Gard’s Music

Great gear, friendly, helpful staff!

Terrible customer service. The owner Robbie is a rude and not very understanding lady. I’ve made arrangements twice to settle a debt and she took different actions both times resulting in her debiting my account over 100 dollars. I’ve tried calling on several occasions and she is never there. The only other employees that are at the location are teenagers who do not have answers for my questions. She threatened to take me to small claims court but is still debiting my card.
Do yourself a favor and STAY AWAY! I’m a proud Glendora resident who believes in backing local business to help the community, not in this case. There are other places for music instruments, don’t put yourself through the trouble! SAN DIMAS HAS A GREAT MUSIC STORE. PLEASE MAKE A SMART DECISION AND STAY AWAY!

I wish I’d read othe reviews before coming here. I needed my Ukulele restrung so I stopped in on Saturday. They told me that I definitely wanted Dave to do it and that he’d be in all week. So I asked what time they close on Monday and they said 8. Based on this I naturally assumed that Dave would be there in the evening. When I came in about 4:15 on Monday, the same girl who I spoke to on Saturday told me that I’d just missed Dave as he only works til 4. She said I could leave for the repair guy and they’d call me when it was done. They didn’t call. I went back for it on Tuesday and the strings were not neat and tidy, it looked ugly and frankly like something I (a guy who knows NOTHING about restringing instruments) could have done myself. I told them that my beloved instrument no longer looked as good as it did and he says, «It’s ok, it’ll work. It’s really hard to get them to look like they do when they’re new.» So I paid the $ 7 and drove to Guitar Center. They looked at it and pointed out that it was not only ugly, but it had been done wrong and the strings could have loosened from the bottom. They restrung it for me and earned the customer that Gard’s has lost.

If you are a parent of a novice instrument playing student, beware! Do your due diligent with the rental contract and compare it with other vendors (i.e. San Dimas Music) prior to committing to this business. We ended up paying $ 300 on a violin rental fee for the same exact one selling online for $ 119.99 with free shipping and no tax!
Below is the link:
Also, don’t fall for the rental credit toward any instrument in the store either. It sounds great until you realize that in order to qualify for a «free» $ 120 violin, in our case, we would have to spend $ 600 in rental fees! I’m a firm believer that every business is entitled to make a profit, but 5 times the selling price?
When we approached them with our concern about the grossly profiting contract. The reply we got was: «you signed the contract and agreed to that price.»
Whatever happen to good old business ethics and common decency?

Stopped in to get a simple piece of cork for my flugelhorn, was told that they can’t sell cork, and that I needed a work order and to leave my horn for repair… really. .? for a simple cork .?? Gards Music has permanently lost my business. I do not recommend this music store. Visit Imperial Band Instruments, 15 847 Imperial Hwy, La Mirada Ca. Jerry and his team provide 5 star customer service and prices.

I got a $ 25 gift card for Gard’s at Christmas and thought it’d be spent within minutes considering the long list of things in my head that I wanted from a music store. Unfortunately, their selection truly sucked.
Piano books were very limited. They can sell you printable sheet music from the Internet but that works mostly for single pop pieces– it’s not for if you want a collection of Chopin’s nocturnes, dor example. If I wanted to print music onto loose leaf paper, I could do that from home!
The only way you could buy a harmonica book was in a pack with a harmonica. I wanted a page holder thingie for keeping my piano books from closing on me while playing and those were out of stock. I asked for a music dictionary and the employee quickly gave up her search. Luckily, I managed to find one on my own in some random stack of books.
When I went to pay for my $ 15 worth of stuff that I resorted to buying due to their lousy selection, I was told that there wasn’t any money on the gift card. THANKFULLY, I happened to have the receipt for the gift card otherwise they would have screwed me. The cashier said the gift card was purchased when a new guy was working and that he hadn’t activated the card. He and his coworker were
nice and apologetic but it took the two of them a good 15 minutes to correct the gift card balance and ring me up.
2 stars because the workers were nice enough and I am glad to have a music store nearby, despite however disappointing it may be.

Do not expect adequate customer service at this location. When renting an instrument you must provide enough personal information to take out a personal loan. The employees must intervene because the management is not available and do not have set hours and wouldn’t speak to me even when they were on site. Good customers are treated as «Bad people» by policy so they can hunt you down if you don’t pay (even though the monthly fee must be automatically deducted from your valid credit card). All of the personal information you just wrote down on your contract is then entered in the computer that all of the employees have access to. Even banks have issues with this… I much prefer to give stellar ratings, then have to resort to not good at all.

Gards has been around forever. It’s a great place to walk through and check out but selection is limited (guitars) and staff is stretched thin. Good quick place to grab strings or sticks, but beyond that you’re probably better off at the big box guitar store. You know the name.
One benefit here is that you don’t have the constant sound of kids playing Metallica riffs and Blink 182 songs like at the big outlet places.

Their instrument repairman lacks common sense. I had a tenor recorder which was missing the original thumb rest, which I believed existed because there was a stub on the barrel where it would attach. I brought the instrument to Gard’s hoping that they could order the factory part. I dropped it off in the morning so that the repairman could check it out in the afternoon. He called to let me know that there were two options: a fixed rest for $ 30 or an adjustable rest for $ 50. I opted for the adjustable one.
When I picked up the instrument I was surprised to find that he had ground off the original mounting stub and drilled screw holes to install an aftermarket thumb rest. I was curious what the original rest looked like, and a 60-​second search on Google turned up a source for the original, clip-​on, adjustable thumb rest, for two dollars.
Unfortunately, there was no way I could return the $ 50 aftermarket piece and use the original equipment piece. The original stub had been ground off and one of the screw holes had been drilled all the way through the barrel, which would cause an air leak if those screws were removed. He never asked me if it was okay to grind off the stub or drill holes
I called and asked why he hadn’t checked availability of an original replacement part, and he told me that he didn’t know where to check, and parts are often no longer available.
In short: I took the instrument to Gard’s because I expected that they would have a better idea how to locate and order the factory replacement part, and willing to pay a reasonable markup for their expertise and effort. Instead, they thought looking up the part would be too hard so they irreversibly modified the instrument so they could do the job quickly with parts they had on hand, at a cost of more than ten times what the proper replacement part would have cost.

Once upon a time, when I used to play the saxophone, I would frequent Gard’s Music. Gard’s Music has a good selection of instruments (for purchase and rental), reeds, and sheet music. Gard’s also offers music lessons and instrument repair.
I have found Gard’s instrument repair to be reliable, although the price… somewhat high.