Should have held on. I sold my shares last year about this time. It has moved sideways since then, so I thought I had done the right thing. I'd gotten in at $32. An extra $12 per share would have been worth the wait. Half the fun of owning it was being able to go to a discussion board and tell them that every time there was a GC rantfest the price would spike. (Which was sometimes even true.)

I am sure this new company will try and make Guitar Centers even more profitable and then sell them to the highest bidder.

There seems to be a lot more of this going on. You buy a company, you make it more profitable (usually by firing half the work force) and then quickly selling it again at a huge profit. What ever happened to the idea of running a successful company and making your money by working hard...Oh well! I guess that is why I will never be a millionaire.

I hate it when companies go public. (Look what happened with Disney during the Eisner years.) Answering to a board & investers just sucks, IMHO.

Whatever happened to doing great job and charing a reasonable amount for it?

The whole concept behind public trading and investors is that the company must always do BETTER than last year. That's fine in the early/starup years, but hoo-boy, when things top-off, and a company is running smoothly with no big changes (good OR bad), then things get rough no matter how good things are. Making more THIS year than last is the mantra, and it makes good companies do bad things....cheaper manufacturing, more layoffs, corners cut, etc.

Wow, sold for almost 2 billion, that's a fair chunk 'o change.

Guess they've done quite well selling ITB mastering software like WaveLab to home studio newbies ; - )

For real studio equipment purchases our local "go to" guy is Al Priest at Studio Tech Supply.

http://www.studiotechsupply.com/

JT

that is a lot of guitar cables. Oh well, we'll see if one opens up on every corner like starbucks.

GC was bought with the belief that there was $100 million in debt. Truth is, they have now discovered it's double that! If they don't keep the shareholders off of their backs by opening more stores to justify the load of debt (which is how they did it in the past), they're sunk. I wonder how long they can keep their vendors like Hartley Peavey and Henry J*&^**&^z at Gibson from getting their share.

that's a lot of guitar picks!