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America's Most Underserved Guitar Cities (2026)

The flip side of the guitar capitals: big American cities where you can barely buy a set of strings inside the city limits. These are the 30 most populous US cities (100,000+ residents) with zero or one guitar store in our 8,315-store national directory — 4.9 million people between them. If you've ever wanted to open a guitar shop, this is the market-gap list. Updated 2026-07-15.

The list

Top of the table: Aurora, Colorado — 403,130 people, a single guitar store. The biggest city with none at all is St. Paul, Minnesota (307,465 residents — 11 of the 30 cities are at zero). Most of these are big suburbs in major metros, which is exactly the point: the anchor city's shops are a drive away, and the local walk-in market is unclaimed.

#CityPopulationGuitar stores in directory
1 Aurora, CO 403,130 1
2 Newark, NJ 317,303 1
3 St. Paul, MN 307,465 0
4 Glendale, AZ 258,143 1
5 Fontana, CA 218,455 1
6 Grand Prairie, TX 207,331 1
7 Newport News, VA 183,056 1
8 Pembroke Pines, FL 179,326 0
9 Paterson, NJ 160,463 1
10 Kansas City, KS 156,752 0
11 Mesquite, TX 150,140 1
12 Thornton, CO 146,689 1
13 Palm Bay, FL 142,023 1
14 Coral Springs, FL 140,808 1
15 West Valley City, UT 138,144 1
16 Warren, MI 137,686 1
17 Hampton, VA 137,596 0
18 Sterling Heights, MI 134,342 0
19 Pearland, TX 129,620 1
20 Allentown, PA 127,138 0
21 Fairfield, CA 122,646 1
22 Cambridge, MA 121,186 1
23 League City, TX 118,456 1
24 West Jordan, UT 116,688 0
25 Richmond, CA 115,353 0
26 Buckeye, AZ 114,334 1
27 South Fulton, GA 112,003 0
28 Edinburg, TX 108,733 0
29 Jurupa Valley, CA 108,154 0
30 West Covina, CA 106,920 1

Read it fairly: counts are within city limits. St. Paul players cross the river to Minneapolis; Aurora shops in Denver. "Underserved" here means no local storefront — not that residents have never touched a guitar.

Cite this data

Suggested attribution: “America's Most Underserved Guitar Cities” — Guitar-Stores.com, 2026, linked to https://www.guitar-stores.com/guitar-stats/underserved/. The tables are CC BY 4.0: chart them, quote them, publish them — just link back. Want a custom cut (by state, metro, or chain)? Email us.

Download the full CSV Data updated 2026-07-15

Methodology: store counts from our continuously maintained national directory of 8,315 guitar and musical instrument stores (public business listings, filtered to genuine stores — no recording studios, DJ services, or lesson-only studios). City universe = incorporated places and consolidated city-governments with 100,000+ residents, US Census 2024 estimates; census names normalized to everyday names (Nashville-Davidson → Nashville) so no city is falsely flagged. Stores are matched to cities by the city name on their address. Refreshed with each quarterly re-crawl — cities graduate off this list when a store opens. Browse what nearby markets look like instead: stores by state, or the full stats hub.