House Of Musical Traditions

I initially had a negative experience here with one of the staff members.  I thought it was unusual to have such a off-putting experience at a boutique music shop -- having travelled to many boutique music shops across the country I almost always leave feeling like it was a great experience -- great instruments, great atmosphere, and great friendly helpful staff.  I figured maybe it was a bad day or something.

Since my initial experience here was surprisingly negative I contacted the owner, David.  My comments and concerns were all well received -- in fact we were both in perfect agreement about what went wrong and how the situation should have been handled.

Having said all of the above, the rest of my experience was perfect.  Another staff member who I spoke to was helpful and answered questions I had about mountain dulcimers as well as high end guitars.  The instrument selection is vast and the staff seem knowledgable.

(This is probably 4.5 stars to me.)  I haven't come across anywhere like this before with such an eclectic mix of instruments.  This is excellent for ukuleles, banjos, guitars, and drums.  For the latter, I don't mean formal percussion -- at least as far as I saw -- but otherwise drums of all types/nationalities and sizes, as well as numerous 'noise makers' (for lack of a better word) of all variations.  There are also smallish selections of violins, Asian instruments, harps, accordions [actually a decent-size selection of those . . . as an accordion hater, a far larger selection than I think necessary . . . anywhere . . . :-) ], and other wonderful things.  The prices aren't exactly friendly on the instruments, but for the those I saw I don't have much background in them (yet) to compare them to, particularly not having come across most of them in other music stores.

The House of Musical Traditions has an interesting set up in what seems to be an old house.  A winding walk through the two floors reveals each room filled with a different selection of instruments.  I'll definitely be back, probably for too many intriguing purchases over time.

Interesting selection of instruments here, as well as musical accessories (some very nice music stands hand-carved by a local guy).  I'd visited a few times before locating the stairs to the second floor.  
A strong point of this place is that their selection of new, entry-level acoustic guitars is well chosen- almost uniformly good sounding instruments, often in the $200-300 range.  The rambling layout of the place means that there's often not a staff person around, though that's a good thing if you just want to test out an instrument or do some good old fashioned shoplifting (I kid).