- Guitar Center:
Up to 30% off exclusive guitars - Fender:
USA guitars up to 20% off - Musician's Friend:
Huge up to 60% off discounts
Welcome back to another edition of Deals of the Week with me, your friendly neighborhood gear addict. It's Labor Day weekend, which means a great opportunity to get your hands on some discount gear, no matter where you like to shop. With nearly every retailer offering some kind of sale, I've done the legwork for you and dug into the deals that are really worth exploring.
Having gone early with their sale, Musician's Friend remains the place to go for headline discounts with hefty reductions of up to 60% off. There's an excellent variety of gear on offer here, including deals on Fender guitars, Ernie Ball strings, and some significant savings on Martin acoustics.
Guitar Center launched its sale yesterday, and although discounts of up to 30% don't sound quite as tantalizing as what's on offer at Musician's Friend, they've got a trick up their sleeve. Many of the items on offer are Guitar Center exclusives, which means finishes and models you can't get anywhere else - great if you like to stand out from the crowd.
Fender's Labor Day sale is delivering up to 20% off guitars and accessories, but it's just their previous sale rebranded as something different. That doesn't mean it isn't worth a browse if you're a fan of the big 'F', though, with some excellent savings on American-made guitars and some limited edition Squiers.
If you've been holding out for pay day, you'll be pleased to know that the Positive Grid back-to-school sale is still live, which means some nice savings on their full range of smart amps. Whether you want something for practice - like my personal favorite, the Spark Mini - or a full-fledged performance amp like the Spark Live, the sale will end after this weekend, so act fast!
If you're not averse to buying used gear, and in this economy, I'd be surprised if you aren't, then over at Reverb, there's a massive Labor Day sale that features up to 60% off gear. There are hundreds of thousands of discounted items, from brand new to B-stock, to mint condition items, that make it a great way to save significant cash on your favorite gear.
The Sweetwater Labor Day Sale isn't showing on their front page at the time of writing - John Mayer playing a Silver Sky currently has that honor - but you can find the link to the sale in their deals menu. The headline offering is a generous up to 50% off, which includes some awesome bits of gear like a Les Paul with a Koa top and Dave Grohl's signature Epiphone, both with big discounts.
I've been eyeing up the Death By Audio Space Bender for a noisy post-punk project I'm a part of, so I'm praying to the gear gods that it will get a discount soon. If you spot any deals you think are worthy of inclusion here - or you've got a Space Bender to sell - then drop me a line at matt.mccracken@futurenet.com with your top tips, and I'll feature the best ones next week.
My top deals
Guitar sales to shop
Each week I search all the major retailers and manufacturers for the very best sales for guitar players. Here's a list of what's available and where this week.
- Amazon: Money off accessories
- Fender store: Up to 20% off
- Gear4Music: Clearance deals
- Guitar Center: Save up to 30%
- Guitar Tricks: 1 month just $1
- IK Multimedia: $200 off Tonex Max
- Musician's Friend: Up to 60% off
- Plugin Boutique: Money off plugins
- Positive Grid: Save on Spark
- Reverb: Up to 60% off sale
- Sweetwater: Save up to 50%
- Thomann: Hot deals on gear
- TrueFire: Save 60% on lessons
- Waves: Buy two get one free
Upcoming sales
If you're not ready to shop just yet but are looking to save some cash for an upcoming sale, I've got the insider knowledge on which sales are coming up soon. Here's what you should be saving your money for:
- Amazon Prime Day 2 - while the exact date hasn't been announced just yet, Amazon typically has another Prime Day sale before the biggest sales of the year arrive during Black Friday. Last year, it was called Prime Big Deals Days and was a great place to grab savings on smaller items like strings, capos, picks, etc.
- Black Friday 2025 - The biggest sale of the year will be here soon, falling on the last weekend of November. This year, the timing means that lots of people will be getting paid on Black Friday itself, which could make it the biggest one yet. We'll be keeping track of all the best deals on our Black Friday guitar deals page.
Top products
Part of my job is looking after all the buying guides here at Guitar World, which gives me a unique oversight as to which products are hot right now. Every week I look at what's getting the most clicks from our buying guides and list the top five products for you here.
Our clever widget sorts them by price and automatically picks up if there's a discount at a particular retailer, doing a lot of the hard work for me! If you're looking to see what other guitarists are interested in and get the cheapest possible price, then this is the place to start your search.
Why trust me?
You may be wondering, why should I trust what this random dude on the internet says? Well, allow me to introduce myself. I'm Matt McCracken and I've been playing guitar for well over twenty years. In that time I've gigged all over the UK, recorded in professional studios, bought and sold countless guitars, amps, and pedals, spent 5 years working in music retail for Dawsons Music and Northwest Guitars, and now I handle all things gear for Guitar World.
I am a guitar player first and foremost, and the reason I do this job is that I genuinely love all things gear. When I'm not working my day job, you'll find me in the rehearsal room with my band, helming the desk at my local studio working with other musicians, or writing new songs and testing gear in my home studio.
The main focus of my job is to test and research gear for our buying guides and reviews here, whether it's demoing the latest pedal release with my band, diving into the technical side of audio interfaces, or putting guitar cables head-to-head in group tests to determine which is the best. It gives me a great overview on what gear is out there right now, and unlike a lot of content you find online, I've actually had my hands on the gear I write about.
I'm also responsible for finding the best possible deals on gear for our readers, covering all the major sales events of the year like Memorial Day, Prime Day, Labor Day, and of course, the Black Friday guitar deals. I track prices of all the most popular gear throughout the year, so I know straight away whether or not a saving is the real deal or a dishonest retailer trying to pull the wool over your eyes.
How I choose deals
To determine whether or not a deal is worthy of inclusion in deals of the week it has to pass a few different hurdles. I'll ask myself the following questions about any deal before I decide whether or not to include it:
- Is the product genuinely good value for money?
- Is the discount amount real or has the RRP been inflated?
- Would guitarists benefit from having this particular piece of gear in their rig?
- If I've not had hands on experience with the gear, do I have a recommendation from a fellow staff member or musician?
I have various tools I can use to check prices if I've not been tracking it, like camelcamelcamel which can track the price of a product on Amazon. Generally because I'm looking at this stuff every week, I already have a good overview of what the product should cost.
Shopping tips
1. Consider your music goals - What do you want to achieve with your music over the next 12 months or so? Do you want to gig more? Learn a new instrument? Or finally, record your songs? Now could be the time to invest in gear that helps you fulfil your musical aspirations.
2. Create a wishlist early - The most sensible way to take advantage of any gear deals is to know in advance what you’re looking for. This will make searching much easier, rather than having to trawl through loads of deals you don’t want to find the ones you do, or pondering things you don't need. To help you create your dream shopping list, take the time to explore our expert and up-to-date buying guides and reviews.
3. Work out what you actually need - Check out your favourite brands, see what you need and will genuinely use - don’t waste your cash and fill your basket with stuff that will never truly see any action.
4. Streamline your current gear - Something else you should consider ahead of time is whether you have enough space in your collection for new gear. Could you offload some gear you don't use to make room and generate funds for some new gear?
5. Sign up to mailing lists - In addition to bookmarking this page, we'd recommend signing up to mailing lists of your favourite retailers now to get the jump on the best deals when they do come around.
Over to you
Spotted a deal that I missed? Drop me a line in the comments below and if it's still live I'll drop the best ones deal into next week's Deals of the Week.
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