Guitar Center — Local services in Cerritos

This place has employees that are friendly and polite which makes this place very warm and fun to be at. Priscilla one of the employees there is incredible. Victor! The Store Manager here is so kind and very helpful. If you have any questions, he's always happy to help. The 3 stars are all dedicated to Victor and Priscilla, thanks for helping me out the other night!

Now you may ask me why 3 starts? Well if you read my reviews in the past you know how my reviews are honest and well balanced. Although the Employees are great I must say that there are two things that I don't like about this place. These two things are quite major hence why 2 stars are being deducted. What are those two things?

Layout of the Place and it's organization is quite lousy. Compared to other Guitar Centers I've been to, such as Hollywood, Pasadena, Brea and even Pasadena they are all quite neat looking and organized. However on this particular branch they have the Acoustic Guitars hidden on a cave like room. The electric guitars hanging up so high that I literally had stiff neck for looking up all the time while I'm browsing around.

I mean c'mon Guys, for crying out loud the place is called "GUITAR Center" so please if you're going to flaunt instruments then make the Guitars more accessible and easy to see. Unfortunately the piano, keyboard and drums are way more visible than the Guitars. Maybe they should change this particular branch to Piano Center instead of Guitar Center.

Stocks/Supply. Again it's called GUITAR Center then why in the world they only have 2 pieces of Gibson and 4 Martin Guitars. They have Taylor's that are either super expensive or the ones that are entry level. Which makes me wonder how about a musician like me that enjoys and would like to purchase something that are in mid level Guitar. Plus if you want to try something that you saw online that has a good review, you won't able to try it out and see if you're comfortable with it. They can't even order it for stock so if you like something online then you have to order it online and just rely on their 45 days Free Return which is to me a bit of a hassle.

To conclude my review, I should say that this specific branch had great staff however the place's layout is confusing and the selection is quite...

I visit this location every few months and there's always issues with being able to test gear. They have a bank of pedal stations, but they're either never connected or just don't work. Can't find a 1/4" cable to plugin a majority of the time. The keyboard section usually has a majority of the pianos turned off or not connected to a speaker. They arbitrarily lock up guitars of varying price points and in a backwards move, put mid range or high end guitars at the lowest point, while pushing lower end guitars like Squier's, up to the top racks. Have also had employees tell me to turn down when I'm at 1 on the volume, but not attempt to ask if I need help or offer to fix any of the broken/disconnected stations. Are you guys trying to sell instruments or not?

Edit 2/17/2025: Stopped by to check things out for Presidents day sales. Picked up several Squier classic vibe jaguars and jazzmasters that were completely unplayable, with terrible fret buzz on the top three strings. Only the J Mascis signature model was playable out of all the ones I tested. Many instruments were way out of tune, others had terrible fret sprout and sharp fret ends. This is less GC's fault an more the fact that fender is pumping out crap. The boss pedal demo station had to be fiddled with for about 3 minutes before I could get any sound from it. On the plus side, one of the employees mentioned that a riff I was playing sounded cool. It just sucks that it's such a chore to find anything able to be tested properly, and therefore loses sales for the company. They really need to be checking all the demo stations on the regular and reconnecting anything unplugged and resetting pedals and amps to default settings to ensure a proper testing ability by any customer who walks in. Also, employees should be readily available and actively checking in with customers to make sure they're finding things they're looking for and that everything is working as it should be. No excuse yo have guitars out on the floor that are...

I have Guitar Centers closer to me, but as of this visit I feel most welcome at the one in Cerritos. I was looking for a Les Paul Custom or Supreme, and Cerritos was the only store that had a fireburst Supreme within a 50 mile radius. From the moment I walked in, I got a friendly greeting from Pricilla who is also bilingual. I saw her helping some customers in Spanish, and I knew I was in the right place. For starters, they have The Vault. Steve took the guitar out of the glass case and let me play the only Supreme they had for as long as I wanted. He never interrupted me while I was putting this guitar through its paces. Steve was super patient and worked with me on my PRS trade-in. I even left and came back, and it was like I never left. He had to step off the floor, so he connected me with Miguel. From what I understand, Miguel may have been responsible for ordering the Supreme for this store, Good call!!! I was also happy with the trade in price Miguel gave me for my PRS, and because it was Black Friday, I even got an unexpected discount. They didn't even tell me they applied it until I went to pay, and it was noticeably less than I thought it was going to be. Victor is their manager, and all I can say is from my own personal experience leading teams, from a manager's perspective, I saw some great leadership in this store. Once the sale was completed. I spoke with Trevor, one of the onsite techs. I said I just bought this guitar, and I was hoping to get an expert's eye and touch before I left the store. Trevor made time for me. He had work to do, but he recognized that I needed this in walk out of there on Cloud 9. He gave it a once over for me. He said the factory setup was on-point and really only needed a small tweak to the intonation. He also suggested this really cool mix of strings that will give me a little more versatility in my playing. There are several Guitar Centers closer to me, but this is the only one I would consider going back to for any future purchases....