Old school music store complete with instrument rentals, top instructors, music books, jewelry and musical goodies and gifts. Warm and professional service.
cool little music store in downtown mountain view. private lessons and practice rooms in the back.
Took my flute collection in for a possible tune up. Was told that all but one of the flutes were unplayable. Guess my looks or money weren’t what they accepted there. Took my ‘non playable’ flutes, and commenced to use them to busk, there in downtown Mtn View. Odd that they were declared unplayable, yet I was playing at least one of them not 30 minutes later. Care to explain West Valley Music staff ?
Lovely neighborhood music shop. They have a great selection, and the staff is incredibly helpful.
Great selection of patch cords, good service.
Knowledgeable staff, wide range of products
Kudos to the independent music store that has endured the test of time… probably due to their friendly, no pressure staff. Would have liked to see more guitars and basses not mass manufactured by Fender and Gibson and Rickenbacker. Gelb has some vintage and few boutique guitars by Anderson and Suhr… didn’t see any Zon or other California bass makers… which IMO they could use more, but being around for so long means they are doing something right.
Helpful staff. Nice selection of guitars.
Selection is really good. Nice instruments, And I like the atmosphere. A classic old store, kinda historic. A little pricey (for this I blame the insanity of real estate in the area, not them). Some music store staff are great. Some are typical.
I have found that music store workers are mostly of two varieties: the typical kind, who tend to have this undercurrent of rather sexist, judgmental pressure, and those who just love to connect people of all kinds to what they need.
Sigh – this place has both.
Unfortunately, there are a LOT of the typical kind in this world, and female (or otherwise not “Rock Star” types) really feel it. It is like they somehow need to prove that they are more knowledgeable than me, or something. Very tiring. I want to tell them, “look, I know you wanted to be a professional performer and it feels degrading to be working in a music store, and that you feel like selling stuff to female musicians makes you feel even further from your standards of your own self-image. But you really need to heal that, not surround yourself with a bubble of asserted wannabe dominance. It is not helping you at all. this is actually a really cool .”
To be fair, I only really got this attitude a little here, and it was pretty subtle (but there). Everyone else has been fine. But even a little makes it hard to want to come back. I think music store owners need to screen this, and train people out of it. Or better yet, hire some good female staff.
But I do come back, because the location is good and they have good stuff and they are historic and small. I like them overall. And it is very rare to find places that do not have that phenomenon. So they are not losing my business any time soon. I just hope that one issue gets fixed. Everywhere.
As someone who has been going to Gelb since I was a teenager all I have to say is “Please make it go away”.
What was once a well known piece of the music community of the bay area has become totally useless.
What was once a family of musicians active in the local music scene is now the Kmart of music stores, disorganized…impersonal…just another guitar store.
A couple of weeks ago I went there to get a couple of packs of strings and they couldn’t find them???
Today I went in to see if they had a couple of guitar boxes to ship a guitar I was selling, in the past the response was sure how many do you need, today the response was “We sell them for $15”, if they had said 5$ sure but $15? what exactly am I paying for? your stellar customer service?
Since the change this place has steadily gone downhill, please just let it go, make it go away, or at least change the name so you aren’t tarnishing the name of what was once an institution of the bay area music scene.
should be gleb, not gelb.
I just experience the worst service, something that was going so good, ended up leaving the me (customer) unpleasant and dissatisfied. Im in need of a power supply for a unit which i purchased from Gelb music store about 6 years back. In fact it would’ve been my third time getting an adapter here. I saw online that they have it stock, i drove from Napa to redwood city due to familiarity. Multiple staff tried to help find an adapter that works. One older staff insist to take over. He found one unboxed among spared ones without a price tag. The older staff therefore told another staff to charge me(customer) $25 for that old charger.. (let it be known, newer charger/ adapters are between $10 and $20)
How do you come up with that figure?
Oh the black man has to pay more huh?
Omdb they’ll never have my business again.
The older staff viciously took back the adapter and said i was assisting his time. Thought you were working?..
7. Sono Strings
Address: 171 E El Camino Real, Mountain View, CA 94040 , Ladera , California , United States
Very cute place, super good customer service. They switched out the strings on my violin and put on the tape for the different positions, very happy with the service
Jason is incredible! We were in a bind–we had a lender violin from our school that someone had glued the bridge to, and were looking at spending $1K minimum to replace the violin. Jason was able to fix the problem for us for substantially less! We are so grateful, and look forward to continuing to use Sono Strings for our future violin and cello needs 🙂
I went to the store with my own sit of strings and a violin not rented from the store, they were so kind to help me string my violin free of charge. The staff is kind and gentle. I totally would recommend.
Bad quality violin!!!! We rented a 1/8 violin but wanted to cancel our 3-month contract the same day we rented due to violin quality issue (black paint all over my child’s fingers with strong chemical smells on the surface of the strings and the string board, never happened on her own violins we bought before).
But the Asian female staff there refused, we ended up paying over $90 without playing for a single day!! She was also angry that we have rented another violin from elsewhere without going to them first. But we are very disappointed with the quality and do not want to bother exchanging for another one. And she kept asking for my current address and also read aloud my address from my driver’s license as if to threaten me. Horrible experience!!
The female staff also refuse to give me information of the owner and insisted that she contact the owner directly and would not give me a call if the owner refused to give me back my deposit.
We returned our violin after three months but they refused to give the deposit back to us 🙁
8. Unique Recording Studios
Address: 884 Portola Rd, Portola Valley, CA 94028 , Ladera , California , United States
