Guitar shops worth the trip in Denver

On Colfax since 1998, this is a real working luthier shop qualified for vintage-safe repair — neck resets and full refinishing included, which narrows the field of Front Range benches considerably. The sales floor is stocked by genuine trade-in and consignment traffic rather than distributor allocation, so what is hanging on the wall turns over.

Harry Tuft founded this in 1962, and it became a genuine hangout for Judy Collins, Arlo Guthrie, the Mamas & the Papas and a young Bob Dylan — one of the most historically important folk retail spaces in the country. It still operates as a working acoustic shop with rotating vintage consignment rather than trading on the history alone. Platt Park, just south of downtown, is an easy first stop on a Denver day.

Ronny Kae, a touring drummer, started this in 1965 with fifty dollars and one kit sold out of his closet; his sons run it now. Six decades later it is the largest ESP and Schecter dealer in the country, and a $30,000 gold-plated Sonor kit once passed through the inventory. The address is Wheat Ridge rather than Denver proper, northwest of downtown — worth knowing before you plot the route.

Thirty-plus years in historic Olde Town Arvada, built around serious acoustic connoisseurship: Martin, Gibson, Collings, National, Bourgeois, Santa Cruz and Deering, alongside used and vintage consignment. Repair happens on site. Arvada is its own municipality northwest of Denver, so treat this as a deliberate leg of the trip rather than a stop between two others.

A Fender dealer that also runs guitar and bass repair and carries pedals and effects. The effects side is the reason to detour here — this is the stop for chasing a specific box rather than an instrument. Combine it with a repair drop off and the trip pays for itself.

Boulder’s longest-running local music store at twenty-five-plus years, which in a town with this much turnover counts for something. Consignment is where it gets interesting — a 1919 Gibson F4 mandolin has come through. Boulder is a proper drive north of Denver, so bundle it with the Broomfield and Louisville shops instead of making the trip for one stop.

Buy, sell and trade traffic keeps the floor moving here, and an in-house luthier handles repair work and custom builds. That combination means the inventory is whatever walked through the door recently, which rewards a look rather than a plan.

Small, personal, and housed in a historic USPS building, with roots tracing back to vintage-show dealing in 1989. Broomfield puts it in the same corridor as Wildwood over in Louisville, which makes it the obvious walk-in to pair with a Wildwood appointment on the same drive.

Hand-carved custom builds come out of this shop, and the founder trained at the Colorado School of Lutherie. It is a working bench you can visit, not a sales counter — repair and setup are the day job. Go for the craft and the conversation; there is no wall of inventory waiting.