Hmm. Yeah. When it comes to extreme deals like that, I can see why you would go to Guitar Center. Though, for more mundane things, like speaker wire or guitar picks, a mom and pop shop could do just fine. There can be other types of perks for shopping at places like them, besides finances. When you become a regular, they really start to keep an eye out for you, often going out of their way to make sure you're happy.
The problem with Guitar Center, and why it is dangerous is that I'm liable to spend $500 there, when all I wanted to do was buy guitar picks. That said, I can afford to pay 40% more for guitar strings and picks but a lot of musicians cannot. Mom and pop stores are way, way more marked up than guitar center. It sucks, but that's reality. Also, Gibson and Fender refuse to give mom and pop stores their best product. All of those go to guitar center and mom and pops get the left over bullshit nobody wants to buy. Also, Gibson will mandate a purchase minimum or insist that you buy x number of shitty guitars for every Les Paul they allow you to sell. They're dicks. Every mom and pop hates Gibson. But they play well. Also, most mom-and-pop stores can't compete with the comprehensive inventory guitar center has. That's why it's so damn dangerous for me to go there. But really, the truth is that if I walk in to any music related store, or even pawn shop, I'm going to leave having purchased something. Guitar center just tends to have more expensive "somethings" that I leave with.
Gibson has gone waaaaay downhill over the past 15 years or so. My '85 epiphone shits tonally on any Gibson you don't spend over $4k on. Martin is doing the same thing, hands down best acoustic guitars in the world if you wanna spend $6k+ on them up to ~200k. But there are brands like maton and Cole Clark in au that make acoustics that sound better than 99% of the $1-5k martin and lower end Taylor's. It seems your issue with guitar center is more that they have such good deals that you buy stuff you don't need/want(which is pretty standard I think for musicians in music stores). I go into guitar center all the time and don't buy anything. I'll go in to test new synths or guitars that come out and if I want to buy them I'll try to find a used source in the area. The great thing about living in la s that there's tons of money and kids who want to learn 50 instruments they never follow through on, and for some reason mom and dad bought them a les Paul studio lol. Also, prs sound way better than new Gibsons so there's that option as well for the ma and pop shops, lol.
One thing about guitar center that you will never see at a ma and pop shop is discounts of 30+% on a Black Fridayesque day that you can go online print out another 15% off coupon and use on top of that deal. I'm totally for supporting the ma and pop shops, but I will not spend over $100 more on anything I buy anywhere. Less that that Id cover if I liked the place, but with instruments you're talking thousands and thousands of dollars, this is where I just can't hang.