ONE OF Dundee’s best-loved music stores has been forced to close with immediate effect as has the founding store in Fife.

Sound Control in Castle Street closed its doors yesterday, nearly a month after the Fife company went into administration.

Despite hopes that a buyer could be found for the Dundee branch, staff were told yesterday that the shop was closing and they were losing their jobs.

Three other group stores are also closing—in Dunfermline, where Sound Control was founded, Newcastle and Stoke. It means half of all Sound Control stores in the UK have closed since the company went into administration.

Ten of the company’s 26 stores nationwide were closed when the company, founded 25 years ago, went into administration at the end of April with a loss of 166 jobs nationwide.

Now, administrators Deloitte have announced that four more stores will close at a cost of 27 jobs.

Until it went into administration, Sound Control was the largest musical retailer in the UK with a turnover of £50 million and 372 employees in the UK.

Competition from the internet has been blamed for the firm’s collapse.

Administrator John Reid said, “The administrators have today, in light of the limited interest in the remaining operations of the group as a whole, made the difficult decision to close a further four of the group’s trading locations, in Dundee, Dunfermline, Newcastle and Stoke.

“These changes to the group’s operations have resulted in 27 redundancies with immediate effect.

“The administrators will continue discussions with a number of interested parties to explore a possible sale of the group’s remaining operations.

“However, at the same time as they explore sale options, the administrator will continue to trade the remaining 12 stores, selling high-quality musical instruments to the public.”

The demise of Sound Control also has implications for others associated with the company.

Two former freelance associates of the Dundee store—Rod Vaughan of RV Guitar Repair and Jimmy Laird of EMR Services—have set up their own repair company for musical instruments called Rattle and Hum.

Rod has been the official on-call guitar repairer for T in the Park for the past seven years, helping out bands like Kings of Leon and the Stereophonics, while Jimmy repairs and services all kinds of modern keyboards and amplifiers.

He is also regularly called upon to help repair church organs.

Rattle and Hum will open for business on Monday at premises in Milne’s East Wynd, part of the Blackness Trading Precinct in Dundee.