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By Jeff Spevak
Democrat and Chronicle
(Friday, June 21, 2002) -- AT
9:59 ON Tuesday morning, Trisha Johnson and John Cashwell, both of Rochester, are
standing in the parking lot at 645 Titus Ave., waiting for the doors to swing open
at the House of Guitars®.
"Somebody's coming right now," says Cashwell, spotting
some movement inside the door. "They put a chain on it and everything."
"Can you blame them, with all of that in there?" says
Johnson.
But now it's 10 a.m. and the chain is off the HOG.
"That's the thing about this place," Cashwell tells
Johnson, as they take in the mountains of CDs, tapes, posters and T-shirts in the
warehouse-sized back room. "You can be looking for something, it can be right in
front of you, and you don't know it. Then you ask them, and they go right to
it."
Indeed, the HOG has a reputation for being somewhat
disheveled when it comes to stocking merchandise. It's not complete mayhem. But
everything looks a bit askew.
Technically speaking, Johnson -- who was searching the
racks of gospel tapes -- and Cashwell weren't the first customers in the House of
Guitars® that day. As is often the case, the store opened at midnight on Monday,
taking advantage of the technicality that it's actually Tuesday morning, the
official release day each week for most major new albums.
Korn's new CD, Untouchables, was the featured
attraction. "It was a good one," says HOG owner Armand Schaubroeck. "Long lines,
the crowd was excited."
The House of Guitars® is well known as an Irondequoit
institution, although it has shifted around the area since Schaubroeck set up the
first store in the cellar of his mother's Irondequoit house in 1964. He bought the
current building, an old Grange Hall, in 1972, and "we've been adding buildings to
it, hooking them together, ever since," he says.
Now it's home to an estimated 30,000 to 40,000 guitars and
4 million albums, CDs and tapes. It could be successfully argued that the House of
Guitars® is the best-known independent record store in the country, after being the
subject of admiring profiles by both People magazine and The Wall Street
 Journal.
The guys from Aerosmith, Nine Inch Nails' Trent Rezner,
Eric Johnson, Peter Gabriel, Brian Setzer, REO Speedwagon, Foreigner, Korn, Dickey
Betts and Emerson, Lake and Palmer are among dozens and dozens of acts that have
purchased instruments from the House of Guitars®. Marilyn Manson was looking for an
American-made guitar and settled on a small Rickenbacker that appeared with him on
the cover of Guitar Player magazine. Everclear bought from the HOG the
mandolin seen on the cover of the band's 2000 CD, Songs From an American Movie,
Vol. 1: Learning How to Smile.
When then-unknown Metallica was recording its first album
at a studio on East Avenue, the band would hang out at the HOG. "We'd ask, 'Can we
help you?' " Armand recalls. "They'd say, 'Nah, we don't have any money, our
laundry is drying down the street.' "
A few years later, when they did have some money and were
headlining a show at Darien Lake Performing Arts Center, the band called and asked
if the store could open at midnight, after their show. "They said, 'We'll bring the
beer,' " Armand says. "They brought a couple of cases and spent
$70,000."
Armand's brother Bruce is a co-owner. Brother Blaine and
sister Beryl also work there.
He is selling keyboard synthesizer and volume pedals to
Mark Goodloe, who has driven in from Auburn, Cayuga County, where he is the
resident sound engineer for a Broadway-style theater. "There is a small music store
in Auburn, and they can usually order things for you," Goodloe says. "But the House
of Guitars® has a better selection."
What sets the House of Guitars® apart from most is the
museum-like aura and the labyrinthine arrangement of rooms filled with instruments
it sells -- and refuses to sell. Particularly the massive guitar collection. Many
of the guitars are autographed: The names Les Paul, Dave Matthews and Brian Setzer
are scribbled on guitars.
Some of the guitars are goofy, such as "The Intimidator,"
an electric guitar celebrating the late racing legend Dale Earnhardt. Some are
exotic, such as the 1913 harp guitar built by Orville Gibson himself. Armand
himself designed the Schaubroeck Gibson, a gleaming instrument that has the
qualities of both an acoustic and an electric guitar; it sells for about
$10,000.
"The guys from Metallica came in and just looked around,"
Bruce says. "They said, 'There are things here I've only seen in magazines. And
dreams.' We've got to keep it like that."
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- Epiphone Artists The
Drive were in Rochester, New York in November for a
