business days for orders to Alaska and Hawaii. Guitar Center and Musician’s friend are similar with 3–5-day delivery waiting periods.
But in my personal experience, I’ve received next-day deliveries with Sweetwater far more often than either of the other two. They also call you after you place the order to let you know about its estimated time of shipping, which is a nice touch.
One advantage with Guitar Center is that they offer you the option to pick up the item from your nearest Guitar Center store. If you do have a GC nearby, you can get many items on the same day and others on the next day. This is unique to GC, only made possible by their considerable physical presence across the country.
Warranty
Musician’s Friend offers a 2-year free warranty on guitars and basses. This is on top of the manufacturer’s own product warranty. Sweetwater offers the same 2-year free warranty on top of manufacturer warranty, which they aptly refer to as the “Total Confidence Coverage”.
Guitar Center has “Pro Coverage” for an additional fee (it’s exactly what it sounds like, an insurance plan). The fee depends on how long you want the instrument to be covered. Musician’s friend has a similar option which they call “Musician’s Friend Gold Coverage”. This covers the customer for environmental factors and accidents.
Return Policy
Nothing boosts consumer confidence more than a great returns policy. Knowing that you can return an item that you’re not satisfied with makes it much easier to fork out the money when buying your instrument.
Regardless of all the photographs, videos, expert testimony, and customer reviews, you will not know exactly what you’ve bought until it is in your own hands, and you can play and test it to see if it is a good fit.
The Sweetwater return policy offers a 30-day hassle-free option to return the product if you are not completely satisfied for whatever reason. Used items have a 90-day return period. If your product qualified for free shipping, and you’re returning simply because you didn’t quite like the product, you will be liable for the shipping costs to return it. That is unless the product has a defect or you were sent a wrong product.
Guitar Center has a 45-day satisfaction guarantee. This gives the consumer 45 days to return a product for a full refund. Once again, you will be paying for the return shipping costs. It is important to note that there are some limitations with this policy, based on the product you bought.
Musician’s Friend also offers the 45 Day Satisfaction Guarantee return policy. The difference between Guitar Center and Musician’s Friend is that in-store purchases from a Guitar Center store makes the return or exchange policy much smoother and in most cases, free. You simply take it back and demand your refund.
Both Musician’s Friend and Guitar Center often take a very long time when it comes to exchanges or refunds. While the policy allows for the return and full refund, getting it done is not quite that easy. In this regard, Sweetwater is much better.
Final Word
So, which store is the best option for you? Whether you're primarily interested in Sweetwater vs Musician's Friend, or Guitar Center vs Sweetwater, here's my take on this...
In my opinion, it is Sweetwater that wins the prize as the best online music store. I love its website layout, shipping (speed & policies) and excellent customer service (they go above & beyond in helping you choose the gear that you would actually benefit from the most).
Oh, and did I mention the free candies with every order!?
In the end, it’s not only the price that’s important – you must consider the overall satisfaction of the shopping experience and the support you will enjoy after your purchase.
All these industry people clamoring in the comments make me lmao. You work for the guitar center. You’re going to shill for Guitar Center. You work for Sweetwater. You’re going to shill sweetwater. Everyone knows GC is trash and that they are desperately trying to hire talent away from other companies to make it better. But they are still just going to copy the playbook Sweetwater perfected. Exceptional customer service, salespeople, and legitimately being deeply engrained in the industry. GC can do whatever blah blah it wants, and it can basically say, “We’re trying to exactly copy the market position of sweetwater.” but at the end of the day, Guitar Center is the McDonald’s of music stores. Sweetwater is the Five Guys. Done.
Most of the info in this article is not correct and out of date. Ive been doing music retail for 21 years. A top sales person well respected and one of the best in the country. Perfect customer service is impossible and GC is not owned by Bain capital for quite sometime. GC has 48 months no interest every month and 5% back every purchase. Same warehouse house as MF and more exclusive gear. There are a lot of knowledgeable folks there. Your making a judgment call categorizing a whole chain because a few newer people aren’t as experienced as you like. This article is not the truth. At Sweetwater you have to ship back gear when it breaks and wait for it. You can’t just go to a store. Plus GC has in house repair, lessons, rentals and financing and leasing options.
I’ve worked for Musicians Friend! They had a giant warehouse. Incredible size! They also would fulfill Guitar center, Music123, Band and orchestra orders! Between these places the only difference is customer service! They are packaged and shipped from the place and same staff for all four companies.
I would say that Guitar Center has gone far and beyond what I expect from a music store retailer, concerning all of my many purchases. I just returned three 50s Gibson Les Pauls due to issues (one was sold as used with in excellent condition and arrived in fair condition with no COA, picture, or multi tool (all scratched on back, one small ding on the front). They first discounted it almost 1,000, then waived the 24.00 shipping fee when I still decided to return it). The managers for me, have always been very helpful, too. There are issues with old stock being sold as new IMO, but they’ve always returned these items free if charge and resent new items when necessary. I have had multiple issues with Sweetwater. One time I called my “Rep” and left a message asking if three items I was considering were available at a possible discounted price. An hour later my credit card alerts me of a purchase. I never said send those items; I was just wondering if they could be discounted. Then when I called and finally got a hold of this rep, I was told they already shipped, and to send them back. Then once that happened, I never got credited for the items it shipping. I kept calling saying that I’m looking at my statement and NO, I haven’t been credited back (over two to three weeks). Finally, I sent an email stating that I would be disputing the charge with my credit card issuer, and at some point that day I got a message stating Oh, I made a mistake and you’ll be getting you’re credit by tomorrow. Problem is if I didn’t look into the refund, multiple times, I would have paid for items that I didn’t keep (and it felt like he was trying to scam me). There’s been other issues too. That said, after saying that I would never shop Sweetwater again, I just bought the 4th attempt at my 50s Gibson Les Paul from them (last chance, and they do seem nice over there), as GC sent me, what I believe to be 3 used guitar (1 I knew was used, but they completely mislead me on condition, as the pics were small and blurry), sold as new from their distribution center (the two had factory tape on the box, but looked resealed) and all guitars had blemishes and we’re dirty on the pickups and tailpiece as if they were cleaned up but missed those areas (returns to store were free though and no issues). When I buy new, I want new, especially at the price of a Gibson (at least no dings). Finally, i take issue with Sweetwater having the best shipping and returns, as GC ships the same day if ordered before noon (and that has been the case for me), and returns are FREE if brought into your local store, which one can be found mostly anywhere. Also, with SW, it seems my guitar won’t ship for an extra day or two, if it still has to go through the Sweetwater inspection (and since I set up my guitars myself, other than blemishes, I don’t need their inspection, just my guitar to arrive promptly as possible. And you stated SW arrive in 1-3 days. That seems misleading, as I’m across the country from then, so unless they’re giving me free 2-day shipping, how are you coming to that 1-3 day delivery time? It will probably be 5 days shipping to me.
Sweetwater is now owned by Providence Equity Partners making it no better than GS or MF… I find their prices higher than other stores especially Thomann in Europe. You can get a low price there even with shipping and tariff added…
Sweetwater doesn’t have the gear I want in stock. I just pre-ordered a synth from them on October 18th and they still don’t have it in stock. I canceled the order and ordered the synth from Musician’s Friend yesterday. They shipped it today with UPS tracking number, and I’ll get it this Tuesday. I prefer Musician’s Friend.
I’ve worked for G. C. for many years, here in Atlanta and in New Jersey…
I’m looking to do on line sales or customer support from
Choices are great to have… but my passion has always been Vintage, Pre Owned Gear… because we always have fantastic, deals! Super cool and often times “Fine” Instruments due to our huge inventory with almost 300 locations Coast to Coast… I hope to be back with G. C. soon… then I’ll be able to assist my fellow musicians in finding the gear that you are looking for… plus some good ideas
Later ….Mark
Oops it missed one word…..
I looking to do online sales/ customer support from “Home”
Thanks….
I have had only great experiences with Sweetwater. And while it is true they all post the same prices, I have always been able to negotiate a better price on large (read, expensive…) items at Sweetwater. Having also done some extensive shopping at GC/MF, I have recently resolved to eliminate GC/MF as a viable retail source due to the fact you can never depend on the quality of the item you are sent. I have had to return guitars (3) and other electronic purchases both from online and stores for either not working or being of poor build quality or banged up. If you’ve ever played any GC instruments off the rack, you’ve probably noticed how abused they get yet GC still sells these items as new. Sorry I strayed, Sweetwater.
Sweetwater was supposed to send me a brand new Ibanez RG. They sent me B stock. 55 point inspection my a$$. Don’t forget to check zzounds for your next purchase.
Sweetwater, charged me, or better yet synchrony charged me for a guitar for 2 years that I never received, a prs schizoid guitar. I ordered it through sweetwater then heard bad reviews on it so I cancelled the order and Sweetwater never sent the credit back to synchrony so synchrony started charging me a monthly fee, and I never receive the guitar. I open a dispute and lost and still had to pay for it and never received it I was very upset and neither Sweetwater or synchrony could ever figure out whose fault the mix-up was so I just got screwed.
I have been using Musicians Friend for years. I have never paid for shipping on purchases of any items and never paid for shipping on returns for any reason and I always have been very happy with the quality and condition of what I purchased. I agree the website could be better. Seems like the prices are pretty much the same on all, but I do occasionally see offers for guitars that are only available through Musicians Friend.