Guitar Stores

The guitar room at Fred Oster Vintage Instruments in Philadelphia.

I was road-tripping with the family over the 4th of July holiday, and we stopped in Montpelier, VT for lunch and a brief stroll to stretch our legs. We were hungry & cranky, but I really wanted to check out GuitarSam, just down the street from where we planned to eat.

I love guitar stores - what guitarist doesn’t? We love to pick up the priciest instruments and strum, imagining how they’d sound with the rest of the band, or how we’d look playing that vintage Martin at the next show.

When I was younger, my dad would truck all around Philly and South Jersey looking for the best deal on an amplifier or guitar. We went out to Zapf’s Music for my first amplifier, a solid-state Fender that had two inputs so he & I could play together. When I saved up enough money to buy my first electric, we went to a now-defunct store in Maple Shade, NJ & I bought a Hohner 430LP, on which I endlessly played the intro riff for Hootie & the Blowfish’s “Time.”

We never checked out GuitarSam, and I wish we had. When I visit neighborhood guitar stores, it’s often just me and the owner. Invariably the owner is friendly, and introduces himself, and we talk about music and the gear hanging on the wall. When it’s just me & the owner, I’m not afraid to ask the dumb questions, and I have the quiet to strum on open D and listen closely for the instrument’s tone. There’s no sales push, just a conversation between musicians and a chance to build our musical community, to explore ourselves, to pursue our quiet, intimate ambition.. 

I keep hoping my kids will take up guitar, and we can explore guitar stores together. My son is 10 and enjoys singing. He’s got a Strat copy in his bedroom & a drum set in the basement, both of which I use far more frequently than he does. My daughter is 18 months old, and she enjoys lugging her little plastic guitar around the living room & using it as a step-stool to the counter.

So maybe they won’t want to go to guitar stores. Maybe it will be a ballet studio. Maybe it will be a fly shop on the Upper Delaware River, or maybe my son gets that feeling when he tugs his batting helmet over his head and steps into the box at the local batting cages. But I know they’ll find something that makes them feel like they can do more, that they can do better, that maybe this place is the next step in their journey.

It’s a chance to see what more the world has to offer, and what we have inside of us to offer in return.