Worship Musician Magazine May 2024 | Page 3

SOUND CHECK

RETURNING TO SOME RETAIL ROOTS …

In 1978 as a young Christian man , I was hired to manage a Christian record store in Southern California . From the early days of the Jesus Music movement I was selling vinyl records , cassettes ( and even some left over 8-tracks back then ) to fellow Christian music lovers . I noticed there was a need in our customers for a good place to buy their guitars , keyboards , and other gear , so I started with two Guild D-25 Cherry Mahogany guitars . Once they arrived , I liked them so much I bought one of them . Yes , I bought 50 % of our little store ’ s guitar inventory .

Slowly but surely , we started building up the instrument side of the business . Alongside the Phil Keaggy , Randy Stonehill , Keith Green , and Amy Grant records ( and those dreaded background accompaniment cassettes that church singers were using back then ), we added Yamaha , Takamine , Fender , Roland / Boss and more . There were some great products in the 80 ’ s .

I decided to sell the gear at very competitive pricing and soon the word got out to mainstream musicians . They would come in and walk through the humble store and say , “ I don ’ t know who these guys are on your records , I ’ ve never heard of them , but I sure like your prices .” And they would buy their instruments from us . I wanted to be salt and light to them . We even had guitar picks printed that said , “ Jesus … the way , truth and the life ” on them to give to our customers .

I spent 11 years of my life managing that combo Christian record / musical instrument retail store . I am grateful for that time spent and it was a building block to what I still do to this day … working with Christian and mainstream musicians with the magazines and guitar shows we produce … as well as working with the gear makers to help place good products into our musician friend ’ s hands .

Now , all these years later , we are back to selling products that we like . We can ’ t have a whole retail store full ( and we certainly don ’ t have room for vinyl records ), but we can still sell gear that we personally like both on-line and at our live events .

We are authorized dealers for the popular Solo Dallas pedals , Riggio Custom Guitars , Larrivee Guitars , LR Baggs , EFNOTE Digital drums and now Taylor ’ s Circa74 acoustic and vocal amplifier .

You can read all about that amazing new Circa74 in the [ WGP ] Worship Guitar Player section of this issue .

On top of that , for the last several years , we ’ ve been selling various brand name vintage and used guitars and amps on our Reverb page too . We have over 400 5-Star ratings ! If interested in that vintage & used gear , please visit Aragorn Guitars , and for the new gear , visit reverb . com / shop / worshipguitarplayer .

It is great to be connecting musicians with good gear again . If there is any way we can help you … please let us know . You can email me at bruceadolph @ mac . com .

Lord Bless You as You Follow Him ! Bruce & Judy

The Cast The Details

Publisher + Editor : Vice President :

Bruce Adolph

Judy Adolph Editorial + Ad Director : Doug Doppler Associate Editor : Spanish Copy Editor : Ad Sales Manager : Ad Acct Exec : Higher Ed Acct Exec : Production Manager : Layout + Design : Customer Experience :

Michael Hodge Rina Solano-Castillo Andrew Adolph Steve Sattler Alex MacDougall Mike Adolph Matt Kees Brian Felix

Bruce @ AdolphAgency . com Doug @ AdolphAgency . com Michael @ MichaelHodge . com

RinaSolano @ icloud . com Drew @ AdolphAgency . com

Steve @ CreativeSalesResource . com

ProfessorMacBNA @ gmail . com Mike @ AdolphAgency . com Matt @ AdolphAgency . com Brian @ AdolphAgency . com

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