Jones & Crossland was a music equipment retailer situated on the inner ring road in central Birmingham, right next to Holloway Circus. As you can see in the ad, the exact address was 4-8 Smallbrook Queensway, and if you put that into Google Maps you’ll see exactly where that is.
The shop, well established by the ‘80s, had a clean, bright and modern image, very unlike the typical poky and rather dim guitar hovel of the period. It combined the kind of presentation you’d see in a department store, with the kind of knowledge and advice you’d expect from a good specialist dealer. Prices were nothing like as high as in department stores, and although not quite as low as in the most aggressive discount shops, they were highly competitive – as the ad shows. Jones & Crossland were very customer-orientated for their genre and time too, and that, in conjunction with the general trustworthy feel of the environment, was a combination a lot of buyers liked.
The business was taken over by Carlsbro Retail around the turn of the decade, and began to be listed as a Birmingham branch for Carlsbro in ads published forward from April 1990. Staff were retained when the business changed hands, and the feel of the place didn’t noticeably alter. Staff discretion seemed to be a big part of Jones & Crossland, and that remained intact in the early ‘90s under the auspices of Carlsbro.
At the time of the ad in 1988, J&C’s primary competition came from Musical Exchanges, but the closer if less powerful City Music (Suffolk Street) would have been a rival too. There was still a small guitar shop called Muso’s nearby on Hurst Street in the mid ‘80s, although whether it was still there in ’88 I can’t remember, and it was really a secondhand dealer rather than a contemporary market retailer. Fair Deal Music was just getting started on Smallbrook Queensway in the latter 1980s, but what sort of impact it would have had on J&C in summer ’88 I don’t know. I remember selling a Gibson Sonex privately to the guy who set up Fair Deal not too long before the J&C ad was published, and at that time it was literally a brand new business venture. George Clay was also on Smallbrook Queensway by '88, but had a different market from J&C, and would not have been much of a threat.
Anyway, the ad… Highlight points of interest are plenty, and include a push on the ever-present Rat Mk.II, which J&C were describing as “the best overdrive money can buy”. There’s also a selection of “without doubt the finest pickups available”, from Seymour Duncan. £59 was a good deal on the ’59 PAF at the time – around £10 below the going rate. And at the same price, you could turbo-charge your Strat with the DiMarzio Shock Waves jack socket pre-amp.
The Boss ME-5’s entry is pretty low key given its significance. It was brand new back in ’88 and there’d been nothing like it before. There’s no price shown, but they were £549 when they first came out.
The Midiverb II and the Microverb are a real signpost of the time, and the Rockman X100 and Soloist were in their heyday too. “Arriving soon”s on the Fender Clapton and Malmsteen Strats once again categorically define the moment of this ad.
But most interesting of all is the Hamer association, and the shop’s billing as “The number one Hamer outlet in the country”. This was the height of the superstrat era, and the likes of Jackson, Charvel, Kramer and Yamaha RGX combine to dominate the ad, along, of course, with the more select Hamer models which lead the listings.
All in all, a real encapsulation of summer 1988 in the world of UK guitar retail.
