Remembering Rhythm City, Atlanta GA

[Big Al]

After a weekend of searching guitar shops in the Atlanta area and not finding anything that interested me, I started thinking about the good old days of Rhythm City. Growing up, Rhythm City was the place to go to find all of the new guitars of the 80’s. As a teenager, I would save up money to buy a guitar, make the trip to Atlanta (100 miles/one way), do the routine of haggling and getting to the “out the door” price and on the way out of the store, you would spot your next guitar (usually in the Jackson section). If for some reason you could not close a deal, you had to make it past the owner George Luther standing at the door not letting anyone leave the store empty handed. If you could make it out of the store without a guitar, you would always come back just to see if they could beat someone else’s price…and they usually did. None of this “we can order it” crap, they usually had the model and color you were looking for in stock. I once got to go through the storage area in the back of the store and saw the seemingly endless racks and rows of unopened guitar boxes. My memory may be off on how great the store was, I was a teenager and this was the first place I saw a Jackson with custom (or limited run) graphics. George would order a few custom graphics along with the usual naked woman with small feet, joker, sweating policeman and skull graveyard graphic Jacksons.

A few years ago, an ex-Rhythm City employee purchased an amp from me and as he was trying it out, he shared some personal stories from the store. Loved hearing his stories and was curious if any of you guys ever hand any interesting stories from Rhythm City? I don’t know if it was just the 80’s product lines, me being young and new to guitar buying or the store was just that great.

So…anyone got any RC stories?

[Rsmacker]

You'll be astounded to hear that I have absolutely no tales of Rhythm City, but I can say that it's the same the world over, the experience of guitar shopping has just become more sterile and, well, shit. We all used to be able to go and hang about the big music shops, drink coffee and show off, and there would always be hidden treasures to find, always.
Now, everything is on a computer system and everyone knows what everything is worth. No bargains, no gems to make you feel you've got a massive bargain, no reason to go back to the shop and be one of the boys.

I blame the Internet.

Mind you, the Internet is responsible for an inordinate amount of porn, and my wrists are now in no shape for me to play guitar. Que sera...

[Jayster]

RC kicked total ass back in the day, I remember being able to walk in and see 10 or more usa Jacksons on the floor with more in the back room, charvels a plenty too!!! Back in the days of holo flake paint jobs and all, a great place to kill an afternoon. They had relic'd RR's before there was a trend in relic'ing - I got a RRcustom with the upper horn torn to shit for around 350$ IIRC in 87, good times!!! I always enjoyed going into their store and wasting an afternoon..... Then it eventually turned into a guitar denter :/

[Big Al]

That’s what I am talking about! I heard that another store originally (probably Metro Music) was the Jackson distributor for the Atlanta area and George stole it from them, stating to Jackson that he could sell way more than them and placed a large first order.

When RC built the new store (now guitar center) things changed. When George Luther sold to Guitar Center he stayed on for a short transition time. The new store was clean, organized…kind of sterile. They still had some USA Jacksons but that was probably just left over inventory. The old RC store was cluttered, amps formed the isles in the store and you never knew what you would find.

A former employee of RC told me that George (the store owner) was very strict about all guitars being tuned. He would do spot checks to make sure and if not, raise hell with the staff. Try finding a guitar that is tuned in a GC!