Exclusive selection: The top 8 music shops of Orange

Jerry is the best. He scowers for great gear and consistently delivers. He’s knowledgeable, informed, and fair. One of the rare stores you can walk into which has a fantastic inventory at competitive prices. As someone who has purchased well over $100,000 worth of musical equipment from Jerry at The Guitar Collector, take my recommendation seriously. Avoid Guitar Center, go to the Guitar Collector.

Jerry is an absolute gem, and anyone who negatively reviews this place just hasn’t taken the time or care to connect with him. No, he’s not going to do a song and dance when you walk in the door. But he is a kind and caring man running a much needed business, with integrity.

At Guitar Collector, you’ll find treasures from decades past. Demo guitars you never imagined you’d get to touch. And find the perfect instrument for you, whether you’re a pro or just starting out.

In 2019, 4 guitars were stolen from me. Two of them were sold to Jerry. When I came by and described my guitars, Jerry gave them back to me – even though he had paid for them himself.

That’s why I choose to do business at Guitar Collector. Thanks Jerry for reuniting me with some of my guitars, and for letting me sit in your shop for hours and hours, multiple days per week, when I was looking to replace my stolen ’75 Les Paul.

I moved away from California in 2019, but if I ever visit again, I’d love to come by the store.

Sweet store. Amazing instruments. Nice people.

VERY PROUD OF HIS STUFF

This place is overpriced and nothing close to top tier boutique or collector vintage grade like you should expect. These guys are new here from Arizona with expectations to pull fast ones on people with money here in Orange County please do your own research. There experience and expertise is minimal they are all talk and give nothing for your instrument in cash or trade. Low attention to detail and low grade educational background in this industry with pathetic information on there instruments and nonsense story’s backing them. The gear they have is not clean or setup and dialed in and the owner is a rude no it all ego maniac that thinks his store and what he has is the best period. Won’t last.

Rude and not human equipped

No fun to be lied to, several times. Dude apparently thought I was stupid. I’m not one to prove myself, but considering that I have over 20 years experience dealing in vintage guitars, am a professional musician, a published writer (about vintage guitars) AND have toured the world as a guitar tech was more than enough to spot the incredibly lame attempts at downright fraud in this store. Good luck with that kind of business model. The vintage guitar world is dying, and to alienate a customer that actually spends $ and is under the age of 50 is just fu*%king laughable. My first time ever writing an online review of a store. This experience was so bad that it had to be shared.

Jared is a huge asset to the shop. Thanks for all the old mags …Frank

If you want vintage, go to Imperial!

Very helpful and nice

I went to Imperial Vintage Guitars in Orange the other day to checkout a guitar that I saw online. Instrument pricing and condition varied, but overall they offer a good selection of guitars for a small storefront.

The guitar that I went to see was a Gibson (I’m keeping the model out) that was listed in “excellant” condition. The online pictures looked very good as well! Their description did mention some playwear and scratches. However, in person I would not grade the guitar as excellent. While the guitar played well and had no major issues, I’d put it in just good condition. Of course opinions are subjective. For me the guitar was overpriced for its condition. I’m sure they would have taken less, but I decided not to make an offer at this time.

Still, I do recommend stopping in and checking them out. It is a guitar players candy store!

Lots of musical equipment to see. Decent prices, wait for the sales.

Awesome place with all the fancy musical instruments

Love the store. Guitars we’re beautiful and amazing.

It’s well stocked with an atmosphere of calm and the demo keyboards are fun to play with the only flaw being severely understaffed

To this Guitar Center’s credit, I’ve been able to find some harder-to-find items here in their drum room. My drum throne as well as my most recent set of drum heads came from this location (and while the tom resonant heads weren’t exactly what I was expecting, I was hardly disappointed with the options I had for substitution and found an appropriate cache of heads for all of my drums.) My biggest complaint is the service – Not that it’s terrible, but there’s times where they’re either under siege or sending people who aren’t as knowledgeable about the products that they’re sent to sell. That said, I’ve had worse GC experiences and regard this location to be one of the better ones I’ve attended.

A bit too pricey but they do have some sales.

Attitudes. Walked the floor for about an hour not a single person offered any assistance.

Mask nazis. Everyone is rolling back the restrictions but not these guys. Jokes on you. I wax about to drop 400 bucks on a guitar but you wouldnt serve me without wearing a mask that the cdc says doesn’t work.i will never support you business again nor should anyone else. It’s not your job to demand your customers wear masks.

Trying to get some info about a used guitar, phone just rings and rings no answer.

Huge selection

Very informative and great selection. Can be expensive but the records are perfect quality. Very knowledgeable staff on inventory.

Great little place! The woman who helped me was very knowledgeable and kind. This shop carried 78rpm records – which are very hard to find! (I must’ve visited/called a dozen different record stores looking for them.) I highly recommend this shop!

Everything is alphabetized

I was amazed at the collection of records in this store! It seemed like there was a little bit of everything. I could have stayed all day!

Widest selection of retro, soundtracts, and rock..

Overpriced and staff completely ignored me and changed the price to more than listed

I first came to this store and was greeted by a younger gentleman who was very knowledgeable and helpful. He helped me find an Ahmad Jamal record that I’d been seeking for years. He found it in the back and gave me a very reasonable estimate. There was an older lady with white hair beside him who seemed to want to jack up the price simply because of my enthusiasm for the record, and I was glad she did not influence the young man. I immediately bought that record along with a few other records and left the store, excited to come back and give them more of my time and business.

The next week, I came in and encountered the older woman with white hair. The younger man was not there, but there were three other gentlemen behind the counter. Unfortunately, although they were the ones i approached with questions, it was the older woman who butted in to justify the high price of a record I was holding by saying it was “hard to get.” The problem is that she never once looked at the record and therefore could not know what record I was holding. When I called her out on this, it became clear that she indeed did not know the record, which was a very recent press despite being a 1970s release, was well-worn, and was (so far as I could see) highly overpriced.

I had genuine questions about the pricing of the record, and might have been convinced to make the purchase with good answers. However, when it became clear to me that the white-haired woman was much more concerned with preserving her pricing than justifying it or having a satisfied customer, I left immediately. The store has a solid collection of records in a multitude of genres, and if I knew the name of the first gentleman I encountered there, i would tell you (hopefully they didn’t fire him for being personable and helpful). I am torn over whether I will return. I get the feeling that the price of vinyl records are a bit inflated, but they never seemed to be artificially so until I walked into this record shop. Needless to say, I’d never want to give that white-haired woman my business.

Super expensive record store and was rudely approached by Mr C who didn’t want me to touch the records on the wall even though I was being careful. He took it back and acted like it was gold dust. Never will go back. Surprised it’s still open. You get much better service and deals at other shops if you do a quick search engine browse.

The place is great and has a nice collection of vinyl records and equipment.

Fantastic local record shop, drop in for a dig!

Small intimate shop with lots of gems daily. The owner is awesome.

Nice reasonable pricing, a little messy but good finds and friendly staff, once you navigate through the boxes and maze, you’re good.

Cool place with assorted variety of music

great record store off Santa Ana with not just fresh and funky records,but some Goodwill quality clothes for cosplaying and probably theater costuming. There’s even a pinball cabinet,with a new one almost every day. Liked this swag cuz it was like clothes Wes Anderson characters would wear

Called a couple weeks before record store day To see if they were getting something that I was looking for to. Spoke with someone on the phone for over 5 to 10 minutes about it and they told me it was on its way and would be available. FF I get to the shop to be first in line getting there at 3am and low and behold they not only didnt get the record I wanted they never even requested to get it. Then when asked if that’s the only thing I came for I asked for 3-4 other punk / pop punk titles and even some non record store day stuff and they had none of it. If you’re looking for anything punk rock, pop punk or anything emo or remotely like it forget this shop all together. They were even kind of rude about it.

Expected more punk rock

Disappointed…. The new store is good… I had the opportunity to buy records at the previous location so I expected the same good attention, customer service and variety in the records… but this time the 2 guys that attended (probably one of them was the owner) were super unfriendly, they didn’t help me at all, and answered my questions in a rude way. I had to buy some discs because I had a gift card….

I’m very happy I learned Orange County now has a new Hollywood Piano location. It was a treasure that I’m happy to have discovered while living in Irvine. The quality of their pianos and the variety of choices they provided amazed me. Since I was confident that their store would have the ideal piano for me, I made the drive from Irvine. Hollywood Piano is the place to go if you’re in the OC region and looking for a top-notch piano!

Highest quality pianos

I recently visited Hollywood Piano and had the pleasure of meeting Alex, their salesman. He was knowledgeable about all the different pianos, and also very funny! He gave some great advice regarding the keyboard I was looking for. Will come back for sure!

The owner is very helpful and kind.

Sales guy was very rude to me. I am not willing to buy a piano here.

Horrible customer service felt stereotyped and judged since i walked in, the old man , sounded rude when he said quote ” can i help you with something or what!!” As a general contractor i was helping a client find a piano, ill take my business elsewhere.

My five year old son has been playing a very old, out of tune piano at home, so we came to try out a few pianos and possibly purchase one. However, an older european sounding gentleman approached us and was upset we were trying out some pianos. He was concerned we would mess up the tuning and said we could only try them if we were planning on buying something. Even though we possibly were, I felt this was extremely rude and left. I’ll take my business elsewhere. Next time, don’t assume people are there to get a free piano session.

I’m currently taking bass lessons with Adam and learned more in my first month of lessons than I did from another guitar lesson group. I’m learning a lot by having fun and I want to practice. He’s incredibly patient and funny. I wish I had found his place sooner! I would highly recommend Adam as a teacher.

Fantastic! Adam has a great sense of humor and is an amazing guitar player!

My daughter wanted to learn how to play a guitar. I asked my friends on Facebook who they would recommend and two people instantly referred us to Adam’s Music Studio. Our first impression of Adam was very easy going and he knows how to make teaching fun for my daughter. Her very first lesson she learned how to play two songs. My daughter loves going every week and she looks forward to bantering jokes with Adam. I would very much recommend Adam’s Music Studio to anyone who is looking to learn how to play a musical instrument.