I was able to take lessons from Sam years ago, He is an…read moreexcellent teacher and I continue to use the notes I took during our lessons. Margie Hilton

I took lessons from Sam in the 90's. He's an excellent…read moreteacher. Knowledgeable. Works with you to help you improve in the areas you want to focus on. He is also the archetypal mad genius in a basement. I mentioned the Church of Euthanasia as an aside once, and Sam had taught the leader guitar. Also, in the middle if a lesson one time, he said "oh by the way pay no attention to my basketball player." and a 6'8" dude in full court gear silently walked through the room and out the door. And there was no explanation. The lesson just continued.

I highly recommend visiting for clarinet / woodwind repair and maintenance. I would also give the…read moreMaestro a call if I was looking for a good quality pre-owned clarinet before going to a more generic musical instrument shop.

I want to offer a second review. As it appears the my first review has been taken off. I do not…read morerecommend this place to get your clarinet repaired. Take it elsewhere. I bought a brand new R13 elsewhere. As many of you will know, it is common for tenons to swell up when they are new and need to be slightly adjusted. The common way to adjust this is to slightly sand it down. This is what virtuosity did, afterwards on a different tenon, for free! For some reason, he used a laser cutter, and charged me $60. He took off too much, confirmed by multiple repair persons. Now my clarinet moves slightly at one of its joints. It was an imperfect job that has permanent consequences for my very expensive instrument. He has consistently refused to own up to the mistake and give me any kind of refund. Furthermore, on an earlier post, he blatantly denied that he did this. He said that I "fabricated" the story. Nope, it happened. It's one thing to mess up my clarinet, it is another to consistently deny that it happened and call me a liar. Bummer. Go elsewhere for clarinet repair!!

Main St. Music is my favorite local business in Waltham; between all their teachers and regulars,…read morethere's so much musical knowledge and ability here. I don't know why people complain about prices--this isn't a corporation, they don't get the kinds of massive bulk discounts you're going to find at Guitar Center. That being said, you're going to find much more here in the way of community than you'll ever find at some big name store staffed by egotistical kids. The staff remembers you, will sit down to play with you, will go completely out of their way to help you, and can get you something if they don't have it there already, even foreign instruments that you can't usually find. The weekly meetups on Wednesday nights are great and always diverse. Shop local, keep your mom 'n pops in business. I know I'll come here before I go looking anywhere else.

The business owner, in fact, is a friendly and patient man. I was looking for a beginner acoustic…read moreguitar, and the business owner offered a good deal, and even gave an introductory beginner lesson. So, come with a good heart, and enjoy the music!

I'm a 36 year old student, singer in a wedding band and have always had a passion in pursuing…read moreplaying an instrument. I have recently begun my journey in learning piano from Dan. I am not only extremely pleased with his level of patience in teaching an adult as most can agree can be very difficult, but I am most pleased with his methods of teaching. Dan is very thorough and knowledgeable he sets up each lesson to fit your level of learning, his homework assignments are pretty light and flexible for anyone with a busy schedule it can be done! He is so on point with his teaching you can tell he knows what he is talking about, I am being challenged and am seeing improvement on my end, and man what an amazing feeling to be learning and learning from an amazing teacher. I am learning how to read and play by the end of my classes with Dan I feel much more can be accomplished in my music endeavors. Book your lessons with Dan, you won't regret it.

A friend told me about Guitar Stop so I brought in my acoustic which had a bad case of fret buzz. I…read morethought it needed an entire setup (I'm still very much a beginner player). However, Jeanne made a minor adjustment to the truss rod and fixed my lousy stringing error and the buzz was gone. This cost me $5. I returned to the store the next day and Annette was extremely helpful and very patient with all my questions about a new electric guitar. I ended up purchasing my first electric with a great amp. They even include a free gig bag and six picks! Very cool. Overall, I'm very pleased with this family-owned store and will visit them again for my guitar needs. Thanks for reading and rock on!

I had a strange experience there with a guitar repair…read more Ten years ago I bought an acoustic guitar with a pickup at GuitarStop. A few months ago the pickup stoped working. I brought it in to Guitar Stop. Their technician examined the guitar, cleaned the dust out, and came to the conclusion that the pickup/preamp would need to be replaced. They gave me the customer service phone number of the guitar manufacturer, and said that because they were no longer distributing that brand, there was no way they could get the parts, or do anything else to help me. Even though I bought the guitar there, they told me I'm on my own. One odd experience was that the technician didn't talk to me. All this info was mediated to me by the people behind the counter. When I had a question, they would ask the tech, the tech would tell them, they'd tell me. It was odd to have a middleman coordinating. I then did what I didn't want to do: I brought the guitar to Guitar Center on Mass Ave, across from Berklee. The guitar technician came out, introduced himself to me, and walked me through all the options. A couple days later they called me and said the guitar was completely fixed. It was the wiring, the very thing that Guitar Stop claimed it wasn't. There was NOTHING WRONG with the pickup or preamp. It works/sounds beautiful now. When I brought this to the attention of Guitar Stop, they told me how "filthy" my guitar was, how their tech tried every everything, etc. They offered to refund me the $20 bench fee, but it feels picayune to accept that. I always want to support local business and not the "big retailers," but in this case, if I need any work on any guitar, I won't feel confident bringing it to Guitar Stop.

Brought a ukulele in for string replacement and lowering action as that is what the teacher of the…read moreclass I just started said would improve my experience playing. The gentleman working there looked at the instrument, which I am borrowing from a family member, and pointed out that some warping was the reason the action was a bit high - not a typical saddle or nut height issue. I asked if he could just replace the strings (I had brought in my own). Dropped it off on Saturday and picked up on Monday. He was helpful showing me different sizes of ukuleles they had as I mentioned waiting to buy one myself until I knew better what I wanted. Very helpful and not at all pushy. I almost didn't stop in due to seeing bad reviews here but my experience was great.

1. Illegal bait and switch 2. Complete incompetence…read more3. Unhinged rude attitude 1. Illegal bait and switch - I called and asked if I could bring a guitar for assessment. Guy on phone said I could bring in and they'd assess for free. After five minutes of my free assessment, the lady tried to charge me for it. The guy then changed his story and said he actually meant that they would assess it for free only if I dropped it off but not dropped by with it (which doesn't make much sense if you think about it) 2. Complete incompetence - A) I told her that the guitar frets were out of tune. She denied it and said nothing was wrong with the guitar. B) I told her I wanted to action lowered. She said it was impossible to lower it anymore without causing buzzing. C) I told her something was rattling when I played the open G string. She said it could be anything causing it, even a loose truss rod So I took it to Stubblebine lutherie. Without even playing it, he inspected everything about the guitar - he listed exactly what was causing it to be out of tune (mainly the nut grooves), exactly how the action could easily be lowered without causing buzzing (he said the action was actually pretty high), and exactly what was causing the rattling (loose tuner component), and offered to fix everything for 100 dollars 3. Unhinged attitude - She started making fun of me for the questions I was asking. When I handed her the tuner, a rubber piece fell off, and she blamed me for breaking it to her coworker. When I pointed out that some of the frets we're out of tune, she blamed it on how I tuned it. When I clarified that I was told on the phone that the assessment would be free, she started to try to guilt me into paying and trying to get me to tell her how much money I made in my job. When I eventually did offer money because I felt bad, she made fun of me again

I am so happy with the workmanship in this company, I have brought two trumpets here the first an…read moreold family trumpet that needed the bell hammered out and a 1941 silver plated Conn that I recently bought and brought directly here to get back into working condition. When I picked it up from them it looked like a new trumpet with all the miscellaneous dings unnoticeably repaired as well as a missing piece soldered back on. All of the work very reasonably priced. This is the only place I will bring my trumpets.

Bob O. rebuilt an old Bach 42B back in the early 80's for me, and the horn is still the best!!read more

I use Parallel as rehearsal space. I have been a customer for a couple of years now…read more The good: convenient location with good number of rooms to rehearse in. Rates are very reasonable. Online reservation portal is fairly easy to use Jay,owner, seems very personable to deal with face to face. Any other communications, email or text for example, not so good. See below. The Bad: They do not invest any money in equipment. Have had problems with some of the same amps repeatedly and they don't seem to get fixed. The really Bad: Responses to email communications when there is a problem are absolutely horrible. Many emails simply do not get a response. I have had some errant charges on my account and repeated emails to ask them to look into it were ignored. One example in particular, an extra charge late in December, send a bunch of emails with no response, Finally got a response early in New year after I was clearly frustrated saying that my emails came in during christmas break so they did not have a chance to respond and that they were reviewing the books. Now it is mid January and there still is no response to follow up email sent a couple of days ago. This has been the worst of it but in general pretty representative.

I have been learning bass with Jonathan for a couple months and definitely go here for instrument…read morelessons. I also rented rehearsal space for me and my friend and for the price you get a decent amount of space and equipment. I would definitely recommend for bands or if you want to take lessons here.