What this is

A curated guide to guitar shops worth traveling for. A comprehensive list of every music store in America already exists and is useless — it cannot tell you which room will hand you a '59 and which one sells recorders to seventh graders. The opinion is the point.

How entries are sourced

Every shop carries a verification date, and most carry a mark showing how well it is actually known:

• Researched — compiled from shop sites, local press, and trade coverage. Not visited.
• Visited — I have been in the room.
• Purchased from — I have given them money, in person or online.
• Visited & purchased from — both.

Most entries here are researched, and they say so. That distinction matters more than it might look: shops close, relocate, and quietly switch to appointment-only, and a guide implying firsthand knowledge it does not have is worse than no guide at all. The marks accumulate as I actually travel.

Why verification dates

Directory rot is how sites like this die. Compiling this list turned up a Nashville shop that had been absorbed by a competitor, another that moved after its location closed, and a widely syndicated New York roundup still listing three shops that shut years ago. Every entry here shows when it was last checked, so you can judge staleness rather than trust it blindly.

Corrections

If a shop here has moved, closed, or changed how it operates, that is worth knowing. Call ahead when an entry says to — several of these are appointment-only, and a few keep hours narrow enough to waste a drive.