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Guitar Store Stats, 2026
We mapped every guitar and musical instrument store in America — 8,315 shops with 1,374,173 player reviews between them. Here's where the stores actually are, which states have the most guitar retail per resident, and how the national chains split the map with independent shops. (Journalists & bloggers: cite freely with a link.)
Which states have the most guitar stores per capita?
Nationally there are about 24.4 guitar stores per million residents. The per-capita crown goes to New Hampshire at 51.8 stores per million — 73 stores for a state of 1.4 million people — with Vermont at 43.2 and Connecticut at 43 close behind. Guitar retail follows music culture more than population: the states where playing, gigging, and collecting run deep keep shops alive that a spreadsheet says shouldn't exist — which is why the gap between the top and bottom of this table matters if you'd rather play a guitar before you buy it. At the other end, District of Columbia has just 5.7 per million.
| # | State | Stores | Per million people |
| 1 | New Hampshire | 73 | 51.8 |
| 2 | Vermont | 28 | 43.2 |
| 3 | Connecticut | 158 | 43 |
| 4 | Massachusetts | 260 | 36.4 |
| 5 | Rhode Island | 39 | 35.1 |
| 6 | Oregon | 144 | 33.7 |
| 7 | Idaho | 67 | 33.5 |
| 8 | Maine | 46 | 32.7 |
| 9 | Wyoming | 19 | 32.3 |
| 10 | Tennessee | 222 | 30.7 |
| 11 | Pennsylvania | 394 | 30.1 |
| 12 | Montana | 34 | 29.9 |
| 13 | Wisconsin | 173 | 29 |
| 14 | New Jersey | 271 | 28.5 |
| 15 | Minnesota | 164 | 28.3 |
Chains vs. independents
Of the 8,315 stores in the directory, 664 (8%) belong to a national chain and 7,651 are independent shops — guitar retail is still very much an independents’ game. The biggest chains in the directory: Guitar Center with 402 locations and Music & Arts with 262 locations.
| # | Chain | US locations in directory |
| 1 | Guitar Center | 402 |
| 2 | Music & Arts | 262 |
America's guitar capitals
The cities with the most guitar stores in the directory, by raw count — the music towns where the players, the studios, and the touring circuit keep the most walls stocked. Top of the list: New York, NY (35) · Houston, TX (31) · Las Vegas, NV (28).
| # | City | Guitar stores |
| 1 | New York, NY | 35 |
| 2 | Houston, TX | 31 |
| 3 | Las Vegas, NV | 28 |
| 4 | Los Angeles, CA | 26 |
| 5 | Miami, FL | 26 |
| 6 | Austin, TX | 26 |
| 7 | Brooklyn, NY | 24 |
| 8 | Chicago, IL | 24 |
| 9 | Nashville, TN | 24 |
| 10 | Portland, OR | 24 |
America's densest guitar-store cities
Guitar stores per 100k residents, cities over 50k population. Raw counts favor the biggest metros, so this table is the other lens — the mid-size cities where guitar retail clusters hardest per resident.
| # | City | Stores | Per 100k |
| 1 | Marietta, GA | 11 | 17.4 |
| 2 | Missoula, MT | 13 | 16.6 |
| 3 | Harrisburg, PA | 8 | 15.8 |
| 4 | La Crosse, WI | 8 | 15.7 |
| 5 | Lancaster, PA | 9 | 15.4 |
| 6 | Pensacola, FL | 8 | 14.8 |
| 7 | Camarillo, CA | 10 | 14.3 |
| 8 | Idaho Falls, ID | 9 | 12.9 |
| 9 | Santa Cruz, CA | 8 | 12.8 |
| 10 | Eau Claire, WI | 9 | 12.4 |
| 11 | Kalamazoo, MI | 9 | 12.3 |
| 12 | Loveland, CO | 10 | 12.3 |
| 13 | Greenville, SC | 9 | 12.1 |
| 14 | Plymouth, MA | 8 | 12 |
| 15 | Alpharetta, GA | 8 | 11.9 |
Inside the shops
Of the 8,315 stores in the directory, 6,226 are definitive guitar & musical instrument stores — that's what they call themselves — with the rest being vintage dealers, repair-first shops, and full-line music stores whose walls earn them a place here. We deliberately leave out recording studios, DJ services, and lesson-only studios with nothing on the wall. From our review and website mining so far (these counts are floors — they require evidence, and enrichment is ongoing):
| Stores that… | Count | Share |
| Buy & trade used gear | 1,661 | 20% |
| Do repairs & setups on site | 4,007 | 48% |
| Offer lessons | 2,698 | 32% |
| Specialize in vintage & rare | 3,051 | 37% |
Small-town standouts worth the drive
Guitar stores in towns under 30,000 people that still pull hundreds or thousands of reviews — destination shops that outdraw their whole zip code.
- McKay's Mebane — Mebane, NC ★ 4.5
- Antiques & Uniques — Wickliffe, OH ★ 5
- Value Pawn & Jewelry — Wilton Manors, FL ★ 5
- National Pawn — Hope Mills, NC ★ 4.9
- Brass Armadillo Antique Mall - Kansas City — Grain Valley, MO ★ 4.7
- Awesome Flea Market — Shepherdsville, KY ★ 4
- Wild Side Pawn and Jewelry — Stuart, FL ★ 5
- Clarksville Peddlers Mall — Clarksville, IN ★ 4.2
- Bull Moose — Waterville, ME ★ 4.7
- Sterling & Knight Jewelry & Pawn — Hinsdale, IL ★ 4.9
- Fieldstone Jewelry & Pawn — Conyers, GA ★ 4.9
- Shenandoah Music Inc. — Winchester, VA ★ 4.9
- King Music Inc — Bradley, IL ★ 5
- Guitar Center — Springfield, NJ ★ 4.4
- RINK Gallery, A Vintage Marketplace — Bethany, OK ★ 4.6
More data: the full stats suite
Each deep-dive below is its own dataset page with a downloadable CSV — cite freely with a link.
- America's Guitar Capitals — the cities with the most guitar stores, raw count and per resident (the Nashville-vs-everyone table).
- The 25 Best Cities for Guitar Players — store density × store quality, scored for every US city over 50k.
- The Vintage Guitar Map — 3,051 confirmed vintage & rare specialists, mapped by state.
- Chain ratings: Guitar Center vs. Music & Arts — every location's Google rating, aggregated, plus the best-to-worst Guitar Center spread.
- America's most underserved guitar cities — the biggest US cities with zero or one guitar store.