House of Guitars

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

House of Guitars,Inc. is a store selling guitars, percussion and related items in Irondequoit, a suburb of Rochester, New York. Billed as the "Largest Guitar Store in the World," it has a prodigious collection of new, used and vintage guitars packed into a few thousand square feet of retail space. Guitars are housed in cases two levels deep with more displayed well above head height on the tops of the cases. Some seem to be for show purposes only, or to add to the atmosphere. Following a staircase an upstairs room sells drums and keyboards and also does repairs. Back rooms and a maze of twisty passages serve as retail space for percussion, amplification, PA's etc, with a large area at the rear, accessible from a rear parking lot, selling CD's and other audio at rock-bottom prices. This area is famously disorganized and may require much digging to unearth the music desired, often turning up unexpected gems. However, this disorganization is actually an illusion as every CD is cataloged in the store's computer system and most CD displays are organized alphabetically. The House of Guitars also has full repair service on all musical instruments and amps. They offer music lessons on all musical instruments.

The store was founded in 1964 and is still owned and run by the Schaubroeck brothers, Armand and Bruce, who keep themselves in the public eye with bizarre video commercials for the store as well as public appearances. Another brother, Blaine also works the store, as do local musicians who are given generous time off to tour with their bands.

The store claims many rock-and-roll personalities as current and former customers. A store shirt can be seen in the 1994 film, "P.C.U." Wes Borland, formerly from Limp Bizkit, was also seen on MTV wearing a House Of Guitars shirt.