Gig Harbor Audio

Gig Harbor Audio started from the inventory of three closing record shops and grew into a destination for vinyl playback in the Pacific Northwest. The shop pairs records with turntables, cartridges, repairs, restoration work, and listening rooms built around high-fidelity sound.

Interview with Gig Harbor Audio

Gig Harbor Audio is built around high-fidelity playback — VPI and Rega turntables, Lyra and Ortofon cartridges — with vinyl alongside. How did the shop come together around great sound?

Around 2008 I bought the inventory of 3 record shops that were going out of business. The business very simply came out of remembering how great a vinyl album sounded compared to an MP3 digital file. We cleaned all the records (about 50,000) and put them in nice inner and outer sleeves. This was about 3 months after Lehman Brothers went bankrupt sparking a huge recession which cleared out the commercial office park we owned allowing us to store all the records in one of the office units. The crazy idea to turn this into a shop was not long after. All of the equipment choices since the beginning of our shop have been based on the best neutral and musical reproduction for vinyl playback. We consider all the equipment that we carry to be good, just slightly subjectively different among the components.

You do repairs and custom turntable work, not just sales — how does that hands-on side shape the shop's relationship with its customers?

We have never sought to advertise in any way or even help people necessarily; rather we have always fixed units with improving expertise over the years for our own benefit of using units to enjoy vinyl. Helping people fix their units to enjoy their vinyl is a welcome bonus. We do warranty work and restoration for most British companies, many Japanese companies, American companies, and various niche audio companies around the world.

Gig Harbor's a smaller Puget Sound community — who comes through, and how's the local audiophile and vinyl scene?

Since we are a 3 story brick/mortar shop with 5-10 systems actively on demo at all times we seem to have become a destination music experience shop for the Pacific Northwest. We encourage customers to listen as long as they would like in our shop and to borrow units to make sure they ‘float the boat’ in their own homes. We also ship worldwide.

For someone whose records suddenly matter more than their old all-in-one player, where should they start on the gear side?

We suggest to people to start simple.

We often sell less expensive ($2-400) vintage/used record players with simple but good moving magnet cartridges on them. We think the turntable should be appropriate to the rest of the system. For example, a ten-thousand-dollar record player might not necessary give better sound than a five-hundred-dollar record player if the rest of the system is a cool but inexpensive vintage Marantz or Pioneer receiver and old JBL speakers. Start simple and work up over time. The most important component in a good hi-fi system is the vinyl record itself. The British companies Rega Research and Music Hall make excellent $6-900 record players that would be great foundations to a good HiFi kit.

From a playback and preservation angle, what condition problems hurt a record most, and should owners clean records themselves or leave it to the pros?

We do not offer any record cleaning services, but we do sell record cleaning machines which work great. Even a $99 SpinClean which is basically a piece of Tupperware with brushes (add distilled water) will do a great job depending on how much elbow grease one puts into it. Or you can get a Clear Audio Double Matrix ultrasonic machine for around $8000. If a record does not have any huge scratches, just as long as it is carefully wiped off just playing the record will do a fair job of cleaning it. The heat created by the stylus riding through the grooves is quite high and can burn off a lot.

Vinyl's resurgence has pulled a lot of people back toward real turntables — are you seeing that, and what does it look like in your shop?

We sell a lot of record players. The main idea that we try to get across to people is that in contrast with streaming an album, every single vinyl album is different even if 2 are from the same pressing run from the same year. Each vinyl is different, some better, some worse, all quite unique. So, just saving a FLAC file of Pink Floyd’s “Money” is different than collecting 20 copies of Dark Side of the Moon because every copy will be slightly different in one way or another. All the FLAC files will reflect from what source they were digitized. Vinyl on the other hand a hobby and a passion. Collecting CDs or hi-rez digital files, for us, is not a passion.

What do people most often get wrong about what makes a record sound good — condition, pressing, or the gear playing it?

The devil is in the details. Just because a new release costs $500 and is pressed on 200G vinyl does not make it good. Perhaps it was pressed from a digital file and maybe that digital file had been “tweaked” to sound “better”, but what we look for is not a record sounding “better” than what it was but rather a record sounding as faithfully close to the original master tape as possible. Anyone can break out a graphic equalizer or a computer program and alter “Billie Jean” by Michael Jackson to make it sound better, but the word “better” always comes down to subjective choices. We prefer the true sound of a master tape. As we say on our website: you can often get a nicer LP at a thrift shop like Martin Denny, Enoch Light, or Serio Mendez for 25 cents than you might get from a new release costing over $300.

What's the most memorable system or setup you've built for someone?

We like every hi-fi system large or small. We are always drawn toward the simple elegance of an original Acoustic Research AR-XA turntable going into an Acoustic Research Amplifier into Acoustic Research AR-3 speakers. Not super expensive, but looks and sounds great.

FAQ

Does Gig Harbor Audio repair turntables?

Yes. The shop does warranty work and restoration for many British, Japanese, American, and niche audio companies.

Does Gig Harbor Audio clean records?

The shop does not offer record-cleaning services, but it sells record-cleaning machines and can advise on cleaning approaches.

Last updated: 2026-08-14

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