Timeless guitar shops - what's yours?

[Br1ck]

Gryphon in Palo Alto, and Sylvan in Santa Cruz. Both are great shops.

As a note: I think sales tax in Palo Alto is more than 9%. Makes it tough for brick and mortar stores.

[ataylor]

Originally Posted by godfreydaniel

I’m confused by your comment on paying more elsewhere. Is that due to the high sales tax?

That, but mostly due to the fact that they don’t seem to budge from MSRP. I’d be happy to pay the sales tax on a competitive deal if it meant supporting a local guitar shop, hence my comment on being willing to pay an extra $200-300. But paying MSRP plus WA sales tax is a non-starter for me.

[jjrpilot]

I purchased my Martin OMJM from Wild Wood Music in Ohio and Don and Marty are just wonderful people.

I bought my Taylor from Mass Street Music in downtown Lawrence, KS and that entire staff is wonderful. It's a great mom and pop shop that was est in 1983.

I love mom and pop music stores, I hope people continue to support those types of stores.

[Mr. Paul]

Harry Tuft is a treasure. He recently sold the Denver Folklore Center after owning and running it for 50 years. Over the years I've purchased a few there. The DFC is still a great place to buy a guitar.

[Parlorman]

I've been going to The Music Emporium for almost 50 years, first in the Cambridge locations and now in Lexington. It's always been stringed instrument mecca to me. I'm happy I live about a half hour away.

I'm going to Nashville next week and plan to visit Gruhn's and Carter's for the first time. It will be interesting to see how they compare.

[Silly Moustache]

Originally Posted by Mick Peel

Gosh Andy, Potter's music shop in Richmond brings back some memories...... I bought my first decent acoustic in there in the early '80's an Aria 'Paul Brett' rosewood dread. Beautifully made, a Japanese D28 copy.
About a year later I traded it in with Gerry for a '63 Gibson Hummingbird he had that I paid £400 for, which was money I was saving for a house deposit!
Gerry let me pay for the Gibson with six post dated cheques that he would put through the till one a month for the six months. Happy days, life seemed simpler then and people nicer. I sold the Gibson last year for a sum fairly close to £3,000 so it was a good buy all those years ago.

Hi Mick, I was wondering if there would be a Brit that knew one of those shops.

Gerry was always SO kind -and seemed more interested in helping his customers than making money! He certainly made me two remarkable deals basically giving me in trade what they cost me!

Great days in Richmond and Twickenham - the Stones at Eel pie on Wednesdays and the Station Hotel, (Sundays?) the hippie groovers at l'Auberge, and the Ed Faultless trio in the Palm court hotel, and the Hanging Lamp Folk Club ....dreaming.

[v32 finish]

I would love to learn of a shop in or around Houston TX. My experience here has been limited to Guitar Center, which is hit or miss... there's a tiny, hole in the wall shop called House of Guitars, but I haven't been there in years and don't remember being overwhelmed by the selection or service, maybe I'll go back.


Other than that, I do t know of anything here. I was planning on trying Alamo Music in San Antonio when I go visit family. Anyway....anybidy know any shops in TX??

[Nctom]

I drove by Don's Music City in Burlington, NC recently. The place looked the same, maybe a little run down, as it has since the '60s. Not quite the same as the stores in NYC or Madison, but still a real Mecca in a sleepy Southern town. The walls were full of Gibsons, Fenders, drum kits and amps, and pictures of all the touring acts that came by for supplies while they were on the road. It was an intoxicating place. I should have stopped and gone in, but the memories were best uninterrupted.

[ataylor]

Originally Posted by v32 finish

I would love to learn of a shop in or around Houston TX. My experience here has been limited to Guitar Center, which is hit or miss... there's a tiny, hole in the wall shop called House of Guitars, but I haven't been there in years and don't remember being overwhelmed by the selection or service, maybe I'll go back.


Other than that, I do t know of anything here. I was planning on trying Alamo Music in San Antonio when I go visit family. Anyway....anybidy know any shops in TX??

I’d check out Fuller’s if I were in Houston.

[Steve DeRosa]

• MandoBros - 'nuff said; my friendly local guitar shop for 35 years (Stan used to affectionately refer to my wife as "Mrs. Steve"), and a major loss to the acoustic instrument community when it went under
• Bucks County Folk Music - used to make it my business to stop there a couple times a year on the way to Lancaster County (PA); never a big selection but always a few noteworthy pieces
• Royal Music - located well off the beaten path in Brooklyn's Canarsie section, this mom-&-pop shop was a veritable gold mine of NOS - they still had Kalamazoo Epiphones into the early-80's, '60s Harmony Sovereigns w/OSSC and tags that finally made their way out of the basement 30 years on (ex-band bud scored one in the mid-90's), '70s/80s Westerly Guilds, pre-Gibson Flatiron mandolins, unsold silverface Fender and grey-logo Music Man amps, and the only Gibson Citation I've ever seen in person; fell victim to Hurricane Sandy and never reopened
• Rudy's - never been to the Broome Street location but a couple of buds who were around in the early-60's tell me it reminds them of the old Silver & Horland and Harry Newcorn stores on Park Row, and based on the pictures I'd be inclined to agree; if you weren't "there" back in the day this is as close as you're going to get to a "real" NYC music store
• "Pawnshop Row," East 14th Street, Manhattan - a stone's throw from the old New York Epiphone factory, this strip was a bargain hunter's dream going back to the early-1900's, and if you were into the no-longer-fashionable Jazz Age tenor/plectrum banjos and Big Band-era 17"/18" comp boxes (mostly Epiphone, as expected) in the early-60's, you could have made a real killing here; in the days when Brill Building NYC R&R/early Motown/surf music ruled the AM airwaves and a candy-apple red Strat plugged into a blonde Twin-Amp was the epitome of cool, one of those "obsolete" tweed Twin/Bassman amps in excellent-to-mint condition could routinely be had for $75 (the local studio/club guys - all jazzers by profession - were solidly on the Ampeg wagon by then), an equally-uncool P-90 LP goldtop for not too much more - and if I only knew then what I know now...

[magictwanger]

Mandolin Brothers! Gone,but never forgotten!!

[Earl49]

Elderly in Lansing. I grew up in Michigan, and this is the "holy land".....

Gryphon in Palo Alto once we moved to the Bay Area after college.
Tall Toad in Petaluma after we moved there.
Acoustic Vibes in Tempe, AZ Will stop in next week, and make it a point to visit every trip to Arizona.

I've visited many of the well-known shops west of the Mississippi over the years, some now gone. Buffalo Brothers was a treat, as was Dusty Strings in the Seattle area.

[jstroop]

I’m a huge fan, even though I have never been inside the store.

[Misifus]

I’m surprised Gruhn’s hasn’t been mentioned yet, or Cotton Music. I’ve bought from both.

[Jeff Scott]

Here one for you to check out sometime:

https://reverb.com/shop/clydes-shop-2