While their rentals are about even with All County Music, I am afraid that their lessons are too and that's not good but it isn't by accident.
It is very typical result of policies of facilities that view lessons as nothing more than a real estate deal and the most consistent red flags that would indicate that are their needless sign-up fees and pricing all teachers the same whether they have been teaching 30 years or 30 seconds.
Instructors are obviously NOT interchangeable and more than guitars are but these types of facilities are always hoping to distract you from that ""oh duh"" until they have you signed up and locked into the facility not the teacher.
Why this should matter to you is that you will end up paying for professional instruction but not only will you not receive it, you will be locked into poor training.
There are likely only a couple of teachers of each instrument in south Florida who are really qualified to be charging the prices that these ""real estate"" stores charge and they are not going to hand over half their paycheck to the store.
You are no more likely to find any of these instructors in these greedy facilities than you would find a $5000 Martin guitar at a store that sells all guitars for $1000.
You wouldn't even find a $1000 in a place like that or even a $500 in place like this and while this is an ""oh duh"", greedy store owners find some way to convince themselves that it doesn't apply to music instructors.
It's funny how all of these owners are ALWAYS complaining about their teachers and how they cannot seem to handle teaching AFTER they have been hyping these same teachers for months as as being able to teach anything.
They will always refuse to admit that it is because they ALWAYS try to get only the cheapest, inexperienced instructors and feel it is unnecessary to bother finding a good one that will cost more.
The main reason facilities charge registration fees is because they cannot keep most of their instructors much longer than a few months at a time and they want to lock you into the facility so that you do not leave with the instructors but students do not particularly appreciate always having to start over all of the time right when the students are finally starting to know them.
When students start over with a new teacher who has NEVER taught in their entire lives, the prices do NOT drop. Quality of the lessons will plummet but not the price until you quit or wise up and find a REAL teacher but you will likely spend over a $1000 by that time and wasted months of effort.
If you are lazy, don't want to talk to YOUR instructor BEFORE you sign up then you are GUARANTEED to be disappointed. If you value their 5X5 room for a half hour/hour per week as much as you value the quality of your instructor, then this the place to be.
Their guitar and bass accessories, books are below adequate and their prices are not great but I still prefer them to Guitar Center. I do like the supplies for string and brass instruments but their rhythm section instruments are VERY weak all around.
I say this regrettably because I do not like to see these places eliminated by Guitar Center but greediness toward their students and instructors is not a solution.
more