GAK offered a great price and delivery on a variax guitar, but it was faulty when I received it - this is the fault of Line 6 not GAK, however I sent the guitar back to GAK but had to spend ages chasing them for a refund. Phones and emails went unanswered and of course all this time they still had my money. There is nothing more frustrating than being given the runaround by a company when things have gone wrong, still - lesson learned, I won't be bothering them with my business in future.

I paid a £12 premium for delivery of the product I ordered on a certain day before midday - I had an email to say this had been arranged, but the item didn't arrive. Phoned GAK, who said they'd arranged delivery on the wrong day and 'would have got around to telling me later on' (but not before I had waited in the house all morning!). Next time, I'll pay slightly more and buy things from a company who can arrange delivery on time.

I decided to upgrade the pickups on my Jackson RR to a set of EMG 81/60. They are very nice and I would reccomend them. But that is just about the only good theing I can say.

Bad Points: They said my pickups were in stock, when in fact they were not, and it took two weeks for one to arrive, and three for the other.

I ordered a cab for my amp from Thommann in Germany, and it arrived in 4 days. Clearly, bad service does not have to be tolerated.

The site is nigh unusable, and has got even worse since I bought my order. I cannot find the order tracking facility anymore, which was at least accessible when I bought my pickups.

Good Points: Admittedly, their prices are good, although don't be fooled by the supposed price drops which they offer. For example, GAK would show you a pedal they are selling for £65, and then tell you it normally retails for £95. This is a lie, nothing more, nothing less. Generally, £70 would be accurate for this sort of example in a high street music shop.

When the product finally arrived, it was as described and in perfect working order. This is nothing more than I had any right to expect, but at least it isn't a bad point.

Should you buy from GAK? If you intend on taking a holiday or are going in for surgery within the next six months, or have a terminal illness then no, no you shouldn't. If none of the above apply to you, and you don't mind waiting, then go ahead. But seriously, it is not an exaggeration to say: GAK - The online music shop for cryogenics!

I have given this company so many chances. Ordered lots of times when it said 'In Stock' and 'Next day delivery' only for it to be pushed back a week. Three weeks delay on the last purchase I made. No communication, website is slow in updating delivery times (can be updated/pushed back on the day you expected it) and I had to constantly phone up, told it was this date and yet was pushed back again.

I have bought two very expensive guitars only to find them dented and scratched up. The only redeeming thing is that I got refunds very quickly and bought elsewhere. Not a glowing endorsement really if they can't get it right in the first place.

I've had various dealings with Gak in the past, so I'll base this review on an overall experience.

The best thing about this company is undoubtably the speedy delivery service... providing the item is in stock to begin with however. Their website availability indicators are not based on actual stock levels, so I would recommend contacting them prior to making any purchase to confirm this.

I did order a guitar cab some time ago (it must have been around August 2007 time) with the intention of being prepared for a gig in November and was quickly informed that the item was out of stock and due around the start of September. Constantly logging in on a daily basis saw the date extending to October, then November, then I just cancelled and bought an alternative elsewhere. This certainly wasn't that good an experience, although I did end up making the gig in the end. None of this would have happened if they had a precise stock indicator initially.

The next major blow came when I ordered an expensive guitar amp in spring (probably April/May) 2009, which exceeded £2000. I received the amp on time and everything was fine for the first month or so. During that summer while setting up for a gig, the amp suddenly stopped functioning correctly whilst setting up/soundcheck with a drastic drop in volume. For the record, the amp is carefully transported in a hefty hard case. The least of my worries at the time, I managed to borrow an amp to continue with the gig.

Cue my first major dealings directly with Gak!

I called them the following week and arranged for a return/repair of the item. Everything was fine up to this point. A couple of weeks follows with no acknowledgement of receipt, so I called and they confirmed they had received the amp, which was with the repairs department and they would let me know when it was fixed (thanks guys!)

Another four weeks pass, I hear nothing. At this point I did have another gig approaching in a month and did need to find out what was happening. It turned out that at this point they had to send the amp back to the manufacturer for repair. The gig in question was cancelled under other circumstances fortunately, but this meant that the amp had been out of my possession for over two months now. Surely the amp wasn't THAT broken as I cant stress any more that I did take good care of the amp (as would anyone if they parted this kind of money).

To cut a long story short, further calls were exchanged with Gak (to whom I was calling on a weekly basis at this point) and I did get my amp back fully repaired after around three months of being in Gak's possession. Here's the cool thing..

I did request for them to let me know what the problem was, how easy it was to be fixed etc, details of which were agreed to be enclosed with the amp. You guessed it, I received the amp with no covering letter of what they had actually had to do, although I did find four EH 6L6 power tubes enclosed (appeared to be new). My amp was biased for EL34's! Any amp guru would probably draw a pretty picture at this point, so I got straight on to Gak asking what they were playing at, to which the guy who was dealing with my enquiry wasn't present. They provided me with his email address.

The reply I received from correspondence was hard to believe, however I'll quote it here:

"Sorry for the late reply, it turned out the that there was a problem with the tubes as they needed replacing but there was also a loose connection I believe, which may have been caused in transit, which is why the problem wasnt sorted when I just changed the tubes. However everything has been sorted now so if you notice anything in future it will be acase of just changing the tubes."

I forgot to add that I had been in touch with the manufacturer directly, who offered me this response to the symptoms of what had gone wrong:

"It seems that a preamp tube has failed. Please try to connect a guitar to the FX-Return, open up the Master and switch the standby off. When you play your guitar you should now hear an even louder sound coming out of your cab then connecting the guitar to the input jack of the amp."

Regrettably, I received correspondence from Gak long before the manufacturer, so I had to comply with them due to warranty/returns policies. If only I'd have heard back from the manufacturer first, then I might have had a chance of avoiding the entire fiasco.

In conclusion to my dealings with Gak, I have ordered many times from them over the past decade with no problems (even in the rare occasion when I had to send an FX unit back to them for repair, this was nowhere near as lengthy a process as with the amp), but have learned to use Gak as a LAST RESORT ONLY! I urge you to shop around before committing to ordering from Gak due to my experience, especially with the after purchase service gamble.

After checking just about everywhere on other websites for the cheapest price on an Ibanez guitar, i ended up on GAK. Ordered a guitar on a monday and waited for it to come. No email or notifications so i checked Order Tracking, they said it had been delayed by a week due to the item being out of stock, even though they said it was in stock at the time.
Im still waiting for my guitar to come, but the 'estimated dispatch' time seems to go further and further back every week I check. Im gonna cancel the order and look somewhere else as GAK has been a waste of time, even though a few of my friends have had no trouble buying expensive guitars such as Gibsons but when it comes to cheaper models that are around £200-£300 GAK seem to put you on the bottom of the priority list and forget about you.... Even though they have taken my money