Haight Ashbury Music Center — Local services in Redwood City

I visited on Oct 23, 2025 to purchase a voice performance microphone that had a built in or separate preamp to plug into my Marshall portable speaker which takes a 3.5mm jack.

The sales person (Rocco 🤷‍♂️) was friendly at first, and pointed to a headset mic with a transmitter and receiver on the shelf. Instead of pulling that down, he decided to look for a smaller inline preamp headset. Their inventory of one was previously sold.

When I returned to the original option, it was gone - being purchased by another customer. When I showed disappointment, Rocco looked irritated and told me he can no longer help me. He added I should do my research, He then told me the store’s policies for no reason whatsoever.

It could just be this salesperson, or the store management that gives them a rather low 3.8 Google rating. It’s too bad, because my son and I were repeat happy customers when the store was owned by Gelb Music. Haight Ashbury Music closed in SF. It will likely go out of business in Redwood City.

I’m taking my business to...

The clerk was great, but. .. .I went to buy strings from an independent music shop. I avoid the giants like guitar center. I've bought all of my instruments and I play from independent shops, bit these guys try to rip you off. They wanted $25.99 for the strings so I told them I'd go somewhere else and the price dropped to $17 as though by magic. Another (possibly the owner) walked behind the clerk that was helping me and told me they were really expensive strings and implied I didn't know what I was talking about. This is my second horrible experience with them. I wanted to buy bass strings and the guy that runs the place told me he would have to charge me for a set up as well and told me that if I knew what I was talking about I wouldn't change my own strings. What? I've been playing the bass for 14 years. What an ass. In any case this is a tourist trap try Noe Valley...

I was unable to leave feedback on Reverb so I decided to leave a review here. Haight Ashbury Music took the time to check their inventory and send me photos of the bass I was interested in to see if the top on it lived up to what I was expecting. While I unfortunately did not go through with the purchase on the bass because I was looking for something different from what they had available, the fact that they took the time to do that for me and to respond to me on Reverb was above and beyond what many shops would do, especially on a holiday weekend where most shops are closed for Memorial Day. Great experience, and hopefully I will be buying something from them...